Formation for Christian Integration began . . .

It was seven years ago in April, on a day like today, balmy and wet. I was sitting in St. Boniface Church on a 1st Friday and thinking:  "If I want to understand how to form youth and help other people, why don't I just write a book?"  That strikes me as funny now.

I went across the street to my flat.  It was so gloomy, so little light shone through the sheer white curtains that I had to turn on the lamps in the middle of the day.  And the fan was blowing because it was wet but warm.  I got out a huge card-file box and some 3x5 cards and started reading.  And that day it may have been Tolkien's "On Fairy-Stories" or Dawson's The Crisis in Western Education or I might have started on The Complete Works of Aristotle.

Forming the Four Men: Formation for Christian Integration was the product, a book in two parts (principles and praxis) with appendices, and merely 41,000 words.  I finally pitched the note-cards this spring, but the book has been finished, revised and revised again, and enlarged as I test its theories in the parish, teaching, camps, etc.  I've also weeded it--it is half as long as it used to be!

These blogs are the latest fruit.  The weather was so reminsicent today.