Posted: April 6

Dreaming about change

(Barcelona) It has been 20 years since I’ve been in Barcelona and this city on Spain’s northeastern coast does not seem all that different. If anything it is more prosperous looking, especially in comparison with Rome. The cathedral certainly does not seem to have changed much except for the video monitors mounted on the stone pillars along each side. We dropped into the dim space late Saturday afternoon as Mass was beginning, and few people paid attention to the monitors; fewer still sat in the pews. Perhaps that is a change as Spain has steadily moved away from the central, privileged status that the Church used to enjoy. The plaza right in front of the cathedral was however jammed with people doing a traditional dance. They formed circles of six to 10 people and moved slowly around as an orchestra seated on the cathedral steps played the stately music that they moved to.

We were taking a break from a three-day conference of web masters of European web sites. The conversation as we strolled down the Ramblas on an early spring day wandered from new software like Ajax and the best way to do open-source CMS systems. If none of that makes sense to you now, it would after taking part in one of these meetings. It’s not only technology we discussed though. The most lively discussions came from arguing about how to do retreats on line. Can you just post information that people use as they want or can you bring in the back-and-forth dynamic of a typical Jesuit directed retreat? How can you achieve that sort of interaction if the one who is making the retreat and the director are not in the same room, or may not have ever even met each other? Should you even try to do it? I think I most enjoyed the session where we just dreamed about what we want to do without worrying about technical limitations. As voice over the internet technologies like Skype become more common, we could begin to think of spiritual direction done at some physical or geographic remove. People who do not live anywhere near a Jesuit retreat house could start to experience the benefits of an Ignatian retreat. We also dreamed about creating communities of prayer. I really liked the expression someone used, “You may pray alone but you are not alone in prayer.” Some of the new technologies could give people praying simultaneously but in greatly separated places a sense of community that encourages even more prayer.