All posts by susanfrancoiscsjp

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About susanfrancoiscsjp

I am a Gen X Sister of St. Joseph of Peace. Read more about my community at www.csjp.org.

Holy Saturday Moments

reflections, , , ,

holy20saturdayLife is filled with many Holy Saturday moments. Time upon time we must let go of what was before we can even begin to be open to what will come.  I think of the way the first Holy Week after my own mother’s death was different than any other before or since. I felt it in my bones. I think of friends who have lost their job and struggled to find their feet again, or friends who have lost a child far too soon, or seen the end of their marriage.  There is always that messy middle space of witnessing the love lived and lost before something new emerges to call us forth to witness to love and life in new ways.

Theologian Shelly Rambo identifies Holy Saturday as the “middle day, as the site of witness to a more complex relationship between death and life” (Spirit and Trauma: A Theology of Remaining, pg. 46.). And what is at the core of this complex relationship? Love of course. “Between death and life, there is a testimony to Spirit, to a love that survives not in victory but in weariness” (pgs. 79-80).

This weariness is real and of the Spirit. It attests to the depth of love that has been lived. But it also can keep us from seeing the new life that is before our eyes. Think of Mary Magdalene at the tomb, mistaking Jesus for the gardener!

I can’t help but ponder the shifting landscape and transformations taking place in religious life through the lens of Holy Saturday. As I wrote in a Global Sisters Report column last year, “Middle space represents this time as an almost Holy Saturday moment. Much is breaking down, we know something new is emerging, but this is a moment pregnant with not yet.”

On this Holy Saturday morning, I found myself reading an article featuring some younger Catholic sisters I know who are members the Sisters of the Holy Redeemer. It is a great article that focuses on the new life that is present and emerging, even as the sisters are letting go of the structures of the past. “Now they are crafting a brave future in which the sisterhood may be minuscule, but its work will go on.”

We are indeed living in a Holy Saturday moment. “We can say, ‘Oh, isn’t it sad, our sisters are aging, nobody is coming, we’re dying out’ – and that’s real,” said Sister Anne Marie Haas, provincial supervisor of the community’s Montgomery County headquarters. “But we have a choice.”

And that choice is love, even in its weariest and messiest forms. As we say in our CSJP Constitutions, “Confident of God’s faithful love, and collaborating with others who work for justice and peace, we face the future with gratitude and hope.”

Love > Fear

Global Sisters Report, reflections, , , ,

This morning, after reading much disheartening news on the domestic and international front over breakfast, I spent some quiet time with today’s Scripture readings and my friend Julia Walsh, FSPA’s latest Global Sisters Report column.

In Hosea, I read: “What can I do with you, Ephraim? What can I do with you, Judah? Your piety is like a morning cloud, like the dew that early passes away … For it is love that I desire, not sacrifice, and knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”

In Julia’s column, I read: “In this fearful age, God can transform all of us and the ways we feel about each other. We can love in radical ways, guided by our faith that each of us — even the person who scares us the most — are truly children of God deserving to be loved and cherished. Then, freed from the fears that plague our conversations, news, and dynamics, we can powerfully love one another just as God has loved us, sharing transformative mercy and hope.”

Both can be summed up by this equation:

love-greater-than-fear

Worthy of meditation and practice, I think.

It is also important for me to stay abreast of current news and the currents of political discourse. But I can’t let that weigh me down. Fear is not stronger than love. Suffering is not insurmountable. Hatred is a symptom of broken relationships and isolation. We are called to something greater, to community and connection.

We must give voice to love in the face of fear, through our words, our actions, our hopes and desires. Not just in the quiet contemplative moments but in all of our interactions and in our ordinary lives. That is how change happens and how love spreads to dispel fear. Don’t you think?

Lent – That’s What’s Happening

reflections, updates,

73830c79eb33ab07b328d8a4bdb71f8d-650x422x1During my childhood in the 1970s & 80s, Saturday mornings were a special and almost sacred time, in large part because of Saturday morning cartoons and the bit I looked most forward to–Schoolhouse Rock.

For those who are not in the know, and I am always surprised when folks cannot sing the preamble to the Constitution or know that zero is my hero, Schoolhouse Rock was a series of catchy songs set to animated cartoons. The series helped a generation of children understand complicated concepts such as how a bill becomes a law, the values of immigration for society, or the function of a conjunction in a sentence. Music is a great way to learn, and there have been many times in my adult life when I have returned to what I learned via song and cartoon  all those decades ago on Saturday morning.

This Lent, for example, I’ve been playing around in my head and heart with some of what I learned from Schoolhouse Rock about grammar.

Think about it … Lent itself is a funny word.  The online Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines Lent as the “40 weekdays from Ash Wednesday to Easter observed by the Roman Catholic, Eastern, and some Protestant churches as a period of penitence and fasting,” with the origin coming from the Middle English word for springtime. Living on the East Coast as I am these days, where there is still frost in the mornings and the possibility of snow, it is easy to understand why this season of anticipation took its name from the hope for spring!

Of course, the word lent has other meanings as well.  In French the letters l-e-n-t  become and an adjective meaning slow, which is entirely appropriate for the Lenten Season. Adjectives, as the “Unpack Your Adjectives” Schoolhouse rock video taught me as a child, “are words you use to really describe things, handy words to carry around.”

I carry lots of things around these days, mainly a growing list of urgent things that need to be done. Yet the wisdom of the Lenten season is that, as a church, we set aside a time each year which carries with it the higher priorities of slowing down through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. The French adjective lent is a good word to carry around in my heart as I slow down during these 40 days.

Lent also has other meanings in English. For example, it can be the past simple tense or past participle of the irregular verb to lend. Verbs, as the Schoolhouse Rock video “Verb, That’s What’s Happenin’” reminds me, put “my heart in action … to work, to live, to play, to love.”   This is both a lovely and very challenging concept, especially when I consider the ways my heart is lent in action.

Who puts my heart into action? Who am I lent by?  Where do I lend my energy?

Lent, that’s what’s happening.

Sister Anastasia’s advice to the “younger sisters”

in memory, ,

We have a tradition in our congregation known as “Lest We Forget” … A book with the obituaries of all the Sisters who have gone before us since our founding, organized by their day of death. Reading about different women each day who lived as Sisters of St Joseph of Peace is a marvelous way of soaking in our history and charism as witnessed by their lives.

Yesterday was the anniversary of Sister Anastasia Daigle, a Sister I never knew but certainly have heard a lot about. She entered in 1925 and went home to God in 2002 at he age of 99 years. As an older retired Sister, she started a ministry to people who were homeless on First Avenue in downtown Seattle. “I’m a beggar and I don’t mind begging for the poor.”

Reading about her this morning, I was really touched by this advice she gave to the “younger sisters” on the occasion of her 60th Jubilee:

“Give your whole self to God … Don’t hold back. Take each day at a time and trust. Let God do in you what needs to be done. If you love enough you can put up with a whole lot.”

Wise words to pray about and live into.

On Goodness

updates, ,

One word has been popping up persistently in my prayer of late  …

image

Goodness.

I am not sure where it came from,  but it was a quieting word amidst the storm of worry and anxiety and worse case scenarios that I am prone to from time to time.

Goodness.

The goodness of God. The goodness of people far and near. The goodness of life itself and creation and the universe  and creativity  and community and love and laughter and … (fill in the blank).

What I have discovered  these weeks of praying with goodness is that it is everywhere, even within and among you and me.

What I have also discovered  is that swirling thoughts or worries or wonderings  are no match for focused attention on goodness.

Next time you find yourself spinning  to a not so good space, try this. Close your eyes. Breathe in. Breathe out. Think of goodness. Just the word. Or some representation or experience of goodness in your own life. Keep breathing in, breathing  out, focusing  on goodness.  Maybe, like me, you will feel yourself settle, slow down, at peace.

Goodness … it’s what’s happening if we but pay attention!

Writer’s Block

columns, Global Sisters Report, life

how_to_beat_writers_block_for_content_marketersI realized this morning that I have not posted anything here on the blog in the new year!  I’ve had many things kicking around my head and heart, but I guess they have not been in publicly consumable form for the most part.

I did manage to break through my writer’s block for a bit earlier this week. The result is my latest column on the Global Sisters Report, in which I ponder indifference and disconnection, justice and injustice, privilege and moral action.

Facing an overwhelming sea of social injustice, I am coming to realize that my privilege moderates which realities I choose to see and which I take to heart. My privilege distances me from the experiences of people living in poverty or those who daily struggle against racialized structures of injustice which limit access to education, housing, and employment. My privilege obscures my own complicity and connection to the root causes. My privilege makes indifference and disconnection possible. (Read entire column here)

Have you ever noticed that you really start to appreciate some things in their absence? Friends, family, and in this case, writing. Writing is a gift that helps me process and relate to the world and the movements of the spirit in my life. Writing helps me connect with my deepest and truest self.  Writing is gift … even as these words come forth from my mind and heart through my fingers to the screen.

Maybe I’ll be writing more soon … maybe not. But whatever comes is surely gift!

Endings and Beginnings

life, reflections,

Another new year is coming, ready or not. Balls will drop, champagne will be drunk, some will go to bed early and most of us will wake up in 2016.

This year my new year musings coincide with the end of my first year in elected leadership of my religious community. 2015 meant:
-an end to my grad school experience
-a move to New Jersey and revisiting familiar territory with new eyes
-building community with a new group of Sister housemates
-meetings and travel and opportunities to visit our csjp community in all three regions
-and every thing in between.

It has been a good year filled with endings and new beginnings. January 7, our Community Day of Thanksgiving,  will mark the beginning of year 2 of my leadership adventure. Much is in progress, some important projects are just beginning, and there are others still on the horizon, not to mention those surprises good and bad which are bound to come.

There is lots of uncertainty,  some anxiety, but a deep peace and faith that the One who calls us together will guide our feet into the way of peace, through the next set of endings and beginnings on this path called life. And that is a good place to be as we say goodbye to 2015 and move into the new year and all it will hold.

Decking my heart

reflections, , ,

Wow, it is already Christmas Eve. Advent has been very full, as has the past year. Full of good things, full of hard work, full of light and laughter and love and loss, because all of those things come together in this package we call life.

This Advent I’ve been spending some time with words written almost 150 years ago by Margaret Anna Cusack, who later as Mother Francis Clare founded the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace in 1884. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, her little 1866 book Meditations for Advent and Easter is freely available under public domain.  Her words are steeped in theological worldview of her day. That is a given. But there are also kernels of wisdom, insight and challenge sprinkled throughout that are every bit as relevant today as they would have been to a 19th Century audience.

In her reflection for Christmas Eve, she writes this:

Tomorrow sweet Jesus will come. Oh, how blessedly near is His advent! Today we are decking our houses for His divine visit; let us not forget to deck our hearts.  Let us sweep out every imperfection, every imperfect disposition, every wandering thought, with the besom of penance and adorn ourselves with the fair bright flowers of contrition and love.  Tomorrow our Infant King will come. Are we prepared to receive Him? Have we all the love ready for Him we should like to offer Him?

This is my prayer this day, that I may deck my heart to be ready to welcome the one who is love incarnate.

ChristmasEveMeme

 

Generous Heart – Sister Alicia

in memory, updates,
baldwin
Sister Alicia (in white) with me and Sister Eleanor

This week the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace celebrate the life of Sister Alicia Cavanaugh, CSJP who passed away late Saturday night at the age of 82.

I first met Alicia when she opened her home, and her heart, to me as a novice. I lived with Sisters Alicia and Eleanor for 3 months during my novitiate ministry year. I was placed in two very challenging ministries–three days a week working with survivors of human trafficking, two days a week helping women emerging from domestic violence situations attain restraining orders.  Every day when I would come home from work after hearing stories of such hardship and suffering, there would be Alicia inviting me to sit down with a cup of tea and tell her about my day. She was always interested, always inviting, always engaged.

She was also extremely generous. She had a number of people in the neighborhood who would stop by regularly for a visit and a little bit of help. Whenever we went out in the car, she always had a small stash of one dollar bills to give to folks begging on the side of the road. And on more than one occasion, when I came home from work to make dinner, I’d find that the food that had been there in the morning when I’d made my plans for the evening meal was no longer there.  Alicia, I’d say, do you know what happened to the tuna fish or pasta or rice? Oh, she’d say, so and so came to the door and she was just so hungry ….  We of course made do and never went hungry ourselves. She’d always help me find something else in our ample pantry that would suffice … It was a good lesson for me.

During her time as a Sister of St. Joseph of Peace, Alicia shared her generous heart with many people. She was a teacher in schools in New Jersey, California, and Kenya! She worked as Director of Religious Education and Catechist. But I will remember her for the lessons she taught me through daily living and compassionate care for all of God’s children, especially the poor and vulnerable.