Sinsinawa
Spectrum
A Congregation News Magazine
Becoming Our Best Self
by Mary Ann Nelson, OP
During Community Days this year, the topics of community life and contemplation will be woven together, just as they are woven together in our day-to-day lives. Community life and contemplation are also at the heart of what women are searching for today in religious life.
Do you even realize what we have to offer! The Baltimore Carmelite nuns realized that there was a value to continuing their cloistered life because the life itself had so much to offer the Church and the world. They engaged in a process of communal discernment and committed themselves to inviting new members to join them. In doing this they faced and named the sacrifices that this would mean for each member of the community.
Are you ready to do that? What are some of the costs of new membership for us? Those of you who have welcomed a new member into your community already know the cost. Connie FitzGerald, OCD, says it includes “sacrificing things that we may legitimately have. . . . We are going to have to be on call, to mentor these women, to provide a model for them of how the life needs to be lived. And unless communities can offer this, they are not going to have, or keep, new women.”
When you invite a new woman into the community, things change. A lot! Every member of that community has to give up something if a newer woman is going to find her place. The community may be more boisterous and, for a time, less solitary. A newer woman has emotional needs and even immaturities that older Sisters don’t exhibit in the same way. Women who are just coming into community may seem preoccupied with concerns related primarily to themselves. We need to be committed to a level of personal investment in order for these women to succeed, to feel that they belong, to feel that they are in their own place, rather than just visiting us. We’ve said in our Constitution that “together we enter a process of change that carries our past into the promise of the future.” Yes―and we know that this is easier said than done. Many of us have gotten pretty comfortable with our life.
Yet, in opening themselves, Connie reports that in the Baltimore Carmel each person, and the community as a whole, has become their best self. Not only that: new members have joined them, and they are once again a multicultural, intergenerational community.
From our oldest members to our youngest, each of us has something to contribute to the next generation of Dominican women. Are we ready to make the sacrifice that is necessary for new life?
For your reflection and inspiration, the article, “Inviting thresholds: how communities might respond to shifting times” by Maria Cimperman, OSU, is on the INTRAnet under the “Resources” button and the “Initial Membership” heading. Also, the DVD, A Future Full of Hope, tells the story of the Baltimore Carmelites’ process of discernment and transformation. It’s available upon request from Mary Ellen Schonhoff at (608) 748-4411, ext. 279, or mschonho@sinsinawa.org.