pat loughery

In August of 2007, I participated in what I think was the trip of a lifetime – an educational trip as part of my doctoral program with Bakke Graduate University, travelling to Scotland, Northern Ireland and northern England and exploring the history of Celtic Christianity as a unique strain of Christian spirituality.  In keeping with BGU’s educational philosophy, a global student pool got to learn from practitioners in high-impact settings.  Our coursework began with a large amount of reading from a required and optional book list, and we summarized each book into 1-page papers in a specific template. When on the course, we kept journals of our experience, and we were to write 2-3 pages per day and describe what we experienced, what we were learning from it, and what we were struggling with.  Finally, we were to write a 20+ page paper which explored some theme that we experienced on the trip. For this course, we were encouraged to not do something academic in nature, but to explore areas that we had questions about – even if we didn’t find the answers to those questions in the paper.  We also didn’t specifically have to apply what we learned into our own ministry and leadership settings, as long as we wrote honestly about what we were struggling with.  That was a godsend, since I found that the more I considered what I experienced on the Celtic Trail, the deeper I had to go in order to grapple with the implications.  As I wrote in the paper, I was happy to take an extension for the project and let it filter through me for two more months than my peer students; I didn’t want to have to write a paper just for the sake of finishing a class.

I  found this experience to be much more than a class, or a trip overseas to fascinating lands.  I truly believe it is and will be a cornerstone of my personal journey and also of the way I see the Christian faith, and my future leadership roles in communities of faith.

I hit a phase over the last couple of months where I needed to slow down on the blogging and finish up some academic work in the nooks and crannies of free time outside the startup web company gig thing. I finally finished that paper, took a breather, and found out that I still want to blog :-).

So, that done, I’ll continue where I left off with the Following the Celtic Trail trip journal entries, and then will post my paper.

Note, I’m not worrying too much about proper formatting – I’m hoping that the odd formatting oddity will be forgiven. If it’s getting to be a pain for you to read, drop me a comment or email me and I’ll do some more editing. Also, please note that I’m posting this stuff unedited. We were on a pretty intense trip, and I journaled the ups and downs, what I liked and didn’t like. I suspect that some of my experiences may be off-putting, but rather than cleaning what I wrote about my frustrations and disapppointments, I’m just going to leave them as-is.

With that said, I’ll be posting these things daily. Enjoy, and please comment, or email, ask questions, spark discussion.  I hope you get something out of these ideas, rough as they are.