Adelaide
CONTACT
| Helen Owens rsm |
Catherine McAuley Place |
| Phone: Fax: Email: |
(08) 8150 4900 (08) 8150 4999 somadel@chariot.net.au |
The Congregational Leadership Team is comprised of Sisters of Mercy elected by the membership of the Congregation every five years.
The Leadership Team consists of the Congregational Leader and Council.
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Left to right: Lyn Beck, Ilsa Neicinieks, Helen Owens (Congregation Leader), Janet Lowe (Vicar), Margaret Adams |
The Transfer of Leadership:
Handing over the reigns and votes of thanks for a job well done.
A thank you to Sr Meredith Evans after 10 years of leadership on behalf of us all spoken by Sr. Kate Conley
Meredith cooks a favourite recipe when we holiday down the River Murray in summer. It is called the 100 Garlic Clove Roast Chicken. Well its about 35 garlic cloves but that’s what I call it. You are a 100 garlic clove woman Meredith or as Scripture puts it “Grace pressed down and spilling over”.
And from your goodness we have all received, which says something about how the Spirit, She who is the well- spring of life must have refreshed and replenished you in weary and difficult times over these years.
Thank you for your kindness. Thank you for your hard work in collaboration with so many especially your team, for your engagement in the wider Church and world and passion for the support of young people and their contribution to the Church and society. And in all this, your mindfulness of the individual. Thanks for your capacity to celebrate -- for your big laugh and your feisty self.
Two areas that I know of that were heavy on your heart- the Goodwood Orphanage and your desire for the programme to be a truly reconciling time for all concerned and the very large space given to the work around reconfiguring and important ground work done there with others for our future.
In these last years you faced cancer and kept close to your mother as she moved into an Aged Care Home with all the adjustments that continue now for her and for you. Thank you for green fingers and the lovely garden that sprang up around the Mile End offices.
Meredith I won’t give you 100 garlic cloves! I would like to give you 100 daffodils but Spring is not here yet. Spring will come and may it bring you beauty, leisure, good health, knowledge of a job well done and some new
doors opening into a creative future.
Thankyou from each one of us.
ABOUT US
The Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy, Adelaide, was established in 1880 as an independent foundation from Dublin by the Sisters of Mercy, Buenos Aires.
Our gift as Sisters of Mercy is to know God's loving kindness and to share it with others. (Constitutions 1.03)
Chapter Statement – December 2009
An event of Communion of Divine Energy: Three movements
If you watch as you have not watched before,
You will see the morning begin to lace the darkness.
If you turn from the trail that has drawn you for ages and gaze at the fringes,
You will see the timber budding.
If you lean beyond the place of your balance, your arms uplifted,
A rhythm will catch and lift you.
For God has come to us and the earth trembles with joy.
1. We gathered in this season when we prepare to celebrate
God’s great leap of love in becoming one of us
at the birth of Jesus.
Out of the same stillness of the heart of God
we found ourselves in a radically new moment,
ready to make our own leap of faith,
ready to let go – reach out – in trust,
ready to risk the unknown with openness and love,
ready to risk a deeper journey of conversion with our Australian and Papua New Guinea sisters,
ready to be in it together.
2. We returned with hope to a place gifted from an earlier risking,
from a leap of faith of our Argentine foremothers.
In this place of memory and identity,
we brought a new gift of love to the altar.
In Eucharistic assembly with archbishop, friends, companions,
our new song soaring in Cecilia’s chapel,
the gift transformed into a deeper joy.
3. On Catherine’s founding day, at about twelve
on the twelfth of the twelfth
came a confirmation of this call and a new invitation.
A call of harvesting the wisdom hived in us like rich honey(1).
We want to name and offer for our new institute’s beginning
the gifts we have to bring.
Gifts of loving, deep respect, trusting, risking collaborating,
Challenge, relationships, commitment,
Telling our stories, hearing our stories
Hoping, changing, creating, celebration of diversity
A willingness to go to the edge
Again and again – “prepared to do what is needed”(2).
The spirit is rising, though we are falling
And the promise comes true that brought us to birth,
The promise that lingered in the young and the feeble
The promise that drove us from evening to morning:
That the lame should move with the gait of kings, the broken flourish,
The bound step up and God exalt among God’s people(3).
(1) This image is drawn from Judith Wright’s South of My Days.
(2) Catherine McAuley
(3) Adapted from Peter Steele’s poem
This weaving was created by the Sisters over the days of the Chapter in December 2009. |
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Call to Action: Chapter December 2009
We rejoice in all our living and in each other. Our love finds particular expression in our care for one another in our frailty as we age, in our welcome and support of new members, and in our way of life of respectfully hearing each other’s stories. We further call our leadership to:
Help us explore together any areas of shadow we collectively carry and our appreciation of the natural rhythms of our lives as women entering into this next phase of reconfiguring
Continue to keep the SA Mercy story alive through the memory and identity of our archives
Carry on our deep relationship with the Sisters of Mercy of Papua New Guinea into the future
Provide opportunities for continuing the sabbaticals and study leave for the Sisters into future reconfiguring arrangements
Explore ways of deepening our understanding of Eucharistic living
We hope that our celebration of difference and likeness among us will continue in the risk-taking that awaits us, so that we are even ‘harvesting the wisdom hived in us like rich honey’(Judith Wright).
More to come
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