change

What Do You Wake Up For?

Another product tagline caught my attention. Recently, as I sipped my morning coffee, I heard the question, “What do you wake up for?” on a TV mattress [1] commercial. This question, amid the coming approach of autumn, became a catalyst for deeper thought. The start of the school year, the resumption of meetings and another year of activities often acts for me like a mini- New Years inviting me to renew or make new resolutions. I am given the opportunity to begin a change I want to initiate. This seasonal change offers me the necessary prompt to consider what needs addressing in my life?

Still enjoying my morning coffee, these lines from a poem often attributed to Pedro Arrupe came to mind.

What you are in love with,
what seizes your imagination, will affect everything.
It will decide
what will get you out of bed in the morning,
what you do with your evenings,
how you spend your weekends,
what you read, whom you know,
what breaks your heart,
and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.

-Joseph Whelen, SJ

Indeed, what we are in love with, what seizes our imagination, will affect everything. It will decide everything. What motivates us? Is it time to make mid-year resolutions?

- Sister Nancy Wales, csj

[1]  Tuff and Needle Canada | Image: Unsplash/Timothy Eberly

Zoom for Dummies

zoom2.png

Confronted with the necessity of learning to use zoom, and wading through a variety of apps, I managed to install a zero-cost Zoom app on my computer.  I had already mastered the skill of opening a Zoom meeting by clicking on the link sent to me via e-mail.  I bravely joined a small group of learners in an on-line webinar taught by Sister Kathleen, a patient member of my CSJ community.  With some extra private coaching, I succeeded in learning computer etiquette, to check the volume of microphone and speaker, join a meeting, move between gallery view and speaker view, adjust my camera, mute, unmute, leave the meeting, etc. Now I was ready to learn how to initiate meetings - on to the advanced class!

In the first session, I was expelled because I somehow managed to render my Zoom app “encrypted” and the resulting cacophony made the meeting inaccessible to all.  My teacher refused to give up; more private tutoring followed.  In the second class, I was again invited to exit the session early after a guided exercise in leaving and then rejoining the group resulted in my computer having two almost simultaneous versions of the meeting occurring, not quite synchronously, for all participants.  Nevertheless, our instructor has not despaired.  More private tutoring and assurances that I could master this next step have given me a modicum of confidence.  This evening, I have a semi-private lesson scheduled in which my intrepid teacher will coach another student and me in learning how to invite each other to schedule a Zoom meeting. Fortunately, our teacher can rove between her students’ adjacent locations to coach each of us.  I wish her success and hope for a happy outcome.

“Computers are a means of teaching us humility”

In my deplorable state I am encouraged by knowledge if children can learn to use computers then so can I! And I am comforted by a remark from Connie, one of our most accomplished staff members (who has shown remarkable restraint and patience in dealing with my computer woes).  Computers, she says, are a means of teaching us humility. Developing a new skill will yield added benefits.

- Sister Patricia McKeon, csj