In our office, we have two whiteboards, an increase from our former amount, “one.” One whiteboard lists, in three columns, things that we all need to do together, that people can take parts of for themselves, and stuff that is up for grabs for anyone. Our second board is a fancy smancy Venn diagram thingy with spots for each of our to-do lists and overlapping places for our teamwork:

The tasks for this week

The joke with this super-helpful-yet-imperfect diagram is that Jess and I can never work together and Kurt and Molly can’t either, but don’t worry; it’s not actually true. The truth is that Kurt and I shouldn’t be allowed to work together, which items 2 & 3 show clearly. Our color codes help organize the info (blue for liturgy, etc.), and brown was previously unassigned until Jess used it to corral our antics. Anywho, the boards have gotten pretty full as Jess laid out our to-do lists to begin the new year.

This week, the four of us went off in our pairs to schedule a semester’s worth of primary school outreach with the schools’ staffs:

  • inviting the schools to come to a prayer service for the International Eucharistic Congress bell’s day at Clonard during its tour of the Diocese of Ferns
  • more class masses with 4th-classes
  • extending our work to 3rd-classes with Stations of the Cross in Lent
  • tours of the St. Brigid’s Day sacred space
  • tours of the Church of the Annunciation for the 2nd-classes leading up to First Communion
  • inviting the schools to Clonard during the Folk Choir’s visit for afternoon concerts with the Domers (as a Folkhead, these concerts were easily some of my favorite things about our tours)
  • and, scheduling the end-of-the-year liturgies (what!?)

Plenty of dates are in diaries now at Kennedy Park, Scoil Mhuire, and in our diary at Clonard, too. The 2012 Google Calendar for Teach Bhride is starting to fill up nicely.

During the days, we spent time honing our proposed template for the Confirmation retreat we’ll be doing a bunch of times this spring for confirmandi from the primary schools around the diocese. The previous years of Teach Bhride have established a good framework for our responsibilities with the Diocesan Retreat Team, and we’ll be in high demand.

We also put together our music order for our February music ministry workshop on music for the Eucharist. We’ll be sorting out who will introduce and describe each song as we get closer to the date and wait for our shipment of music to arrive.

Last night, we made our third visit to the Clonard Youth Club. We have kind of reached a crossroads with this group. It meets in the Clonard Community Centre, but it has no ties to the parish or ministry. It’s simply a weekly time for kids to come hang out. We’ve been going to the later half for secondary school kids to see what’s going on in the group and figure out what we might be able to do. It became clear from the outset – said to us in as many words by the leader – that religious programming wouldn’t work with the group. I thought, “We know; that’s what we’re here for, and we’re gonna try.” But she was right. It isn’t even that the kids wouldn’t want religious programming; it’s that they don’t want any programming. The kids are just there to come do nothing with each other – to sit around, to text, to play some soccer and ping pong. They don’t want to do anything concrete, and they want to do that with each other. So, our coming and even just trying to establish a presence wasn’t a fit, even to the point where we’d be avoided or ignored. It would be a bummer if it weren’t just the simple, plain truth.

The important thing is that we came, explored the situation, learned about the kids there, and came away with awareness of the situation. The way forward for us lies in the work with the Confirmation kids, some of whom recognized Jess at youth club from her work with them last year. We’ll be looking into how we can use the program in the parish as the foundation for another youth group, not to compete with the existing one but to be more similar to the ones you’d find in American parishes and provide some kids of faith-related atmosphere for fun and fellowship. Additionally, we’ll eventually end the game of phone tag we’ve been playing with a local priest who manages vocation ministry in the area’s secondary schools; once we can successfully complete a call to him – and not his voicemail! – another door will open.

We’re nearing the halfway point of our ten months (we arrived on August 25) and are making a date for our mid-year review and reflection with the priests and Sr. Mary. And so as we make our way up to Dublin tonight for the January ACE Fellowship Mass, the journey continues.