Pathways: Winter 2001
A Little Northern Exposure
-By Celeste Cotter,CSJ
It was August 26, 2000.
I had shipped a few boxes to an unfamiliar address in Connecticut, and had just loaded my suitcases into the car. Everyone in my community had come outside to share one last hug and a wave good-bye. I had grown up in Connecticut, and my family still lived there, but I had been away from that area for many years. And now I was leaving for a brand new program of formation with novices from all over the Federation of Sisters of St. Joseph. What was I heading into?
Sr. Anne Meridier, our formation director, was accompanying me on this trip north. She and other directors spent the first few days of orientation with us while the expectations of the program were explained, then returned home and left us in the care and guidance of Sr. Marilyn Lott from St.Louis and Sr. Kay O’Brien of Boston. We chose rooms, unpacked boxes, and began to get to know each other. There were fourteen novices in this first ever, year long Federation Novitiate. We came from California, St. Louis, Boston, Long Island, Connecticut, Canada, Chicago, Cleveland, Springfield (MA), Michigan as well as myself from New Orleans. Although I was the only one from the South, I was not the only one saying "you all." One novice from Long Island had grown up in Texas and had family near Houston, where I had lived for twelve years. Several of us had met through previous Federation activities and resumed our acquaintances. We ranged in age from 26 to 52, from professions such as nursing, social work, teaching, therapy, sales, accounting, and office management.
Our congregations conceived of this project several years back as a way to give those of us in formation the opportunity to develop closer relations, beyond our own communities, while sharing and strengthening our common spirit. Even though the Sisters of St. Joseph of Medaille have been blessed with lots of new members, that is not the case in most congregations. Often when joining a community a woman is the only person in initial formation, and there are few others who are close in age to her. It was the first opportunity for most of the participants in the Federation Novitiate to be studying with other novices as well as peers at their age level.
One of the first questions we were asked by our presenters was, "Is there a 'Joseph' sense of community, and how do we recognize it in community?" After individual reflection on what we felt were high points and challenging times in community life we discovered some strong similarities about what we enjoy in the ordinariness of our life together. Our living arrangements may be simple, but we value our presence to and conversation with another, whether in the doorways or at the kitchen table. Our sense of collaboration and willingness to accompany others is as important to our living together as to our ministry, and causes us dismay when we do not experience that rapport or see it as secondary to our ministries. None of us wanted to live in a place where every one has their own food, their own schedule, and their own space without a sharing of hearts and ideas. Even though dialogue is risky and makes us vulnerable it was an essential aspect of what was regarded as a life-giving community. How we live together and work out differences through respectful listening and negotiation is one of the richest gifts we can give our Church, and is what marks us as religious. Our foundations as a Eucharistic community have much to say to us about gathering around the table.
I found our studies on celibacy to be reassuring. Sr. Maria Hill, from Cincinnati, explained that celibacy is both a call and a gift, and it is not discerned alone, any more than it is accomplished alone. We learn as we grow in our relationship with God to trust the process, but it does change our identity. However, our deepest identity is to love, and so our celibate state reflects that part of who we are, even as the externals change. Prayer and a spiritual guide help us to sort out the ebbs and flows of our sexual energies, especially when we find ourselves in an uncomfortable place. As Sr. Lynn Levo of Albany, said in regard to self-reflection, "Don’t get angry - get curious!"
During our stay in Connecticut we had ample opportunity to live out the many aspects of community and religious life we were learning. With fourteen of us on one floor and one communal washer/dryer, small kitchen, and computer with internet access we somehow managed to work out our schedules and sharing of goods in a friendly way. Sometimes it was hard to find quiet space, especially with our varying rhythms of being morning people or night people, but we learned how to respect one another’s needs. One way religious life differs from married life is that instead of choosing a partner you chose a community, and you might find yourself living with an individual who would not necessarily be compatible with yourself. However, fidelity to your commitment helps you to grow in love and maturity, and is not unlike learning to live with those less than gracious aspects one might discover in a spouse. Living in a house with so many different age levels and interests certainly accelerated that process in myself, and opened me up to the great richness that each of those individuals brought with them. Our experiences of prayer, worship, recreation, and ministry were all heightened by these dimensions of number and diversity. At one point the group sent an e-mail to Oprah and told her that we wanted to go on her show en-masse to reveal a way of communal living that was very different from the much-publicized show "Survivor." (We got no response, unfortunately).
It is an amazing truth about religious life that you get to do and experience so many more things than you normally would, and it certainly was true about our time in Connecticut. We spent time on the ocean at a huge stone mansion with a beach all to ourselves. There was a retreat on an island in the middle of the water near Providence, Rhode Island and another retreat in a blizzard near the New Hampshire border. Besides Hartford and Boston, different members of our group spent time in Vermont, Canada, and New York. We met Anglican monks and visited with cloistered Benedictine sisters who live behind the grate and experience pre-Vatican II worship. Our presenters came from all over the country, and were often the ones who had created our history. Our group was very aware that this Federation Novitiate was itself history, yet like our early sisters we had only a vague sense of the new beginnings of which we were a part. All of our congregations had stories of small groups of sisters responding to a need by starting a mission, often in remote or foreign territory, that later became great institutions of learning or healing. Now we are moving into unfamiliar realms of ministry in response to the Spirit, and learning how to bring the Gospel and our Trinitarian sense of love to international diplomacy (U.N.), public policy (advocacy groups), and conflict resolution (mediation). Our models of living together help us teach others how to merge parishes, bring the Gospel to teenage gangs, and invite women with AIDS to live in communal settings and be a support to one another.
It was an intense experience that certainly affirmed for me that I am a Sister of St. Joseph, and why I am one. While studying our Jesuit roots we learned that St. Ignatius believed we must carry the cloister within us as we engage in active ministry, and that novitiate was the time to develop that strength of spirit. The novitiate process would internalize the cloister experience so that, even in the midst of a crowd, we could still be reflective. I know those lessons and experiences will always be a part of who I am as a Sister of St. Joseph, and will guide me in my new life in community and ministry.
Celeste Cotter, CSJ made her first profession of vows August 11, 2001. She now lives in community in Houma, LA and is Assistant Director of Social Ministries for the Diocese of Houma-Thibedeaux
They
shall live
so that
their Congregation
shall bear the name
of the Congregation
of the
Great Love of God.
-Constitutions