Sister Helen Prejean, CSJ, is a Sister of Saint Joseph and has worked tirelessly against the death penalty. She wrote Dead Man Walking which became a film directed by Tim Robbins and starring Susan Sarandon. Because the book and film provoked much discussion and debate about the death penalty, Tim Robbins and Sister Helen began offering the stage play for college and university students as a way “to further widen the circle of public discourse on the death penalty”. Their project is called The Dead Man Walking School Theatre Project.

Here are some selections from a blog post by Rose Mohan, a BFA student at Naropa University, who is learning the role of Sister Helen Prejean:

I thought I was going to have to tone down my feistiness in order to be able to play a nun. Turns out, I have to find new heights of grit in order to be able to do justice to the character of Sister Prejean in Dead Man Walking. In almost every scene, Prejean manages to slice through what she perceives to be someone else’s delusions. She really holds her own with those hard-shelled prison men. I’m still working on getting there; sanely. One day after rehearsal I was so fired up that I had to walk out of the building jumping and punching the air.
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I have learned so much in this process already. I grew up mildly Christian and when I go to church it still leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. I don’t want some old white guy telling me what to do, as if he understands faith better than I do. A lot of the messages are beautiful but there is no way anyone can convince me that the church provides the only way to God.

Sister Prejean is so refreshing to me because she is not afraid to openly question her faith, to form her own relationship to God outside of the church, to trust her own sense of what is right. It takes a lot of strength to hold one’s faith and be able to question at the same time. But if we are not willing to question, how can we learn?

I also really appreciate her humanness. My acting teacher expressed that she is a gritty, tenacious woman first and a nun second. Throughout the play we see that Prejean makes mistakes, feels afraid, experiences loneliness, questions the authority of the church and her own involvement in prison work and expresses dislike for someone she is trying to help. She is just an ordinary person who has made a commitment that has changed the orientation of her life. I am taking some cues from Prejean — how to not back down, how to be curious, how to continue when you don’t know.

(Do I have to be a nun? post from the Naropa BFA Performance News blog)

It is very cool to see how learning about Sister Helen and playing her can be such a transformative experience. I also like how Rose describes what I would call a “vocation” to performance. It strikes me as being very similar to the calling of wanting to give one’s life to something more, something that is bigger than us like “truth” and “goodness” and “beauty” … and God.

I am beginning to understand why people devote their lives to performance. It is like following an elusive and beckoning beast to try to convey something that means something, something that makes sense of all the somethings that happen to a person. We keep trying to hit something that is the ultimate truth, but of course, that is impossible, and yet it also doesn’t feel far away. It is like truth is already there just watching you try to make a model of it and you can always feel how close you come. I hope that we will capture some part of truth in what we are making.

For more information about Naropa University’s performance of Dead Man Walking as well as other actors’ thoughts, check out Tim Robbins play coming to Naropa in the Boulder Reporter (March 26, 2010).

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Just came across a new-to-me blog by Catholic Sister — Sister Helen Prejean: Talking about life, death, New Orleans and social justice. You can now find this blog regularly in my listing of Blogs by Catholic Nuns. Sister Helen is a member of the Congregation of Saint Joseph and has done a lot of work around the injustice of the Death Penalty and has worked with many people on death row.

Any other blogs that you are aware of that I can add to the list of blogs by Catholic nuns? My basic criterion is as follows:

• blogs by women religious and those women who are formally in the process of formation AND
• blogs which are currently active and not anonymous

Any that are listed that are no longer updated? Any links that are wonky?

While we are on the topic of soliciting feedback, anything you’d like to see more of on A Nun’s Life? topics? media (e.g. video, podcast, etc.)? guests?

Would appreciate your input!

Here is an essay from Sister Helen Prejean, CSJ. It was aired on the NPR segment, This I Believe, ”a national media project engaging people in writing, sharing, and discussing the core values and beliefs that guide their daily lives.”

To listen to the Sister Helen’s essay, Living My Prayer, click here and then click on “Listen Now”.

Living My Prayer
by Sister Helen Prejean

Sister Helen Prejean’s work as spiritual adviser to death row inmates formed the basis of two books, including Dead Man Walking. A native of Louisiana, Prejean became a nun in 1957. In 1981 she dedicated her life to helping the poor of New Orleans.

Weekend Edition Sunday, January 6, 2008 · I watch what I do to see what I really believe.

Belief and faith are not just words. It’s one thing for me to say I’m a Christian, but I have to embody what it means; I have to live it. So, writing this essay and knowing I’ll share it in a public way becomes an occasion for me to look deeply at what I really believe by how I act.

“Love your neighbor as yourself,” Jesus said, and as a beginner nun I tried earnestly to love my neighbor — the children I taught, their parents, my fellow teachers, my fellow nuns. But for a long time, the circle of my loving care was small and, for the most part, included only white, middle-class people like me. But one day I woke up to Jesus’ deeper challenge to love the outcast, the criminal, the underdog. So I packed my stuff and moved into a noisy, violent housing project in an African-American neighborhood in New Orleans.

I saw the suffering and I let myself feel it: the sound of gunshots in the night, mothers calling out for their children. I saw the injustice and was compelled to do something about it. I changed from being a nun who only prayed for the suffering world to a nun with my sleeves rolled up, living my prayer. Working in that community in New Orleans soon led me to Louisiana’s death row.

So, I keep watching what I do to see what I actually believe.

Jesus’ biggest challenge to us is to love our enemies. On death row, I encountered the enemy — those considered so irredeemable by our society that even our Supreme Court has made it legal to kill them. For 20 years now, I’ve been visiting people on death row, and I have accompanied six human beings to their deaths. As each has been killed, I have told them to look at me. I want them to see a loving face when they die. I want my face to carry the love that tells them that they and every one of us are worth more than our most terrible acts.

But I knew being with the perpetrators wasn’t enough. I also had to reach out to victims’ families. I visited the families who wanted to see me, and I founded a victims support group in New Orleans. It was a big stretch for me, loving both perpetrators and victims’ families, and most of the time I fail because so often a victim’s families interpret my care for perpetrators as choosing sides — the wrong side. I understand that, but I don’t stop reaching out.

I’ve learned from victims’ families just how alone many of them feel. The murder of their loved one is so horrible, their pain so great, that most people stay away. But they need people to visit, to listen, to care. It doesn’t take anyone special, just someone who cares.

Writing this essay reminds me, as an ordinary person, that it’s important to take stock, to see where I am. The only way I know what I really believe is by keeping watch over what I do.

Independently produced for Weekend Edition Sunday by Jay Allison and Dan Gediman with John Gregory and Viki Merrick.

(source)