An excitingly varied day

Friday, November 19, 2021 (14:21)

This morning I felt once more how the last pieces of a jigsaw puzzle match together. I am in a final sprint for my personal input to the Synod.

  • I had a vision and wrote it down in three chunks on my phone (see below). My personal input to the Synod will start with this vision. This vision is quite similar to what I wrote already three days ago, which can be considered as a foreboding.

  • I realized that I must do this alone and I must do it now. I must no longer wait for feedback or support from others. Of course I am not alone on this journey (have never been nor will I ever be alone). But this particular step must be done by me alone. I adapted the Your feedback is welcome and How to support me pages accordingly.

  • I realigned the Synodal Church page into the context of this website: actually it is just yet another of my projects, and it might not be my last.

Text of my vision:

Pope Francis will do yet another revolutionary step. He will found a new institution, called the Synodal Church, which will become the legal entity that will lead all faithful to salvation. He will leave the RC church behind him, after appointing a valuable leader for it. He will leave it almost naked, like his patron St. Franciscus, taking with him only what a synodal instituion needs to survive (probably the Synod of Bishops and a few other institutions).

This is the opposite of a schism, it is the natural way to avoid a schism. Not all rc faithful can do this step together with their Pope. And they don’t need to. There might be resistance because the rc church will no longer be the “boss”. They might feel degraded because they will be now at the same level in hierarchy together with protestants and orthodox christians.

Also many of the faithful who left the visible church during the last years will unite again in joy.

I find it interesting to note that I was interrupted several times. A first interruption was because I had to fix a tube in our bathroom. For this I had to go to a shop. A little practical job in the real world. I consider such interruptions as important. This interruption was itself interrupted by an accident: I lost my purse in the bus (because I was typing the vision while sitting in the bus). Fortunately I got it back, but this took about two more hours. And a third interruption was a common prayer, which I used to share my idea with the participants, asking them to pray for me. This showed me that my idea must indeed go to the Vatican now because it touches a topic for which the “end users” lack interest. A fourth interruption was a visit in a family of atheist friends where I heard strong convictions regarding vaccination and same-sex marriage (two hot topics in Estonia). And as a fifth interruption, we watched in our family the second half of Brother Sun, Sister Moon, a 1972 movie by Franco Zeffirelli about Francis of Assisi.

It was a joyful vision of hope, not a threatening warning. It encouraged me to continue.

I do not know where the Synodal Church will physically reside. It seems clear that those who work for it must also pray together, otherwise it would be just another publishing house. When I think about this question, an image drops into my mind: the Pope will live in a monastery, which will receive a constant flow of visitors. Something like Taizé or Dharamshala (the residence of the the current Dalai Lama).

The time indication (“Pope Francis” and “during his lifetime”) is not absolute. It just means that this step is the important next step. Any work that does not align to this direction is a waste of time.

The issues I work upon for my customers (in daily life as a professional software developer) are similar to the issues I see in the Church. I practice the art of discerning what a customer actually needs even when they are unable to fully formulate their requirements. If the Church were a software application and the Synod of Bishops my customer, then this is what I would suggest to do.