Family Days: Evolving Relationships
posted on January 17th, 2010
Today sees the first Family Day of the year and, in accord with the established pattern, it has brought (relatively) good weather with it — only maybe once in 8 years have conditions been poor enough to coop up the kids indoors.
Our Family Days began in 2001 when we were approached by a group of long-time friends of Loyola Hall who wanted to develop something specific to their needs as parents of young families.
The group’s evolving relationship with Loyola gives a glimpse of the changing face of our ministry over the last 40 years beginning in the days when a lot of our programme was devoted to residential retreats for schools — the groups first contact with Loyola Hall. The then got drawn into helping out with other events for young people like the now extinct Deepening Days (which were like Loyola Days for young people) and the ever-popular Holy Week Celebrations.
A bunch of them were on our first non-residential prayer guides course (which became Spiritual Accompaniment Course I) in the late 80s when Loyola got involved with weeks of guided prayer in parishes. Some took part in the first spiritual direction course we ran (which in time became Spiritual Accompaniment Course II) and worked in many different ways with us as Team Associates.
As marriage, family and careers came to the fore they had less time to be involved with the work of Loyola Hall until some of them invented Family Days. These days give the parents some space for themselves and some input from the Loyola Hall team and involve the children in various activities related to the day’s scripture readings — a whole new generation of relationships with Loyola Hall.
The original core-group of families has now expanded organically as other’s have started to come along — a good example of how the work of Loyola Hall evolves.