(If you don't know who Ita Ford is, I suggest reading this first - "Not Left Forgotten: Guided by the Spirit of Ita Ford")

Dear Ita,
As I sit here reading your letters, I feel compelled to write you. I write to you as a friend because, although we've never met, I've known you for years. I've read and re-read your letters and writings since I was in college. Your words have been with me in my studies, in the mission field, and in religious formation.

After leaving religious life a year ago, I wondered if your words would still resonate with me. They had meant so much to me all those years. So, tentatively, I started re-reading, wondering if it would result in the loss of a spiritual guide and heroine (I know, you'd be nauseated by those titles)

But years ago, you wrote to your niece, praying that she would find what gives life a deep meaning for her - "something worth living for, maybe even worth dying for...something that energizes you, enthuses you, enables you to keep moving ahead" (read the whole letter here) And I breathed a sigh of relief. You got it, you understood journeys, no matter what they were.

That's where I am right now - on the path for that which gives me my life deep meaning.
I thought I had found it with religious life, but no, it wasn't what God intended.
I'm not sure what my vocation is, what these next years will hold, but I'm okay with going with God's flow...for now, anyway...I think.

Despite the question marks, since I left the Sisters, to echo your own words:

"What seems to be slowly happening is an acceptance of the truth of who I am: coming to know it, see it in relation to the whole - and accepting the knowledge of who I am and where I am...coming to be comfortable with who I am, how I have been gifted for others." (retreat notes, Aug 1978-1979, p124)

Even though I'm unsure where my life is leading me and I've lost that title of "Sister", I do believe we still have a lot in common. It's incredibly obvious that you loved writing, as I do. You were witty and, truthfully, a bit nerdy. You were faithful, yet full of questions. You struggled with comprehending God's love for you in your imperfections, just as I do.

Neither of us had a journey we expected. You joined the Maryknoll Sisters and left right before vows, joined again seven years later, lost your best friend in a car accident that almost killed you too, and then died just a few months after moving to El Salvador. I, well, I have been all over the place, in and out of community.

Is all this what's meant in Jeremiah 18:5-6, one of your favorites:

"Then the word of the Lord came to me: Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done? says the Lord. Just like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel"? 

In a 1977 article, you mention living in the mission field of Chile as "on the front lines of Christianity" (quoting a letter you had received using that phrase). Things are a bit different here. I called living my faith in Bolivia 'barefoot Christianity' because it was Christianity at its core, stripped to simplicity.
So, how is it that I live out my faith here in San Antonio, beyond church, beyond prayer? I work for persons who are poor and, like you, like all of us, I have no answers for them. I can only walk with them and let myself be evangelized. But the noise of God's work in others and myself isn't quite as loud as it was back then or maybe there's a lot of static my ears are foolishly focusing on instead. But I know He's here and very much alive in these people.

All this is to ask for your prayers, Ita (and readers).
Your friend is a jar of clay but she's not broken yet. God still has me in His hand.

Peace,
Amanda

Quote of the Week: Mary Doria Russell and Creation

“There are times...when we are in the midst of life - moments of confrontation with birth or death, or moments of beauty when nature or love is fully revealed, or moments of terrible loneliness - times when a holy and awesome awareness comes upon us. 

It may come as deep inner stillness or as a rush of overflowing emotion.It may seem to come from beyond us, without any provocation, or from within us, evoked by music or by a sleeping child. 

If we open our hearts at such moments, creation reveals itself to us in all it's unity and fullness. And when we return from such a moment of awareness, our hearts long to find some way to capture it in words forever, so that we can remain faithful to it's higher truth.

...when my people search for a name to give to the truth we feel at those moments, we call it God, and when we capture that understanding in timeless poetry, we call it praying.”

                                                               - Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow

Read The Sparrow. Now. The plot may sound crazy, but it was the best book recommendation anyone gave me.

(Sidenote: Way back when, I had Vincentian Quotes of the Week. I certainly still count myself as Vincentian, but I felt it was time to revive the tradition with quotes I find meaningful from all around the spectrum.)

Elizabeth Ann Seton: Wrestling and Dancing with God

I have always loved reading journals and personal letters of other people, most particularly holy people. I like Henri Nouwen's books, but I devour his journals. Thomas Merton's Sign of Jonas struck me way more than Seven Storey Mountain did. Mother Teresa's Come Be My Light allowed me to connect with her more than anything else would. It almost seems contradictory, considering I've been journaling regularly since I was 16 and, although I may share parts, I have never let another person read them.

There is a deep personal part of our soul that is shared in journals and perhaps in letters. Our soul becomes raw, in openness, a willingness to share our weaknesses, our wrestles with God and our joy. We hold nothing back. To read someone else's journal is to dive into their soul, to dive into the mystery of their being. And for our saints, for those holy people we admire, it is diving into the human soul of someone we may not think of as human, diving into the soul of someone who both wrestled and danced with God.

I've been reading the book Friendship of My Soul: Selected Letters by Elizabeth Ann Seton 1803 - 1809 by Sister Betty Ann McNeil, DC. I've known Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton since 2003 when I first started attending Mount Saint Mary's College in Emmitsburg, where she lived and died. I've been through the museum a handful of times and thought I knew almost everything about her. But in this book, Sister Betty Ann publishes Elizabeth Ann's most intimate letters with her best friends. Elizabeth Ann paints the picture of everything leading up to her husband's death....the ship, the conditions, the smells....and then the sorrow she feels upon William's passing.

In one letter, we find her complaining about the singers at the Opera House in Italy and says that anyone who finds that pleasurable must not have never known real pleasure (when I read this, I looked up at the icon of her on my wall and laughed, trying to imagine her saying that). A few letters later, we find her wrestling with herself and with God over the thought of Jesus' Real Presence in the Eucharist, an idea contradictory to herself, a good Episcopalian woman. You can feel her confusion, grappling over what she truly believes.

Suddenly, Elizabeth Ann became real to me. The book description  "rarely does a story come along where a reader feels effortlessly transported back through time—where words and thoughts vividly convey a feeling of life some two hundred years past." is accurate. Every time I pick up the book, I feel transported back in time, as if I were face to face with Elizabeth Ann herself, as if I could emphatically feel her pain, feel her confusion, feel her anxious doubt.

As you can see, I haven't even gotten to the point where she finally decides to convert to Catholicism. That's where Elizabeth Ann's story really takes off - from losing some close friends because of her conversion, from fleeing New York to Baltimore, from founding the first American religious order and starting a new life in Emmitsburg, from losing so many, both family members and Sisters.

I invite you to read this book as well, or at the very least, research our dear Elizabeth Ann Seton. She, our first American-born saint, is truly a hidden treasure. Her name may be familiar, but I feel that her story is obscure. Her story is one that we all need - a story of pain, of human struggle, but also of a saintly trust in God. Yet it is also important to remember that saints are real, not just stories. Elizabeth Ann was in fact real, a woman who apparently hated opera and whose heart broke a little at the passing of her husband, with her children still so young, and a woman who spent her life both wrestling and dancing with God. May we learn from her example.

Community Living: A Wonderful Mess

While on the beach recently, I read a book called "New Monasticism" by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove. It was an easy and quick read, yet it seemed like almost every page led me to reflect. "New Monasticism" is essentially a ecumenical movement to revive monasticism in a modern context - that is, without deserting the world, without vows, and without habits. It's an interesting and really, wonderful, concept. And to me, it's especially exciting to see Protestants rediscover the wonderfulness that is community life. I feel like it's something us Catholics have known and used for centuries, although it's constantly been reformed to fit with the times (and to fix issues), through women and men religious communities. Thousands of Catholic religious communities exist, with different charisms, for men and women who have the wish to live a religious life with others. And some, like the Daughters, have existed for hundreds of years. But, to many Protestants, the concept is something new, or rather better fitting: "so old it seems new". Now, ecumenical communities such as Rutba House and A Simple Way exist in large cities, where Christians of all denominations live together, pray together and live a modern monastic life together.

Unlike some entering religious life, I've already lived in community. I, more or less, have been for the past 8 years. Not in a "new monastic" community but in different ways. From living with suitemates in college to living with ten Sisters in the convent to living with fifty elementary to high school girls (sixteen of which in the same room). I've had the lucky chance of experiencing community life.

But community life isn't all "smiles and sunshine", just as religious life isn't "daisies and Jesus". You live with people you don't necessarily get along with (we are human, after all) or maybe you live with people you do like but don't like to live with, for one reason or another. Community life isn't easy. Sometimes it can be downright frustrating. It's a tug-and-pull of having patience through prayer, learning more about yourself and helping others and yourself become better people.

But that sounds incredibly secular. And religious community life is anything but. Living in community challenges you to become a better Christian, as you learn to let go of yourself, your wants, and your needs and put your Christian community above all else. It's certainly not an easy thing, but we can all agree it's worth it. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote "The more genuine and deeper our community becomes, the more will everything else between us recede, the more clearly and purely will Jesus Christ and his work become the one and only thing that is vital between us." (Life Together, 26). We must remember the real reason we're together in the first place - for Jesus. And from my personal experience, simply by being together in prayer, our community life deepens. With the Sisters in the convent and with the girls in the orphanage, both in Bolivia, we prayed together. I've done the same with the Daughters, the many times I lived with them during short visits. Many times, I looked around and saw my fellow community members in prayer. I mean, really saw them. I saw their brokenness by living with them (and I saw mine too, by the way) but by watching them pray, I saw their faith and their trust in a loving God. By saying the same words along with them, I felt more united with them in prayer than I would simply by living with them.

Community life isn't for everyone. But I can say, from experience, it is for me. During those eight years, for a short time, I lived by myself. I originally thought it would be great to be on my own, to do what I wanted instead of worrying about the common good for the community. I hated it. I missed the support of those same people that drove me crazy sometimes. I missed constantly learning about faith and about myself from them. I missed the accountability of doing the right thing - outside community, I could do what I wanted without someone there to be affected by my actions, whether they were right or wrong. I missed the connection I felt with others in prayer. My sadness over lacking community life is one of the things that led me back to religious life.

For those already living in community life, what do you love about it? What in community life challenges you?

Books: Gift Certificates from God

Hi, my name is Amanda and I'm addicted to books.

Don't believe me? I've read 20 books this year and it's June. (All this while going to grad school and teaching. Sometimes I feel like reading is my superpower.) And I'm not talking about skimpy 100-page books. I'm talking about 300-400 page books, and even a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer that was over 600 pages.

Yes, I may have a problem.

Nevertheless, I consider books, more specifically spiritual books, to be gift certificates from God - pages we can "redeem" into improvement into our own spiritual life, no cost to us. In that spirit, I give you a top-10 list of my favorite spiritual books.

Top Ten Books That Have Inspired Me in My Spiritual Journey
(in no particular order)

1. "Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in the Secular World" by Henri Nouwen
2. "Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux" by St. Therese of Lisieux
3. "Dark Night of the Soul" by St. John of the Cross
4. "Gracias: A Latin American Journal" by Henri Nouwen
5. "Come Be My Light: The Private Writings of the Saint of Calcutta" by Mother Teresa
6. "Here I Am, Lord: The Letters and Writings of Ita Ford" by Jeanne Evans, Ita Ford
7. "The Sign of Jonas" by Thomas Merton
8. "The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom" by Henri Nouwen
9. "Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God" by Rainer M. Rilke
10. "Letters to Marc About Jesus: Living a Spiritual Life in a Material World" by Henri Nouwen

If I would continue the list, #11 would be "Spiritual Writings of St. Louise de Marillac: Correspondence and Thoughts" (which I continue reading) and #12 "The Way of Vincent de Paul: A Contemporary Spirituality in Service of the Poor" by Robert Maloney.

Which books have you read that you consider to be gift certificates from God? If you were to create a top 10 list of your favorite spiritual books, what would it include?

P.S. With the plenitude of blog entries lately, can you tell I'm at home with nothing else better to do?

(Clip art courtesy of DailyClipArt.net)