Community
We expect a theophany of which we know nothing but the place,
and the place is called community. (Theologian Martin Buber)
Photo thanks to Betty D. Thompson
What does “community” mean to Catholic sisters? We lay folks in Solidarity with Sisters can’t answer that. We can offer observations, we can share wonderful writings by and videos with sisters of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), and we can tell you the kinds of experiences that have built our beloved community with LCWR since 2012.
In LCWR's books, many individual sisters share poignant, powerful examples of community life. That's especially true in However Long the Night: Making Meaning in a Time of Crisis, where LCWR leaders 2009-2015 offer their learnings from a very difficult time.
“As we are fed by the bread of Eucharist and as we are fed by our experiences of God in prayer, we are fed as well by the strength and vitality of this community of religious leaders. In our conversations with one another, at the regional level and locally, we can once again touch into insight and hope, vision and endurance.” – Sister Mary Hughes
“Sustained and open conversation that is contemplative in nature will enable us to come to our truest vocation. Our time calls for community, communion; not just individual commitment but communal commitment. We must engage in and with our world as community, a work in process together.” – Sister Marcia Allen
“We who are in positions of leadership are constantly challenged to honor a wide spectrum of opinions. We have learned a lot about creating community from diversity, and about celebrating differences. We have come to trust divergent opinions as powerful pathways to greater clarity. Our commitment to community compels us to do that, as together we seek the common good… We have effectively moved from a hierarchically structured lifestyle in our congregations to a more horizontal model. It is quite amazing, considering the rigidity from which we evolved. The participative structures and collaborative leadership models we have developed have been empowering, lifegiving. These models may very well be the gift we now bring to the Church and the world.” – Sister Pat Farrell
In LCWR's books, many individual sisters share poignant, powerful examples of community life. That's especially true in However Long the Night: Making Meaning in a Time of Crisis, where LCWR leaders 2009-2015 offer their learnings from a very difficult time.
“As we are fed by the bread of Eucharist and as we are fed by our experiences of God in prayer, we are fed as well by the strength and vitality of this community of religious leaders. In our conversations with one another, at the regional level and locally, we can once again touch into insight and hope, vision and endurance.” – Sister Mary Hughes
“Sustained and open conversation that is contemplative in nature will enable us to come to our truest vocation. Our time calls for community, communion; not just individual commitment but communal commitment. We must engage in and with our world as community, a work in process together.” – Sister Marcia Allen
“We who are in positions of leadership are constantly challenged to honor a wide spectrum of opinions. We have learned a lot about creating community from diversity, and about celebrating differences. We have come to trust divergent opinions as powerful pathways to greater clarity. Our commitment to community compels us to do that, as together we seek the common good… We have effectively moved from a hierarchically structured lifestyle in our congregations to a more horizontal model. It is quite amazing, considering the rigidity from which we evolved. The participative structures and collaborative leadership models we have developed have been empowering, lifegiving. These models may very well be the gift we now bring to the Church and the world.” – Sister Pat Farrell
Here’s some of what we’ve seen in LCWR community: Roots in faith and charism. Organized effort to make a difference in the world. Lifetime commitment to one’s sisters. Tender kindness and steadfast mutual challenge in the endless quest to live God’s mission. Shared laughter, shared feelings of all kinds. Creative ways of celebrating joys. Solid ways of grounding each other. Forgiveness. All of this “in good times and in bad.”
Many experiences that build our shared SwS-LCWR community are also foundations of community within LCWR and its congregations. These are powerful, pivotal ways to build community anywhere, including in our fractured society:
- Dialogue -- “Real dialogue doesn’t have winners and losers. It’s a way that we both get stretched.” (Sister Mary Hughes)
- Contemplative dialogue and communal discernment, in deepening conversation– “It takes intention and focus to speak together from a deeper source, out of a place of peace, to harvest the wisdom of the whole.” (Sister Pat Farrell)
- Spiritual leadership – “…a way of being in the world that contributes to an environment where deep, authentic transformation of the individual and of the whole is possible.” (Sister Marie McCarthy)
- Nonviolence – “Prophets of communion! This is my dream for us, my sisters. It is your dream as well.” (Sister Constance FitzGerald)
- Oneness with creation -- "It is the spirituality of creation -- our affinity, our care, for the rest of creation—that really stretches us to the wholeness of ourselves and to the wholeness of God, as well." (Sister Joan Chittister)
Becoming community in this way isn’t easy. In Solidarity with Sisters, we’ve been practicing since 2012 –getting much better and still far from perfect. This way of being community shifts everything – what we do, how we do it, why we do it, and what happens as a result. We thought and prayed long and hard about what we have to offer you. We put it in the chapter that LCWR invited us to write in However Long the Night: Making Meaning in a Time of Crisis: A Spiritual Journey of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. We’d value your stories of how you experiment with these ways of community.
"Home communities" like these can also become ministerial in creating space for more inclusive community to grow. Sister Nancy Sylvester’s Institute for Communal Contemplation and Dialogue offers an invitation to join with 800+ people throughout the world in a contemplative sitting network, readings and resources, and a blueprint to hold a Coffee and Tea Contemplation Party to help heal the divisions in our minds, our hearts, our society.
Women religious are experimenting with new ways of living community and reflecting on what this means:
- The Reservoir Hill House of Peace in Baltimore, "a pioneer plan for religious life" where two women religious are co-coordinators for a house of people seeking to "be the change."
- These new ways in which women religious are living community often focus on convening, hosting, expanding, cross-fertilization, with the same core of Jesus and the Gospels. Great piece from Sr. Linda Romey.
- A witty retired woman religious living with 60-years-younger Franciscan Community Volunteers in St. Cloud, Minnesota -- and discovering "that I am in a remedial Franciscan life learning program, and now I am having to rethink the question of who supports whom here."
- The 2019 Sisters of Mercy-Nuns & Nones pilot residency in Burlingame, California.