Transforming Tension, Choosing Love

This Living Franciscan post is written by Michelle L'Allier, OSF


Holy Week is filled with the unexpected: from the jubilation of Palm Sunday to the suffering and death of Jesus on Good Friday; from the darkness of waiting and uncertainty of Holy Saturday to the joy of Easter Resurrection. In Mathew’s Passion narrative, we hear Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet, not as I will, but as you will.” Jesus, fully human as well as fully divine, transformed his anguish into acceptance. Ronald Rolheiser speaks of Jesus purifying sin and tension by absorbing and transforming it…taking in hatred, holding it, transforming it, and giving back love…taking in fear, holding it, transforming it, and giving back freedom.

The Sacred Path

We as Franciscan Sisters of Little Falls are on our own journey of transformation. This blog post began long before Holy Week when I was walking on the Sacred Path at Clare’s Well (shown above), remembering the Legislative Session of our Delegate Assembly. This is once-every-five years gathering is a time when we come together as Franciscan Sisters to consider in a spirit of prayer God’s call and our response to the needs of the times. At our February Legislative Session we wrestled with the opportunities and challenges we face as we consider our limited resources, wide-ranging experiences and rich spiritual heritage. Blessed with faith and gifted companions for the journey, we vision and plan together for the future with hope. At our February meeting we also affirmed our call to continued conversation of community life in the 21st Century and to explore forms of governance that more fully reflect values of collegiality and shared responsibility.

Earlier this month we had the Election Session of our Delegate Assembly during which we elected a new Leadership Team. We listened to the movements of God’s Spirit in our midst and in our own hearts and chose a team of four Sisters who will be entrusted with leading us as a community for the next five years. Of this time, Jan described a metaphor of the kitchen  for our community, the hearth of the home is where we prepare food to nourish one another and others; it is where we sip from comforting and at times contentious cups of coffee, all the while staying at the table. It is a pertinent image for these times. Whether considering choices regarding the future of a community such as ours or perhaps significant personal and family decisions, or whether it means moving forward in the midst of a polarized political climate, the model of listening deeply and staying at the table until tension is transformed is an example of fidelity to love.

May we in this Holy Week follow Jesus as he shows us the way to absorb, purify and transform tension and sin rather than simply transmit them.

 Spring’s new life transforms remnants of fall and winter.

Franciscan Community Volunteers

The end of June 2010 saw four young men and women taking several days of retreat to review their 10 months of service with Franciscan Community Volunteers (FCV). During this time of quiet and shared reflection, these special people gleaned insights into how they had grown from their original goals through graced opportunities to places they hadn't dreamed possible in such a short time. Katie Janssen (FCV program manager) enjoyed the lunch break on the deck of Clare's Well Retreat Farm with the 2009-2010 volunteers: Caitie Tobin, Alicia Landale, Will Braun and Spencer Buchert. FCV Director, Sister Clara Stang, sent them off with gratitude for the commitment and energy each contributed to make this new ministry of the Franciscan Sisters such a huge success.

See www.fslf.org/franciscan_volunteers.html for more information.

Franciscans Return Home

We had an amazing week of sharing with our Franciscan Community. I'd say we had the deepest, best conversations ever about what it means to be about God's work in this world.

We from Clare's Well returned home to find our gardens (including weeds) excited about all the rain they had had while we were away. Several Sisters, including our newly professed Sisters Aurora and Isa, returned to their homes in Mexico. S. Joan and Associates from Ecuador returned to Ecuador.

Some whose home is with brothers and sisters who live on the streets in San Francisco paused for a week to do street retreats with a Universalist Unitarian minister, Franciscan Associates, Kay, Dene' and others in Minneapolis. The rest returned to their ministries wherever God took them stateside, remotivated to work for the reign of God.

Sister Carol's grandniece and grandnephew, Carmel and Owen, enjoyed the fence railings lining the garden east of our dining room during a visit from Ohio. Their presence reminds me these little people who follow after us need a healthy world, too.

MISSION TO NICARAGUA

by Sister Jan Kilian

My heart and prayer are with friends in Apawas, Nicaragua these days. Sisters Carol Schmit and Grace Skwira are working in this makeshift medical clinic with Dr. Ron and Kay Brown, dispensing love and support along with medicines. They and 18 other Minnesotans are led to this area each January by our Franciscan missionary friend, Father Ted Niehaus, who works with 75-plus scattered villages in remote areas of Nicaragua. Volunteers of all ages endure the rugged travel and meager living conditions to work with him and to build relationships with these Nicaraguan brothers and sisters. This year only 5 of the group of 20 are first-timers. (Photo:  L-R  Sister Carol Schmidt, Fr. Ted Niehaus, Sister Grace Skwira)

My companion, Sister Paula, and I are keeping the home-fires going and praying we don’t get any really big storm while Carol’s away. She is our best snow-removal person. I can operate the snow-blower, but I’ve been known to blow snow in the garage and on the farm-house porch . . . . As Franciscans, we are delighted to have some of our community bridging us with these dear people; however, Carol, we are quite ready for you to come back home to us!

An I-tude for Clare’s Well

by Sister Jan Kilian

What does it take to make us grateful? Carol, Paula, Richard and I worked quite hard to line up tools and tasks prior to our spring clean-up day. As the day approached, we hoped lots of volunteers would show up to bring our retreat out of unkeptitude to pulchritude. Well! A record number, 75 people came! In spite of cold, windy, unpleasant weather, the attitude of the women, men, and children bordered on beatitude. Their solicitude was matched with a wondrous aptitude for hard work. Smiles and enthusiasm reigned. We have photographs to prove it.

We three sisters sat that evening saying, “Can you believe what happened here today?!” Please, excuse the altitude of my silliness - when the latitude of generosity is extravagant, gratitude is spontaneous. Good care of Clare’s Well entails a lot of work, which we three ‘old ladies’ in various stages of decrepitude could never manage all by ourselves. We are in awe at the depth of the support we experience. We asked, “What if only 3 or 4 persons had shown up?”

Our response to the multitude gives us pause to remember that we are gifted as much by the love in one pair of helping hands as we are by the love in the hands of 75. There is no point at which we can say, “Okay, now we should be grateful.” We either are thankful people or we’re not. Gratitude is the way of our life. (And that’s no platitude . . . .)