Speaker: Michele Jodhan, Meditator & WCCM Academy Student
My experience of WCCM Academy
Michele Jodhan: Hello, I am Michele. I am from Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean. I am part of the first cohort of the WCC M Academy, in the second year of the programme. I came into this programme or was welcomed into it by Vladimir, who's been an absolutely marvellous director and I did I did for two reasons that I have been able to tease out which I wasn't even fully conscious of at the time. But actually even being in the programme has opened it for me even more. Firstly, because I have a background in theology and I had always wanted to go on to go further. But I wasn't, it wasn't possible because of my personal family life. So it has allowed me of deepening into theological understanding and growth. And secondly, because I wanted to deepen my contemplative journey. And I have found the perfect sort of marriage of these two things in this contemplative education programme, deepening of theology, deepening of the contemplative way. One of my motivations was too that I had recently become an oblate, an oblate which I was fortunate to do in Bonnevaux. And I didn't feel entirely capable or that I had a profound enough understanding of what I had the call and the desire, but I just felt I needed more. And this has given me very much what I thought I think I needed in terms of what I've been allowed in terms of growth and development. The teaching in the programme is, I mean, absolutely exquisite. We have had probably the best, many of the best of theologians and philosophers and thinkers of the contemporary world. We also have had Vladimir, I have to think, assembled a very remarkable group of people of different ages, of different backgrounds and gender and the whole thing so that it's been a very participatory process both within the online classroom and among the group. And it has really led us all into a beautiful relationship and immense growth.
