In this book, I trace the winding paths of my life: the fragile beginnings of childhood, the shaping of character and personality, the search for health and wholeness, the awakening of faith, the long seasons of formation, the call to consecrated life and priesthood, and the outward journeys of mission and ministry. Alongside the joys, I speak also of the shadows—the doubts and struggles, the inner conflicts and external storms that tested my roots. I share how I learned to make peace with what I could not change, and to integrate what once felt broken into something whole. Woven through these stories are the theoretical voices of philosophy, psychology, anthropology, theology, missiology and spirituality—threads of wisdom that helped me make sense of my experience, and that my experience, in turn, has made more real and whole.The narrative takes root in a landscape of critical reflection and scholarly inquiry, making the personal and the academic converse with each other—experience becoming text, and text breathing life back into experience, and it is in their meeting that true understanding deepens. My hope in writing this book is not only for personal growth but also it might invite the readers to pause, to turn inward, to listen for the seeds lying quiet within themselves, to recognize their intrinsic potential and to tend them gently until they sprout and bloom.
本書分成兩部份,第一部份以深度訪談法及文獻分析法,進行書寫。第二部份邀請吳偉立神父的親朋好友分享他們與吳神父的故事。第一部份:這部份的編排主要採用縱貫方式,將兩種研究方法所得資料,依時間軸呈現。首先以文獻分析法探究為到中國福傳而成立的修會—聖母聖心會,說明修會的成立、在中國內蒙的福傳,直到遭共產黨驅逐。接續以深度訪談法瞭解本書主人翁吳偉立神父的成長歷程、修會的培育。再以文獻探討聖母聖心會在台的福傳與建樹。最後,述說吳神父逾半世紀在台灣的福傳工作:分別以修士、司鐸身份,在光仁中學、懷仁勞工中心、主教團、堂區等領域服務。第二部份:這部份邀請吳神父26位親朋好友分享他們與吳神父相識、相知、相惜的故事。
Historical memory has a particular value in analyzing events and characters that give life to stories from the past. Jorge Edwards specifies that the story’s description is nothing more than the literary success of a writer who navigates the vicissitudes of life and history, as he rightly points out. History must be observed carefully and as a “conjecture” that points, in the first place, to an experience of “memory” and that keeps alive, despite time, the unique reality of a country and its people. Like Edwards, we attempt to wander through reminiscences and recollection. Our narrative experience is simple. However, it is an observation and representation of history with a testimonial value in its approach. As the novelist points out, the testimony of history is the most creative thing that the writer has. In the same way, our effort is neither more nor less the rescue, through these short stories and their language, of facts and characters that are part of realities, in which their protagonists make time pass and tell us things from the past.Edwards is an inspirational source, like other novelists, whetting our appetites in his search for history, facts, and experiences that give us a unique opportunity to delve into the process of history in an endless dialogue that enriches and continues giving life to the past, in an infinite invention of it. It is ultimately the feeling that we have of things that happened and that we can continue learning from them. These memories and lived experiences are stories that perpetuate characters, intellectuals, writers, works, teachings, and places that express an essential part of life through readings, reflections, and significant looks at chronicles that resist oblivion and disappearance. From each of these short stories, we gather a vital part of the search for the truth and the real meaning of life.