IJC Voice
January 2022
Volume 12, Issue 4
Your heart-warming and generous response to our Advent appeal as we upgrade Loyola House has uplifted us. We needed to raise $500,000. Several major donors had already given a combined $200,000 including generous grants from the Red Leaf Foundation and Arthur & Audrey Cutten Foundation. Your gifts have raised an astounding $150,000. We are grateful beyond words.

Renovations, which began on December 1, are well underway and on track to be completed by the end of March. Your incredible generosity gives us hope that we can raise the remaining $150,000.

Together we are cultivating spiritual growth and ecological engagement so that we can withstand and navigate the challenges of these times. We look forward to resuming retreats here in April.

We keep each and every one of you in our daily prayers.

Fr. Roger Yaworski, SJ
Executive Director
This month we pay tribute to two wonderful friends to Ignatius Jesuit Centre who passed on to eternal life in November 2021.
Peter Peloso’s (1931-2021) lifelong, steadfast commitment to Ignatian Spirituality is reflected through his love of life, his wife, Barbara, his family and friends, his dedication to his dentistry patients, and his engagement with community, especially through the Christian Life Community. Peter and Barbara’s decades-long friendship and generosity have been critical to Loyola House’s capacity to provide a venue for spiritual development, community engagement and ecological commitment. Their championing of our Old-Growth Forest Project was recognized at the 2015 Project launch during which a tree was planted in honour of Peter’s parents, Gerunsio and Angelina Peloso, “Pioneers who taught by living within the bounty of nature.” His legacy lives on. We are honoured that the family designated our Centre for memorial donations for Peter.
Kay (Catherine) Profit, (1933-2021) mother of our Centre’s former Executive Director, Fr. James (Jim) Profit, SJ, (1956-2014) has been a steadfast champion of our Centre, especially amongst her family’s PEI community. She enthusiastically embraced the Old-Growth Forest Project vision and her family have been some of the Project’s most dedicated supporters. The Project is very grateful for all the memorial donations in her honour that perpetuate this vision.
Loyola House - Retreats & Ignatian Training
Sign up for the Full Ignatian Spiritual Exercises coming this Fall - find out more here!

Interested in learning more about Ignatian Spiritual Direction Training? See our training programs for 2022 here!
When your tongue is silent, you can rest in the silence of the forest. When your imagination is silent, the forest speaks to you. It tells you of its unreality and of the Reality of God. But when your mind is silent, then the forest suddenly becomes magnificently real and blazes transparently with the Reality of God.
- Thomas Merton
Ignatius Farm - Preparing for 2022's growing season!
Acreage Rentals - Request for Proposal
The RFP seeks entrepreneurial individuals, groups, or organizations to rent available acreages to implement complementary ecological or regenerative agriculture projects at the Ignatius Jesuit Centre.

For 2022, a few small fields of 5 acres or less, and ¼ acre sections are available for rent. Submission deadline is January 20.
CSA & Community Gardens
Registration is now open for the 2022 Season!

Register for CSA vegetable shares and Community Gardens here!
Ignatius Farm Internships
The opportunity for that ideal learning combination of hands-on experience and practical instruction for aspiring farmers and food advocates is around the corner. Ignatius Farm Interns participate in the full New Farmer Training Program in addition to working on the farm.
 
Look for the 2022 Ignatius Farm Internship application on our farm training webpage in early February.

E-mail farmeducation@ignatiusguelph.ca for more information.
 
We look forward to hearing from you!
Poetry - by Greg Kennedy, SJ
Contradiction
things you don’t say on Ignatius Farm:
“ugly”, “impossible”, “too late”;
the very fields will contradict you
gently
begging to differ as they always beg
with one hand out for attention*
offering you your own guarded heart
if only you slow right down to listen
 
try it if you like
to be disputed
whisper any little word of joyless resignation
then brace yourself
for the overhead-strong thunder 
that will echo booming flashing back:
“beauty”, “beauty”, “life & beauty”
 
 *(a hand that from certain angles might resemble a last-autumn’s empty milkweed pod)