The Lord provides plot turns more wonderful than we could imagine or plan ourselves

I just came across an interesting apostolate that is putting the creative charisms to what seem to me to be very good effect: The Corpus Christi Watershed.

From their website:

Corpus Christi Watershed is a new non-profit organization that was founded in Fall of 2006 on the Feast of St. Philip Howard, a poet and one of the English Martyrs. We are a non-profit dedicated to the fields of the creative arts. Our work is at the same time cultural and literary as well as religious and educational, and we seek not only to preserve and make accessible the great artistic works of the past, but also foster new creative ventures.

Our particular call is the hope of incarnating something of the Spirit in our creative works, be they documentary films, music albums or even something as pedestrian as ‘a newsletter’. Our project is Eucharistic, as our staff spend time in adoration each day, harvesting something of eternity that can inspire us and be plunged into our humble creative ventures. We seek that this be a work of the Holy Spirit above all else.

Whom do we seek to touch? Everyone we can. We consider the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, and seek to be anything but exclusive. One does not need to be religious or Christian to visit the Sistine Chapel or the great basilicas of Rome. This is the same with any work such as the poetry of Dante and Hopkins or the sublime images of Fra Angelico or Carravaggio. The great treasury of sacred art is open for all to behold. Thus, Corpus Christi Watershed is very much a public charity, not only in terms of our pending 501(c)3 federal recognition, but even more importantly in terms of the Latin amor caritas. Love charity, and above all share it and broadcast it far and wide.

One project of theirs that I particularly love is the St. Noel Chabanel Responsorial Psalm Project, but a simple link to it is probably all that our liturgy-wars-free-zone policy will allow.

I particularly enjoyed this description (my emphasis):

...St. Joseph seems to have taken a special interest in this whole project from its inception. As soon as the idea came up a few years ago in the writers group when we were wistfully talking about a “writers’ colony,” it seemed like an impossibility, but Claire and I started making novenas to St. Joseph for guidance as to which direction we should follow and what God wanted us to be involved in, and St. Joseph seems to have taken on the task.

This has progressed with what seems to us miraculous speed and now we are on the slopes, skiing and tobogganing down with great rapidity and trying to control the car . . . but we leave it to the saints to drive the car, and we will savor the ride.

I also want to acknowledge the patronage of St. Phillip Neri who— since I have become aquainted with him through his style, his sanctified jocularity, and creativity— has been a luminous incentive for us to keep jogging along at his pace… which is faster than we are normally used to going. What seems to me is special about this project is that it is set very much in the style of Phillip Neri. We do not limit ourselves by a prescribed structure we envision ourselves, to which we would doggedly adhere as we progress, but rather we allow everything to develop according to the gifts of the people that God attracts to this project. Thus, we let personalities be the guide rather than any kind of pre-arranged formula.

Pope Benedict XVI in his first Mass spoke about this very thing, about his style of governance being not any kind of synthesized structure but the fruits of his own
personality and the fact that he would be completely open to the will of God and see what happens. This openness to the will of God becomes itself the structure.

So we can think of the endeavors of Corpus Christi Watershed metaphorically in terms of a book where it is not some kind of a pulp fiction that the writer drafts according to a formula some publisher gives him with a prescribed structure. Instead, ours is a more literary adventure where we allow the characters to develop the story. So day to day we do not know exactly what is going to happen, but we know that it us going to be a page turner, and everything we do will be an exciting surprise. We always shall be looking forward to the next page, and the next chapter, and we shall keep moving ahead that way. This is how things have been thus far
and we anticipate it to continue this way. The Lord provides plot turns more wonderful than we could imagine or plan ourselves.

I am still planning (the vagaries of life with kids and colds and a husband putting in late nights permitting) to do a few posts on our experience of launching the Nameless Lay Group, to perhaps be a help to others who may want to do something about fostering intentional community in their own circumstances.

In the meantime, the Holy Spirit is always at work in surprising ways, as Sherry W. mentioned last week:

We have been inundated with amazing, Holy Spirit engineered connections and unprecedented opportunities during these these past two weeks - so many that I'm losing count. Ten in all, I think. It is hard to know what God is doing, exactly how to respond, and which will come to fruition.

So keep praying! And expect to be surprised....