Your vocation to share the gifts of God with others requires imagination and creativity as well as an adventurous spirit of experimentation. Emerging from your prayer, your ideas about the world around you will not necessarily conform to the expectations others have about different possibilities. God's creativity lives within you as a child of God, and part of your vocation is to be open to the imaginative possibilities provided by God through you and to express this broader potential to others in creative ways. You will need to trust God and experiment with different approaches and retain that trust when they are not received positively by others.
 
This will require you to cultivate communication skills parallel to your imaginative and creative development. If your gifts are in a technical field, the traditions of rhetoric and communication will be helpful to you as you will have a greater opportunity to argue for the ideas you are presenting. On the other hand, if your gifts are in a creative field such as the arts, you will need to explore the tools of presentation which capture the imagination of your audience and bring them into your own emotional experience of the subject you are seeking to share.
 
Exemplars for both set of skills may be found within the Celtic spiritual traditions and the dynamics of the Ignatian exercises you have explored in this program.
 
— If you are seeking to introduce new ideas about culture and society, you will find it helpful to look at the ways in which the Celtic Christian “colonies of heaven” were created. Take time to look at the history of the early Celtic Christian churches and find the arguments they used to challenge their contemporaries (e.g., Adomnan’s “Law of the Innocents, Patrick’s “Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus”, etc.) as well as the social models they used to transform their societies (e.g., the creation of peaceful sanctuaries, the blended nature of their monasteries, etc.). Also consider the social and cultural implications of Christ’s message presented in The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola (as well as the language which emerged in your prayer during your retreat) to discover ways to speak to others.
 
— If you are seeking to express your own thoughts and concerns through creative expression, you will find it helpful to consider the freedom and power expressed in the arts by generations of Celtic Christians as well as creative interpretations of the Ignatian exercises. Both in terms of subject matter and technique, both traditions may suggest ways for you to inspire others by sharing your vision of God's activity in the world. This involves new artistic creativity or meditations on the creative expressions of others. Find those aspects of your experiences of the Celtic Christian vision and the Ignatian exercises which inspired you and use your imagination to share these gifts with others.
                                                                                                      
Remember that, like every note in a musical composition, you are essential to the expression of God's redemptive plan for creation. You have been given unique gifts which you are meant to share, and God will nurture and sustain those gifts as they fulfil God’s desires.
 

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