Who are we...after the 800th Anniversary?

We’re a community of vowed religious women, right? Right, and we are surrounded by associates who want us to challenge them to be everything they can be in their life-styles. Right?

Our communal life-style is shaped by three gospel counsels: living simply so that others can simply live; loving to white-hot intensity with open hands; and binding ourselves to develop an ever-deepening listening heart. Right?

But other religious women’s communities do the same; and other communities have associates who draw strength and guidance from these women who live these counsels. So who are we as a community of Dominican women religious, who have associates? Who are we just having celebrated 800 years of Dominican identity? What is the distinctive mark we bring to the wider Church as we turn our faces to the future?

I’m going to suggest that we stand among the Jesuits, the Franciscans, the Mercy’s, the Redemptorists…carrying our own distinctive foot-washing towel. It has a monogram on the corner. It is “OP.” What are its threads? Why is it an “OP” towel, when all the others have towels too…but with different monograms and different weaves?

Our weave is indeed distinctive. There is none quite like it. Yes, we all have towels, because it’s all about mission in the end; it’s all about service. But there is no weave quite like the Dominican weave.

There are four distinctive threads, and no other religious community weaves them in quite the same way: there is common life, common prayer, study, and finally mission flowing from the linking of the other three. Those in formation call these the “four pillars.” I’m going to use the more flexible metaphor of “threads.” We’ll consider these in future reflections.

Why do I favor a more “flexible” metaphor, even though “pillar” is very firm and secure? Because flexibility is one of our most distinctive Dominican characteristics. We live our lives bending and flexing like dancers. Nothing in Dominican life binds under pain of sin. What? How in heaven’s name are you going to keep these Dominicans in line? How are you going to get them to do what they ought to do? Dominic wanted to put the weaving shuttle in our own hands. The Joyful Friar reminds us who we are as beggars, lovers, and listeners by our vows. Then he expects us to make responsible adult choices. He believed that living with a penalty hanging over your head kept you fear-motivated, and he was a joyful lover, and love drives out fear.

So we begin with flexibility. We are dancers, who bend and sway, bow and turn. We are the weavers of our own Dominican religious life. We dance to the Spirit’s music holding the shuttle in our own hands.

How Our "Saving" Takes Place

As lent blooms into Easter, we are very aware that we are being saved by God’s love. This is a fact. It’s right before our very eyes. The truth of the fact is one thing, but how it happens is another. We are not used to asking the how question, because it is asking for the explanation of functioning rather than the simple description of a fact of truth.

So let’s take a stab at it…let’s explore how we are saved by a magnificent Love. First, Love bends down. Bending is a function. Here is this poor Cinderella-soul, which finds itself in a drudgery state not of her choosing. Love bends down to her, and she “turns” at Love’s touch, her drudgery gone, and transformed into a princess in a party dress and at a “dance.” Locked in Love’s embrace, she follows Love’s lead on the dancefloor of her life. When she becomes “oh-so-tired-to-death,” Love sweeps her into its arms and carries her across the threshold into the safety of his Father’s “castle.”

Notice that even before bending down, Love sees her in her condition, and Loves her. Love starts everything off. Unable to get herself out of the condition she has inherited, Love bends to her. Love involves itself in her very wretchedness. Love bonds itself to her by touch. This transforms her. She becomes new, someone more than she was before, a new creation, clothed in a garment fit for a wedding. Love continues to involve itself in the dance of her life, holding her close. She dances “the night of her fears” away, held firmly by Love. As time passes toward the midnight of her life, she grows old in the dance. Love is ready. And when she collapses into Love’s arms, she leaves the dancefloor and is carried to “safety.”

Our saving is a process. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The flow of that process originates in a Mystery Jesus called “Abba.” Jesus is the touch-of-God to a wounded human race. When he bonds with our flesh in the incarnation, God is revealed as I AM the One Who Saves. We are transformed. All this happens by an outflowing energy of compassionate mercy that we call the “Holy Spirit.” So the mystery of our saving is an ongoing function of a merciful unending Trinitarian Love. And our response? Well, for goodness sake! Say, “Yes!”

You reach out your hand

And it is a human hand just like mine.

My blindness is gone.

You reach out your hand

And my deadness departs.

You join me even in the tomb

And then leap up and sweep me away with you into the heights.

Saving Love, seal my love-yes in the fire of your Spirit flowing from your open heart.

A Listening Heart

                                 

The context for all we are and do – charism, Spirit Marks, common life, common prayer, study, mission and ministry – is set by our vows, our commitments. Our lay associates witness to us their baptismal vows, and some, their marital vows of faithful loving. Sisters vow the counsels in addition to their baptismal vows, to witness to the entire Church a non-consumerist, wild loving, and obedient life-style in community.

So what is so distinct about vowing the counsel of religious obedience? We all seek to obey the voice of God in our life-styles, right? Indeed.

Yet that voice of God asks different things of different folks. Marital vows ask a listening heart for the needs of the spouse and family. The sister pledges a listening heart for the voice of God coming through her religious community. That means a deep listening to those she has elected into office to influence her. It means listening to the times, and how they cry out to her community for healing.

As it is in every life-style, the obedience asked of religious in our unique life-context might be very costly. It calls us to listen in the wide context of an entire community. It challenges us to bow the stiff neck of our individual ego preferences to where that community is moving. It might call us to consider something we think we cannot do. It might call us to consider what we don’t like or agree with. Make no mistake. Religious obedience in community stretches the soul. If sincerely lived it makes the religiously vowed person big-souled. The individual with her preferences and gifts is part of every consideration, yes, but always in relation to the wider common good.

And there’s the rub. What I want is discerned in the context of what we want and need. In a sense, we vow ourselves publicly to assume a we-consciousness in all areas of our life. We live with a heart that is dilated. It is always open and listening. It would be so simple to do what I want, when I want, as I want, if I want. But to always check out these wants in light of the community is a challenge. As we age, our physical hearing sometimes becomes compromised. But in this obedient listening, age often reveals one who has learned to hear extremely well – with a listening heart.

Loving – At White -Hot Heat

If vows added to the baptismal promises identify certain life-styles, and the counsel of poverty vowed publicly reminds the whole Church that “You can’t take it with you when you go,” what is this celibacy thing all about?

The married must be chastely celibate to all except their marriage partner. They sign the fruitful love of Christ Jesus in their marital love. But what does total celibate chastity mean for religious  who vow this counsel publicly? What does their vow of chastity mean in an age of recreational sex?

Catherine of Siena believed that poverty was the most basic of the counsels, for if the human heart if fixed on a relationship with the Holy One as its one non-negotiable, then celibate love and a listening heart fall right in place. Sandra Schneiders, IHM, takes another view. She is convinced that only someone wildly in love could vow poverty and obedience as a life-style.

I think they are both right. Catherine, from the angle of a basic value, and Sandra, from the angle of desire. Most view celibate chastity as something one does not do. One vows to fast from genital sex. But why would one do that? Only when the longing tells the person it would not be enough, when one’s desire is fixed on something more. So heated is that desire, that it stops at nothing short of union with the Holy. Nothing else will do…no matter how long I have to wait. This takes a love of white-hot heat…a love stronger than death. The totally celibate lover is a sign in the Church of its ultimate union, whatever the life-style each of us have lived.

This wild love-in-waiting can hardly be imagined in today’s world of “If it feels good, do it!” To fall in love with a beautiful human being and not have to “have” them is counter cultural. But it is real. It happens to both the married and to religious. Celibates, married or religious, know. Healthy religious celibates too are wild lovers. Ask them. You might be amazed at their stories.

Going…Where we might not want to go.Going…Where we might not want to go.

It’s here. Lent has come. We’ve been here before. What might be different this year? What might be different is that we are different. We are in a different place. This is most obvious nationally and politically. But what about spiritually? What about the hidden garden of my heart?

Lent is the time for cleaning out the garden…of the soul. It’s time to get rid of the trash, the old growth, the dead stuff. Why? Well, if you look carefully, you will see all sorts of new growth starting underneath the trash. So, clear it away…give the new a chance to grow!

But if I’m honest, I may not want to go there and do that. So, where am I going to go in this garden of mine? The wise Mother-Church takes us by the hand in the scriptures and leads us through the gate. First, there will be the desert, and we will learn that this is going to take work, and forces are going to gather to stop us. Then we climb a mountain, and surprise! We are shown what we will look like when the work is done! Next, we are shown the Fountain in the midst of our garden, and it is a living Person. Out of him flows the Spirit-water that gives life itself to the garden. By the fourth week we are pretty clear that we really don’t see too well, and we need this life-giving water to clear our vision as we do our clean-up work. By the fifth week we are led to face something we want to avoid: dying. We are shown there is no need to fear. The One who has the living water will take care of that too.

Then we enter the final week, where before our very eyes, he shows us how we will come through the key-hole of death into a new life. We call it Holy Week, for it indeed is holy. We watch as he gets sweaty and bloody, working beside us to clear our garden of whatever gets in his way. So, in this Lent of 2017,  we’re going. We’re going where we might not want to go.

Loving Gardener,

Desert Dweller,

Transfigured Human,

Living Fountain,

Vision Healer,

Death Destroyer,

Saving God,

Lead me where I might not want to go.

Sweat beside me

as I work to clear away what hinders the new growth in me you want to bring.

Clothe me in your new life

that with a radiant face

I might be a laser-light to pierce the dark with a just word.