Tantur Ecumenical Institute–Summer 2015 newsletter

We Are Grateful For Your Time
by Dan Koski, Tantur Staff

We at Tantur are grateful for the time that people give us; from the moment they arrive to join one of our programs, to the time they take a month, year, or ten years after they have been with us to let us know what Tantur means to them. We are grateful for the value they give to their time with us, the hopes they have to return once again.

 

Sometime this year, I have it in mind to update the format of our newsletter to that of an email-based publication. It’s supposed to be a much easier system to work with than our current PDF-attachment-by-email system, and while I’m generally comfortable driving outside of the express lane of media innovation, the time seems about right to do so.

One of the reasons I haven’t made the switchover, however, is that our current method allows me to correspond with our readers in a way that an anonymous mass email newsletter doesn’t. Such was the case early this year when Fr. Peter Quilty, an Australian priest, wrote in to inform me that he had been to Tantur on a sabbatical program in 2005, and that, when asked, would love to write a reflection 10 years back. Some time passed without contact; I assumed he had been busy.

Last month, I received an email from an administrator in his diocese. Fr. Peter had died from leukemia, but had requested from said administrator a few weeks before he died that his reflection, (published in this edition), would be sent to us.

What can one say in such a case as this? Gratitude comes to mind. We at Tantur are grateful for the time that people give us; from the moment they arrive to join one of our programs, to the time they take a month, year, or ten years after they have been with us to let us know what Tantur means to them. We are grateful for the value they give to their time with us, the hopes they have to return once again, or – in the case of Fr. Peter – the peace of knowing that their journey to Tantur was a singular moment in their life that forever has value.

Maybe that automated newsletter system can wait another year…

The full Tantur newsletter is below: