The following are from the end of
course reviews and are used with permission from people who completed the
course in Summer 2005:
“Year 1 was very much a personal
journey for me. It provided an opportunity for me to explore where I was/am
at, to explore my sense of my spirituality and how that relates to spirituality
as represented through the Christian traditions. I really valued the openness
in the course to exploring different manifestations of Presence. It gave me
a collective space that is rare in my present life to openly claim and acknowledge
my sense of my spirituality while also being challenged to bring that understanding
to new depths.”
“The two years have most definitely
been a journey for me, a journey of self discovery and personal enrichment.
It has been a journey of growing in self confidence and very much a deepening
of my own spirituality. It has been a journey of meeting new people and forging
new friendships, which hopefully some of them anyway will continue. It has
been a journey of meeting God at a very different level and a much deeper
one. It has been a journey of “letting go” of peeling away the
layers of conditioning and rigidity that bound me together. It has been a
journey of getting to know myself and accepting me as I am and not being so
hard on me all the time. It has been a privilege to be with people where I
was able to be myself, and discuss my own faith journey at such a deep level
and know that how I felt was ok. That was one of the great joys of the whole
course, being able to openly discuss ones’ deepest faith issues and
beliefs without being criticised in any way. It gave me a great sense of belonging,
as if we were just one family. This in turn gave me a great feeling of security
and a place where I felt listened to and understood which has done wonders
for my confidence. I absolutely loved the experiential aspect of the whole
course which gave me certain skills and tools without being too formal.”
“I feel I have more confidence,
there is a realization that a lot of the knowledge, wisdom and the ability
to be present to another has been there for a long time and it’s good
to feel that has been affirmed. That I have the potential as a spiritual accompanier,
to enable another to engage in a journey of exploration, to support them on
a journey that may be difficult and painful, not to have to fix it or put
it right, but to be there, accepting them where they are at”.
“What have I learned from the
two years? Some courses are short term orientated, work orientated etc. This
is life orientated. It seeps through the pores of our being. It is helping
me to be more myself, to be open to what is closed in me. My home life has
been deepened, my relationships with wife and son are healthier. It has allowed
me to be more patient, more calm. The course reached the heart, which was
what I needed. It reached the gut, the core. The course though strictly one
weekend a month was in fact three hundred and sixty five days a year. Thankfully
it is a living course. Through the space it offered it allowed me to begin
reflecting on what it is I want from life and maybe more what God wants from
me”.
“The role plays and the way
in which they were done and processed I found really valuable. They brought
the accompaniment process to live for me and both challenged and consoled
me. Challenged me to replicate the attentiveness that was demonstrated; consoled
me in the simplicity of the approach that reminded me to keep things simple
and real”.