Sister Attracta's Response at the
Celebration of Leadership
“I believe we can change the world if we start listening to one another again. .. Simple, truthful conversation where we each have a chance to speak, we each feel heard and we each listen well… Human conversation is the most ancient and easiest way to cultivate the conditions for change- personal change, community and organizational change, planetary change.” So says Margaret (Meg)Wheatley in her book aptly titled Turning To One Another.
How do we listen to one another? As Dominicans, we try to do our listening out of our tradition of contemplation. “Contemplare et complata alies tradere”: We contemplate in order to listen for the truth in every situation, so that we know how to respond to others. We believe that it is through God’s Spirit speaking to us in all people and events that we hear God’s call. And while we try always to listen well, we listen in a much more intense way every six years at a general chapter where we plan those areas where we will do our most intense listening, followed by action for the next six years. At that same time we also invite five of our members to a role of leadership to help to keep us focused on those areas we have identified at our General Chapter. Our Liturgy today, then, helps us to ritualize these callings and responses.
For the past 2 years in preparation for our General Chapter, we, Dominican Sisters of Adrian have been praying a beautiful prayer composed by our Prioress Sister Donna Markham. The prayer card has the picture of the statue of Mary that I’m sure many of our visitors have noticed in front of our main building. It depicts Mary “setting out in haste.” A line of the prayer which we all prayed in preparation for Chapter (and many of us continue to pray today) implores God “to embolden us to set out in haste along courageous paths that lead toward greater life.” One could say that even more so than the rest of us, Donna, Rosa, Mary Kay, Judy and Kathy were more acutely aware that as the late Thomas Berry, CP reminded us: “There is a newness about our time and we need to be sensitized to the awesome transformation that is being required of us.” Yes, we have agreed, we have committed ourselves to this awesome transformation that is being required of us. Tarianne Di Yonker, Julie Hyer, Kathleen Schanz, Corinne Sanders and I, Attracta Kelly, are here in this position of great privilege and responsibility because you, our Sisters have emboldened us to call ourselves and each other to mutual accountability in this “awesome transformation.” We, thankfully, are not alone in this rotating role of leadership. We are blessed to have seven Chapter Prioresses, Josephine Gaugier, Mary Ellen Youngblood, Frances Nadolny, Patricia Dulka, Judith Benkert, Mary Priniski, Ann Liam Lees and the Secretary of the Congregation, Rose Celeste O’Connell to serve in their different capacities with us as well as our wonderful co-workers who support and sustain us. We are also aware that our leadership teams who have preceded us both living and deceased are also urging s on! For all of us Sisters, we are very aware that we are called and we are sent, we are continuously on a journey ever seeking to bring about the reign of God.
In the Gospel reading we heard that Mary was called and immediately set out “proceeding in haste.” Why did Mary go? I believe over the years we would have heard that Mary went to help her cousin Elizabeth. However, recently our Sister Sarah Sharkey gave another interpretation for Mary’s “proceeding in haste.” According to Sarah, Mary did indeed go to help Elizabeth but she also ran to someone who was far away from Nazareth, someone who was also surprised by God, to whom Mary could tell her extraordinary story, someone who would really listen without judging. Mary could hardly tell her story in Nazareth! Her pregnancy could be a source of disgrace. Who would believe her? So Mary set out in haste, probably wondering as some of us have over the last few months, “Why did I ever say yes?” Mary went in haste not just to help Elizabeth but to be helped, not necessarily to assure, but to be assured. Then the Gospel tells us, “When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting the child in her womb leapt for joy!” Elizabeth, the woman of wisdom, the woman who understood shame, greets Mary with a blessing: “Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” Here, Elizabeth became as the Book of Wisdom says “friend of God and prophet” to Mary. Mary knew she could count on Elizabeth for honesty and support; for courage and love.
John O’Donohue, a beloved Celtic writer, tells us: “Love begins with paying attention to the other, with an act of gracious self-forgetting.” Elizabeth looks at Mary with “an act of gracious self-forgetting” empowering Mary to name our Creator as the one who exalts the lowly and deposes the mighty from their thrones. And with that act “of gracious self-forgetting,” the shame and the fear vanish and Mary says her resounding YES, proclaiming her song of praise: “God who is mighty has done great things for me, Holy is God’s name.” Elizabeth empowers Mary into song, the same song we heard in the first reading: “Hear me, O coastlands, listen, O distant peoples… from my mother’s womb God gave me my name… I will make you a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.” And Mary replied: “ YES, Holy is God’s name”…Elizabeth and Mary, the woman of wisdom and the woman responding with “yes,” expectant in faith, filled with the Spirit, acknowledging God’s plan for them, for us, and the Divine in each other and in each of us.
Many of you will recall that Sarah also asked us to think about who are the Elizabeths in our lives. For the past six years Donna Markham, Rosa Monique Pena, Judy Rimbey, Kathy Nolan and Mary Kay Homan have been Elizabeth to each of us. They have called us to open our eyes to the suffering creation around us, they have encouraged us to set out in haste along courageous paths, they have begged our Creator to give us the courage to go where God’s word must be preached. May I ask these women to stand? Truly in the past six years you have been an outstanding example of “gracious self-forgetting” in empowering us to confront racist attitudes in ourselves and society, in advocating for the rights of women and children, people who are poor and displaced, the marginated, and all the members of the whole earth community. I, on behalf of a very grateful Congregation, thank you and bless you by paraphrasing St. Paul from today’s second reading: May you always know the great light of hope to which God has called each of you and the love and esteem in which we all hold you. We rejoice in our God always for the gift you are to all of us. And we will continue to pray for you forever, for all you have been and have done in our name. May you know many Elizabeths as you leave this holy place to continue your journey with us as you listen and respond to God’s call.
As we look now to our future I am reminded of Mother Benedicta Bauer, one of our foremothers, who is quoted as saying, “We go, we travel constantly for our life is a journey, and this world a place of pilgrimage.” And our comtemporary, poet Mary Oliver, focuses our pilgrimage by asking: “Tell me what you plan to do with your one, wild and precious life?” (As I reflect on that question I am always reminded of our Maryknoll Sisters Ita Ford and Maura Clarke, our Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kasel, and the young lay woman Jean Donovan, our Notre Dame Sister Dorothy Stang and so many other modern day martyrs who have given their one wild and precious life in this place of pilgrimage.) For most of us our journey in this place of pilgrimage will perhaps be more ordinary. Oscar Romero, the Archbishop of San Salvador (whose 30th anniversary of assassination we recently celebrated), provides us with a further lens for our journey by reminding us that “we accomplish in our life time only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.” Romero believed that this lifetime, this pilgrimage, this magnificent enterprise should “enable us to do something and do it very well….because it gives the opportunity for God’s grace to enter and do the rest.”
Will we Dominicans of Adrian together enter our magnificent enterprise of God’s work and live simply and sustainably, or as noted environmentalist Bill McKibben challenges us, will we “…see if we can summon the will, and then the way, to make ourselves somewhat smaller, and try to fit back into this planet.”
Will we Dominicans of Adrian together as we promised “open our heart to the other”? Our Dominican brother Timothy Radcliffe says he believes “we have lost confidence in our ability to seek truth together, and so to build a common human home in which we may recognize ourselves in each other.”
This call, to recognize ourselves in the other, it is a call for everyone—Dominicans, vowed and non-vowed, our co-workers, our families and friends, by virtue of our baptism we are all called as Mary and Elizabeth were to look at each other with gracious self-forgetting, recognizing the Spirit of our God in each of us and all creation.
What a wonderful image for us as we commit ourselves to engage in dialog with the Church and society; what a wonderful image for us as a Congregation as we commit ourselves to study, in our pursuit of truth, so we may say YES to God’s call wherever it takes us. Can we, will we look at each other with gracious self-forgetting so that like Mary, once she was convinced she was saying yes to God, her YES was given in total trust, so also for us. We pray that our Yes to God’s call in our lives is the joyous response: “My soul proclaims God’s greatness and my spirit rejoices in God my savior.” Or as our Sister Judy Byron recently wrote: that our God give us the courage to go, where the people of God and Earth, are crying out for preachers of the compassionate and just word.”
For Corinne, Kathleen, Julie, Tarianne and myself, our prayer for all of you is that you “arise each day through the strength of heaven…with God’s strength to pilot you, God’s eye to look before you, God’s wisdom to guide you.” And may we all, to paraphrase John O’Donohue, “learn to see ourselves with the same delight, pride and expectation with which God sees us in every moment.” So that together we can say YES, to this awesome transformation to which our God is calling each of us. YES, HOLY INDEED IS GOD’S NAME!
-- Sister Attracta Kelly, OP
July 3, 2010