A Long Post - Our History

Thankyou for all of your comments and thoughts.

It is great to know we are connected to a world wide family of faith – and this has been a real blessing of the virtual community of faith – knowing we are not alone and hearing others struggles and having “Ah ha!” moments.

In response to Alan’s comment – here’s a quick and incomplete history of the community.

Chris and Coralie married in the March of 1997. Jason and Rachel married in the November of that same year. Sometime in 1998 we started having a Lenten bible study at Chris and Coralie’s place, with a few other people including Jason and Rachel and local Anglican youth worker Matt (We all attended various Anglican churches at this point). The study continued after Lent and Michelle joined – as she said after Chris cooked her a curry for dinner!

The next 6 years witnessed the usual round of people coming and going and book based bible studies (you know the sort – 15 days with Luke, Be a better person by 200 Days in Micah’s world etc ). But community life was forming. We had a quiet day. We went bowling together. The boys started walking and breakfast on a Saturday morning. The girls went swimming. Birthdays, Good Friday, Easter and other celebrations began to happen more and more as a group. We all enjoyed a drink. Significantly it was during this period that Chris, Jason, Matt and Besty visited New Norcia for a retreat and developed a relationship with Dom John. Many more visits and much teaching followed. This would prove to be a determining factor in developing our corporate spirituality and practice.

Over time, by 2001 Chris and Coralie had two children and bible study had become contemplative. (but that story is way to long to recount here …). Candles. Icons. Lectio Divina. Ignatian Meditation. Compline. Journaling. Story telling.

The community was quite fully formed at this stage, with Pete being added to our number. At this stage Chris was called, and then received, into the Roman Catholic Church in 2002.
(I have written more about this here.)
Matt followed him in 2003. (On the Same page as Chris').
The other remained happily Anglican or what ever they were…

In 2004 we had our first community retreat at New Norcia and spent time reflecting on the
San Edigio Community. We felt a gentle push from God to formalise ourselves and so Transfiguration was formed. Our new life consisted of praying Vespers together once a week and otherwise we continued as we were – although more closely bound by a name.

Now with four kids and seven adults (Matt and Linda married in 2005), Wednesday nights can be busy and noisy. But we share a meal and each others lives and try not be too hard on ourselves. We always pray – generally Roman Compline – and still meet in various groupings through the week. I suppose after Benedict, our biggest influence is the Taize community – meeting together in trust despite, but respecting, any church discipline differences we may have, and honouring our shared values of silence and community. (Not to mention red wine…)

Any questions??