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| Sr. Perry Inso, RC, a Silent Prayer advocate from Cebu, shares the strategy to the GS and HS Faculty in a short session at the school's retreat house, the St. Paul Spiritual Oasis, on July 24. |
In saying it, we take
responsibility for what we want.
Thus, with outburst and zeal, Sr.
Perry Inso, RC declared in her short talk about Stillness in Schools to the Grade School and High School Faculty on July 24, 2014 at the St. Paul Spiritual Oasis, the retreat house
inside St. Paul College of Bocaue campus.
Sr. Perry, a Cebuana, finished her Bachelor of Science in
Education at Cebu Normal University and her Master of Arts in English at the
University of San Jose Recoletos, Cebu.
She worked as a grade school teacher for nine years at a De La
Salle-supervised School in Cebu and a high
school teacher for three years at Ateneo de Cebu before joining the
congregation of Our Lady of the Cenacle in 1997.
She has been involved in giving
retreats and recollections in some religious and lay men and women in Cebu and
other parts of the Philippines .
Considered as the suki of St. Paul of Chartres for 30-day silent
retreat, she also helps in the on-going formation of some scholars and domestic
helpers, including mothers in Inayawan dumpsite and volunteers as catechist to
the parish where she is presently assigned.
Part of her outreach is to teach
children from Grades 1 to VI to focus on silent prayer.
“We experience God when we pray. Anyone who is in prayer is always a response to God’s invitation,” she said after reading a short symbolic story, entitled, Table for Two which is about a man, who,
for consecutive nights, waited for a girl he loves so much in a restaurant. At the end
of the story, Sr. Perry likened the man to God who is consistent and patiently waiting for everyone
to respond to His call through silent prayer. “How many of us had kept God
waiting? Prayer is giving God access to
our hearts,” she probed. She also said that God is a loving God, thus, everyone
may keep Him waiting, yet He still waits for each to respond to His call, for
love is a commitment for the well-being of others; moreover, that’s how God
shows His compassion to people.
In her sharing she underscored
important points about silence: (a) Silence is a lost art in a society made of
noise (b) Silence brings people face to face with themselves (c) Silence is
life’s greatest teacher for it shows what people have yet to become and how
much they lack to become it (d) Silence is the place just before the voice of
God.
She also shared activities she
conducts in her classes such as games, story telling from the Bible
or stories with values infused), guided meditation, make-believe activities
and playing songs.
In an interview, she shared about
her joys of being an advocate of silence and meditation. She said that the
graders she handled, specifically the Grade 1 pupils, could stay still and
quiet for seven minutes; and her secret, according to her, is consistency,
thus, not creating pressure and threat in the classroom. “What I am conducting
originally came from Australia ,
and now, it has spread in some parts of the globe,” she said.
She let the faculty experience
silence through a ten-minute guided meditation and suggested to have time for
silence during their vacant time.
She also said that once a person
develops focus through silence and meditation, he improves his memory,
becomes more aware and less critical to others, and that through silence, a
person becomes more aware of his well-being.
The talk was initiated by the
Religious Education led by Sr. Ma. Gemma Moralita, SPC, Christian Formation
Head.
Simultaneously, a Bible Quiz
Bee was conducted at the Father Louis Chauvet Gymnasium. Grade School and High
School students participated in the activity and some sections especially in
the Grade School Department won numerous prizes such as mugs and rosaries.
News Feature
by Miss Maricar Bargado
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