Transitions: Part Two - What's Next?

What comes next? Well, I will spend the next two months travelling, and the schedule follows.  I will be visiting with friends and colleagues from around the world, attending various gatherings of our community, talking with others who are diaconal people.  I will spend time thinking about  what it means to Live Diaconally in this time, in this place. From those conversations, and those thoughts, I hope to shape or uncover the next steps in this journey.  I commit to anyone who feels like reading this blog, that I will post pictures and thoughts from all of these visits over the summer as I continue on this journey.

 

June 30 – July 8:  DIAKONIA World Federation Gathering. This quadrennial event is being held in the birthplace of the modern diaconal movement, Germany, and will be attended by members of Diaconal Associations from around the world. 

July 8-13: Following the Gathering in berlin, Jan will participate in a post-Gathering tours through Western Germany, visiting several Diaconal motherhouses, including Kaiserwerth.   In 1875 Pastor Theodor Fleidner and his wife, started the Deaconess movement in Kaiserwerth, Germany and opened the first Motherhouse for deaconesses.  This allowed unmarried young women to live outside of their family home and to do social work within the community in a socially acceptable manner.   Pastor Fliedner and his wife lived in the house with them.  These young women served primarily as nurses; in fact, Florence Nightingale was sent to the Motherhouse in Kaiserwerth from England to learn their nursing skills.  The first Deaconesses in the United States were brought to Philadelphia by Pastor William Passavant in 1895, and are the foremothers of our current Deaconess Community of the ELCA.

July 17-20: Jan will fly to Baltimore to attend the triennial National Gathering of the Diaconal Ministry Community of the ELCA, of which she is a member.   

August 16-24:  Jan will be in Porto Alegre, Brazil with the Central Committee of DOTAC (DIAKONIA of the Americas and the Caribbean). She serves as Treasurer of this Board and is the representative for the Diaconal Ministry Community of the ELCA, her own group.  The Central Committee is meeting in Brazil because the quadrennial Gathering of DOTAC will take place there in 2015, hosted by the Diaconal Ministers of the Evangelical Church of the Lutheran Confessions of Brazil.