CAPS News 2024
Download CAPS News anniversary edition 2024
Director’s Message by Vincent Manning
Recognising the Power of Encouragement and Affirmation in Our CAPS Community
The special gifts of two of our CAPS family have been acknowledged publicly this year. First, our Trustee Tyrone Allee has been recognised for services to the community and second, our Patron Timothy Radcliffe OP is to be made a Cardinal by Pope Francis. Congratulations to them both. All of us are so delighted to share in this affirmation of two wise, courageous, loving gentle-men. Our friends.
Too often we fail to encourage one another as we should. Within the PositiveFaith peer support community encouragement is so important. Each person has gifts to share and everyone needs to be encouraged to use those gifts well, not only in service of others but so that they can become fully themselves and fully alive.
There’s much to read in this CAPS News that illustrates how our members and activists have used their gifts in service of others or for the common good. In every case, each person has first received the affirmation of others. Through friendship, our members experience what it means to feel accepted just as you are. In relationship with each other we come to see ourselves as others see us. This can be especially important for anyone who is burdened by the judgments, accusations or unkindness of others. Or anyone who is crippled under the weight of the judgments they have turned in on themselves. For people living with HIV, whether Christian, Muslim, Jewish or Hindu, or a person who has no religion, the acceptance and affirmation to be found in a community of support can begin to heal the wounds of HIV-stigma.
Two feature stories in this edition speak about the experience of being encouraged in faith. Again, but for the willingness of others to be kind or offer a word of comfort, what we describe here as miracles may not have happened – or at least not at all in the same way. No doubt some will be sceptical or dismissive. No matter. What is important is that each of the people in these stories understood their experience as being just the word of encouragement from God that they needed. In a truly Christian community, the affirmation we receive in more ordinary ways, always reflects the way we are seen, understood and loved by God.
