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Posted: August 27
Tomorrow morning I take a train to northern Italy to start my annual retreat. The heat wave finally broke here in Rome, so I hope it is safe to leave my air-conditioned office and go pray for awhile. The last few weeks have been very productive and I feel content to set work aside for a bit. I managed to spend eight consecutive days painting, and although the results are mixed, I am pleased with the opportunity to concentrate on learning more about this incredibly difficult area. There are so many things to know; it's a bit like being a juggler and trying to keep multiple elements constantly in motion: drawing, composition, values, color, edges. Photography is so different because you work with what you find to get the best image, or you wait for the light to change, or come back early the next morning. But with painting everything is under your control and you make all the decisions. I am currently working on a big oil painting of a landscape in Wyoming's Wind River Mountains. It got off to a great start until I realized that the values are off. So I don't mind leaving it be while I retreat. I will get back to it with fresh eyes and a good spirit.
Yesterday I had a very interesting conversation with Jim Holub SJ from the Wisconsin Province who is interested in "leveraging the assets of our Jesuit institutions worldwide via technology." Jim has great credentials as founder of Homeboyz Interactive (http://www.homeboyz.com), a program in Chicago and Milwaukee to provide education to gang members so they have alternatives and a route out of the gangs. Clients for the program have included the Chinese government who commissioned Homeboyz to create materials for teaching English to Chinese youth..
What makes this conversation interesting is that it echoes encounters I have had with a growing number of other Jesuits around the world. I see a great potential for using digital technology to extend the Society of Jesus' resources to people whom we would not otherwise serve and to collaborate beyond traditional local boundaries (a university within its city, Jesuits within a province, provinces within one country, etc.). Enough people are expressing this insight that I am coming to think this is a major avenue of growth for the communications sector. I would welcome reflections, insights, observations on this topic which you can find developed in the report I wrote for the Procurator's Congregation. (a link to download the document can be found at the upper right hand part of this page.)
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