Sister Sandra is daily in my prayers: I love who she is and how she loves and how generously she shares herself with God and neighbor. My questions do not change that at all.

And, Peggy, you are right, I would think, that in stimulating me in this way, Sister Sandra has certainly accomplished what most writers likely seek: her work has engaged me more deeply in our shared world.

Jean

Annie, I guess I question whether the piece is explicitly descriptive without any subtle prescriptive energy. I’ll have to think about that. If the prescriptive energy is there in Sister Sandra’s writing (and like I said I want to think about it: it occurs to me that I may be struggling with a conflation, of my own making, of voice and motivation), I think it is most likely defensive in nature because of the amount of prescriptive energy being directed at progressive sisters. The transition in authority – scholarly experience vs lived experience – may also be where I think there might be a transition from descriptive to prescriptive energy. Sister Sandra has a perfectly expected and legit investment in how ministerial life is described and assessed – an investment that is necessarily different
from whatever investment she may have in how past forms of Religious life are described and assessed – and that investment, that motivation may account for the change in “voice” (as I have been terming it) that is apparent to me when she hits the 1950s onward in her historical overview.

Again, I think the investment is expected and legit. Your language helps me in my thinking, Annie, and I thank you for it. I am thinking that investment can topple the descriptive over into the prescriptive and, if so, that is tricky because investment can be powerfully yet elusively communicated. In this case – this case not just being Sister Sandra but the whole fracas precipitated by the Visitation – I think that has happened. There seems to be a minefield, whether on “the left” or on “the right”, that encourages agreement with and discourages dissent from the dominant description to the extent that the dominant description runs the risk of being prescriptive in effect, if not intent. But that makes me want, in dialogue about contemporary and in-process dynamics, even those in non-dominant communities to explicitly own and define their “we” and, in doing so, to inherently create legitimate space for any dissenting “we” and description. That women have long been denied that legitimate space makes that request of mine hard to swallow for some but I come back to Audre Lorde and her reminder that you cannot dismantle the master’s house with the master’s tools.

I am not sure if that makes sense and I am aware that I am playing sort of fast and sort of loose with “descriptive” and “prescriptive”.

Annie, thanks for engaging in this with me. I am sincerely trying to find my way through this as I discern Religious life (which for me is clearly about apostolic/minsterial – contemplative life) and how to live it with fidelity to Jesus on every level and those levels are infinite. One of my favorite parts of Sister Sandra’s artice was when she notes that the Biblical context for understanding ministerial life is the New Testament. That statement, in itself, is absolutely wonderful and rich and deep and wide as a framework for considering ministerial life.

Your mention of “the hiddenness of women” is very interesting to me because it seems full of “both/ands”.

Jean

Jean

I thought of that as I read Sister Sandra’s article and was very excited. For some reason, in the middle of it all, one of my favorite postcard images came to mind: that retro 50’s woman in an oxford shirtdress, big hair, bright lipstick and matching fingernail polish who say, “Oh no! I forgot to have a baby!” I have to think more about why that came to mind but I think it has to do with how ridiculous it is to suggest that women cannot be conscious and effective actors and drivers in their own lives and that their lives, when examined, will not be shown to be organic with an internal logic and consistency and, thus, “of a whole” in their development.

Back to chewing. Jean

As a lay reader, and one not involved in any debates about religious life, I didn’t encounter any confusion of voices. She writes beautifully about the hiddeness of women religious in the church and in the world. As I understand it, this hiddeness and lack of visible authority is continually frustrating but, as she points out, it is what allows sisters to follow Christ and participate in the Kingdom (if not the Vatican).

Thank you for the suggestions. I know of the Bateson book (and recall you suggesting it here whens omeone asked for books on spiritual writing) but have not read it. I will see what I can do to track down the American Historical Review articles (knowing that you all are discussing it will make it feel like I have company!).

Thank you for this wonderful company, Peggy, especially when you have so many others needing it.

Jean

And now, I have to go and teach (or as one of my grad student friends used to put it, “make history”)–16 honors students in a class on 20th-century US politics through fiction. May they be better prepared than my 135 earlier today on the Modern American Presidency …. I think they will be, and so it will be fun!

By the way, Jean, I liked your use of “participant” and may borrow it .

(It can seem so difficult, in American culture these days, to find dialogues that do not depend – for their driving energy – on monolithic identities and absolutist ideologies; dialogue seems so often combattive that it can be difficult not to just go ahead and give in and work out one’s defensive frustrations by adopting an artifically extreme position with which to give the other guy a good (ideological) bashing.

I like very much the idea of envisioning community – any community – as “concentric circles” of idenitities, voices, relationships…..and, in dialogue, using that concept to manage dynamics (recalling the central axis or center when conflict threatens to overwhelm connection and, once connectedness is restored, inviting each other to move back out and back and forth between those concentric identities, voices, relationships. (My quick-and-dirty first take on your visual of concentric circles. Wow! Peggy – even if that is not what you intend with your visual – there is so much richness possible in just your title that I want to read it. Sister Julie, please pass on my e-mail though I hope you will publish the piece here – it sounds very much as if the time may have come for a wider reading of it, given all of the real or manufactured tension around these days).

Peggy, I appreciate what you say about it being possible to become a “participant” in the past through the practice of history as a discipline (participant being my word not yours). I think that being a historian must be a wonderful adventure for that very reason! I also agree that Sister Sandra is writing “her truth” – and that she has several and is “right” to speak with and from all those truths and that, as you say, maintaining them as a whole, maintaining herself, maintaining her voice as a whole is a good and thrilling and allowable thing. (One of the thrilling moments of this past year for me was when Justice Sonya Sotomayor just came out with it: who I am informs who I am ……with its implicit corollary to the rest of us that who you are informs you are and I think that, when we come right down to the unspoken tenstions that drove the fracas, it is really that corollary which got the shite kicked out of her for a bit there).

Again, Peggy, I appreciate you sticking with me on this because this is a very sincere struggle for me and not at all an ideological one. (In general, I think Sister Sandra’s perspective is “da bomb” and, where I disagree with her, it is a matter of personal preference and whocares about that except Sister Sandra and me?) I want to say that my struggle is an epistemological struggle but am not certain I am using the term correctly to describe my struggle in this context. There is analysis coming from every direction these days and it is difficult to discern how to interact and use so much of it; there are no agreed-upon rules for creating most of the analysis to which we are exposed these days and so, I believe, each of us is wise to develop an intentional practice of reception and interacton with the analyses we encounter. One means is to choose one’s media sources and one’s “expert views” and just trust those but I find that limiting and that it requires me to restrict my interaction with the writer and the material on some important levels. And I think that leads us back to my quick-and-dirty take on your wonderful title “Concentric Circles”…

Perhaps I need to think through why I have no issue with Sotomayor and, yet, I struggle with Sister Sandra. Maybe it is as simple as the fact that I am aware of Sotomayor’s statements on this issue and I have simply not encountered Sister Sandra’s.

Though I go back and get stuck on her use of language like “and this is why sisters are upset…” and “this is primarily an issue for traditionalists”. I cannot stop myself from shouting at the page, “what is the source that allows those descriptive indicators of broad consensus”? I would not ask that – woud not shout that – if there were not, as I perceive it, a sudden shift in “the kind” of history she is writing and, thus, the kind of authority on which she is relying. I understand and believe (and have no problem with) what you are saying, Peggy: she is writing her truth throughout the article. I just cannot shake my sense that textual integrity – and a sincere invitation to dialogue – requires explication of a change in position that is, to my ears and emotional experience, evident in the text. I cannot shake my sense that, in service of what I believe is Sister Sandra’s rejection of absolutism, she has engaged in some subtle and defensive absolutism. Given what is happening and what may very well be “a target on her head”, I am not at all surprised by what I experience as a advocate’s tone that asserts “we exist. we are right to exist. you have no idea how very, very many of us there are and it is time you respnded to us as a reality”. (A friend called me this morning from another state and mentioned that his parish priest had just showed him a letter from their Archbishop with the announcement of a prohibtion on shaking hands in the sharing of peace and the receiving of the Precious Blood by the congregants. I panicked: in my head, I saw all priests saying all Masses in all churches with their backs to the congregation and was on the verge of a dramatic statement about the end of my discernment and the absolute foolishness of such a decision and my conviction that “Catholics” will just not stand for it when, of course, I know there are many who *would* stand for it. My friend, who knows me well, stopped me and said “it’s because of swine flu, Jean”. WHEW!

Most importantly, I just cannot shake the sense that the lack of an articulated and described “we” (in these NCR pieces Sister Sandra has written) contributes to the rancor and fight over “the truth” vs the reality that there are many truths, that there have always been many truths, that there always will be many truths in living with God.

Maybe, Peggy, you can point me to some readings that could help me think this through more?

Jean