We don’t know what colors she preferred. Was she shy, prone to fits of laughter, or sober and absorbed in her own thoughts? Was her gaze direct? Did her voice carry, or did she speak in intimate tones, as though her words were meant only for you? When she entered a room, did she magnetize others by her ease and warmth? Or did she prefer to observe others in absorbed silence, from just outside the… Read more
Welcome to Terra Incognita
… We’re all, more or less, thrown together with a raft of characters, most of whom we would not have chosen for company. Out of these personalities, we can either make art or a living hell. Out of the hell of his confinement, Cummings made a love poem for a good number of men he would never see again. His is the room where memory sharpens affection’s focus and gives back art…
From Convivium School: "Hope"
But she was a person, so she slowly expanded again to fill her place in the world.
Read moreConvivium Salon: On Walls and Pigeonholes
"Like all walls it was ambiguous, two-faced. What was inside it and what was outside it depended upon which side of it you were on."
—from The Dispossessed, by Urlsula K. Le Guin
"Don’t shove me into your damn pigeonhole, where I don’t fit, because I’m all over. My tentacles are coming out of the pigeonhole in all directions."
—also Urlsula K. Le Guin
Queen Ursula
What are the walls and pigeonholes that we confront? How do we face them, climb them, crawl through them, tear them down?
Convivium Salon: Nothing is More Interesting
by Meghan Berneking
In talking with others, I understood right away that none of us knew what to expect. But at the invitation of a friend, we decided to ‘come and see.’ The presentations were all very beautiful, but many of us were particularly struck by the discussion, on Saturday afternoon, about St. Francis and the Sultan, which featured Imam Mohamed Arafat, Mark Danner, and Sr. Agnes Therese Davis, TOR. To see a Catholic sister and Muslim Imam on the same stage in small town Ohio was almost surreal. But what was more interesting was their shared desire to follow the examples of those who came before as a path to mutual understanding and friendship. In the encounters throughout the weekend--both in the presentations and in the meetings with others who were there--I understood that authentic friendship is quite rare in our culture, but when one does meet a true friend, nothing is more interesting. For me, personally, the Festival of Friendship was a sign of this great Encounter in my life. My 10-year high school reunion was the same weekend, and I was debating whether I should go to that instead. But the choice to go to the Festival was obvious, not only because the proposal is more interesting, but attending the Festival was an affirmation and verification of the great gift that I've received by encountering the Movement. Attending the Festival was a gesture of gratitude for me, and of the hope that is born in this friendship…I was so impressed by [the volunteers’] attitude this weekend. It was very clear that [they] were grateful for whatever was given for the Festival. I think if I had been in [the same] situation, I would not have had the courage to invite my friends to travel and share their witness; I would have been frustrated by all the ways it perhaps didn't meet my expectations, or by which friends could or could not attend. But it became clear to me that you all had encountered an interesting proposal for life that you simply desired to share with your friends that you live with every day in Steubenville. And to me, that is a more remarkable witness than if 1,000 people had turned up to hear a talk.
This excerpt first appeared in a collection of testimonies about the 2016 Festival of Friendship. Read the entire thing (and see lots more photos, including of Rebecca Bratten Weiss) here.