IGF040 In Good Faith with Sister Michele Morek, Global Sisters Report

Sister Maxine  
This is In Good Faith, a conversation about the experience of living faith in everyday life. I'm Sister Maxine of A Nun's Life Ministry, and my guest today is Sister Michele Morek, an Ursuline Sister of Mount St. Joseph, Kentucky. Today I'll talk with Sister Michele about her work at Global Sisters Report on the monthly feature series called The Life, about the unique and challenging lives of Catholic Sisters around the world. I'll also talk with Sister Michele about her life as a Catholic sister, and the surprising directions her life has taken in response to God's calling. Sister Michele holds a PhD in Biology from the University of Notre Dame and worked for many years as a professor and administrator at the college and university level. She has also served for 14 years in congregational leadership positions, including six years as community leader for the Ursulines of Mount St. Joseph. Prior to Global Sisters Report, Sister Michele was with UNANIMA International, a religious nongovernmental organization at the United Nations. Sister Michele joins us today from her home, where she is working during this time of the COVID pandemic. Welcome, Sister Michele. I am delighted you could join us today.

Sister Michele  
Thank you, Maxine. I'm really glad to be here.

Sister Maxine  
And first, I want to congratulate you on the start of the fourth year of The Life series. I know it just recently began that fourth year.

Sister Michele  
Yes. It's always exciting. It's always very hectic to start, because you recruit sisters, and you read all the essays they submit, and then you have a committee that selects them. But it's always so delightful. Because we always end up with such an interesting group from so many different countries and so many different congregations.

Sister Maxine  
So you alluded to the format of The Life. Tell me a little bit more about that. How do you structure these? And what do you ask people to write about?

Sister Michele  
We have a group of 20 sisters. And we give them a choice every month of a different topic to write about. And we choose five of them per month to write about that topic, and try to select people from different parts of the world and from different communities, and have a variety of answers. But we ask them questions related to religious life, some of them about ministry. We ask them about associates. We ask them about young sisters, the young and the old. We ask them about prayer. We ask them about retreats. Any topic related to religious is fair game, and we give them a chance at the beginning of the year to suggest questions they would like to respond to. And around Christmas, we ask them, "How does your community celebrate Christmas?"

Sister Maxine  
So you have this variety of questions. And then each of the sisters on the panel responds to the question.

Sister Michele  
Yes, each one responds to the question for that month, uniquely, from her point of view, and her community and her culture.

Sister Maxine  
Say a little bit more about the different places that your newest group of panelists--and I'm sure every group of panelists represents a wide range of sisters and places. Tell me some of the places that your current group of panelists is coming from.

Sister Michele  
Some of them are from many countries in the sense of we give their country of origin, but some of them end up being missionaries in other countries, and some of them are elected to leadership and they will go to another country. So we've had sisters from Nigeria go to Ireland to be leaders. We have a sister this year from the United States, who is in Germany now on their leadership team. We have sisters from African countries who come to the United States to serve or to study. We had one sister once who was the financial officer. She came from Ghana, I believe, and she was the financial officer for a group of African American sisters over here. So from this year, we have several countries from Africa and South America, Ireland, Spain.

Sister Maxine  
As you're describing sisters in their home country, and then the movement of sisters globally, it occurs to me that not only are they speaking out of their cultural context of origin, but many sisters have an experience that goes across cultures.

Sister Michele  
Exactly. And some of my most enjoyable columns that I edit are sisters who have been missionaries. I had one recently that wrote a column about how homesick she was for India, because she came to Peru as a missionary, and got stuck there by COVID. And how she is relating to her new environment.

Sister Maxine  
I imagine for your readers of The Life, people who may feel those same feelings, especially in the time of pandemic, being away from maybe their homes or familiar routines--there's something very, I don't know, maybe comforting in those kinds of words. To know that they're not alone in these feelings.

Sister Michele  
That's for sure. Sharing our human experience. And this is not just in The Life, although we have had some questions about COVID. We've had so many articles lately, sometimes two or three a week from sisters in other countries, describing their experience of lockdown and pandemic, sisters who work with people who have COVID.

Sister Maxine  
In the sisters' stories and experiences with the pandemic, but certainly across other areas--you know, human trafficking care for the earth, so many of the topics that sisters are addressing--as you look across all these diverse perspectives, do you ever hear of perspectives that seem to you almost in contrast to each other, from one part of the world to another?

Sister Michele  
Of course there are differences. And in fact, we love to find those differences, and underline them. In other words, if I find a couple of things that are very different, I will put them in in the same month to show the differences.

Sister Maxine  
Is there one story that you found for yourself to be particularly challenging either to read or to think, "How do I take this in? What do we do with this?"

Sister Michele  
Well, I tend to like creative and unusual stories. I love stories about countries that I haven't read about before. But I remember a series by Janet Gildea, she was a Charity Sister of Cincinnati, Ohio. And she took us on a journey with her across several years of how she dealt with cancer, and eventually died of cancer. And that was so moving. And it was so personal, that journey with Janet.

Sister Maxine  
Again, this is all about being on these journeys together. And for readers, I'm sure that that has had a significant impact, those kinds of stories about sisters lives that can be adapted to their own life.

Sister Michele  
I think so. Because, you know, we all have similar experiences. And I think sometimes people don't realize sisters have the same kinds of experiences. And we react to things with fear and anger and disappointment and curiosity. It's a story about the human experience.

Sister Maxine  
Do you recall a story about the parts of the human experience that--maybe one of the sisters' stories that made you smile or laugh?

Sister Michele  
Do I have to stick with the panel? Because one pops into my mind immediately. I love stories about biology. And so one sister wrote about the birds that live inside Home Depot, the Home Depot store. Any kind of creative story or things that have to do with the natural world. So I particularly loved the panel stories that dealt with the environment and different approaches to the environment.

Sister Maxine  
I imagine this touches in with your background in biology.

Sister Michele  
Well, of course.

Sister Maxine  
That you have a PhD in Biology. Can you combine those two things for me? A PhD in Biology and working in a journalistic field?

Sister Michele  
Well, I'm certainly not a journalist. And I learned so much from the staff members that I work with. But you know, I found that every job I've ever had--and I've had several different kinds--every job has prepared me for the next job, or series of jobs. I'm using skills now that I've learned in every job I've ever had. For example, the discipline of scientific writing is very useful, even when I'm doing something wildly creative. Being a teacher has certainly helped me. It helps me help the sisters write their own stories, and give them suggestions about how they might do things. The skills you learn in leadership, relationships, have been so useful to me. My job is mostly about relationships, the part that's not dealing directly with writing. And I can't tell you how useful the contacts have been that I made in leadership a long time ago. I'm still running into sisters, and being able to find sisters, because of going to LCWR, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. And the contacts that I made at the United Nations with sisters from other countries. And so when somebody will say, "We need a story from Belgium," I'll say, "Oh, I know a sister from Belgium. I worked with her at the United Nations."

Sister Maxine  
Say a little bit more about what you did there at the UN.

Sister Michele  
I was the director of a coalition of sister communities. There were 20 of us who had banded together to form an advocacy group at the United Nations. We were all too small, our communities were all too small, to have our own representative at the United Nations. Some of the big communities like the Charities and Franciscans and Dominicans, they have their own representative, but we were 20 small communities, and we had our own representative. And not only did I do advocacy, like writing and speaking at the UN to try to get our points across, we could bring the sisters in from our 20 communities and give them internships at the United Nations. We had several things that we focused on in our advocacy. One of them was human trafficking, one of them was water. Now they're doing homelessness. But they're all things that have to do with women and children.

Sister Maxine  
As you reflect back on that experience, if you have to say what was the most rewarding accomplishment or movement forward, that you experienced in your time there on behalf of all these communities, and on behalf of the people who are in great need in this world?

Sister Michele  
Well, as anyone who has worked with the UN would tell you, the UN moves very slowly. And you don't see a lot of major accomplishments right away. For example, the sister who was the director ahead of me had worked for 10 years, trying to get the idea of demand as a driver for trafficking into the UN. And now once you get something into a UN document, it's there for millennia. But you have to get it in first. And so it took her 10 years before she saw the word "demand" used in the context of human trafficking. Now, my most successful achievement, I think, was we worked for the five years I was there on the sustainable development goals. I started by going to Rio de Janeiro for that meeting, and then we watched the development of this over the years and one UN representative told us that most of the wording for the sustainable development goals had come from the private sector, from NGOs like us. And he said, probably 80% of it came from the religious NGOs, who were there. We worked very hard on the one for water--water and sanitation. I was in a group that worked on that. So we were proud of that.

Sister Maxine  
The NGO you were with and many of the others with Catholic Sisters were significant in framing the issue.

Sister Michele  
Oh, yes, I think so. Because sisters, you know, once they get there, they jump in, and a lot of the representatives at the UN, they stand up and talk about how wonderful their countries are, and what they do. But not all of them do a whole lot of work. And so a lot of them rely on NGOs to come to them and say, "Hey, here's a document we would really like to get before the end. Would you like to sponsor this with us?" And so we do, as most communities of women, know how to get things done. We work behind the scenes and push.

Sister Maxine  
You were talking earlier about human trafficking and getting the word "demand" into the UN document, and I assume that you're referring to supply and demand?

Sister Michele  
Yes. If there's no demand for trafficking, there wouldn't be any.

Sister Maxine  
So it's shifted the emphasis on that issue?

Sister Michele  
Yes, it made them look at, well, what drives this demand? What economic issues and what people drive this demand?

Sister Maxine  
As you think about these experiences, leadership and education in the UN, has it had a particular impact on the way you look at some of the stories for The Life or on the kinds of perspectives that you're seeking? What has that taught you about what does it mean to have people come forward and tell compelling stories?

Sister Michele  
Oh, well, at the UN, everybody had noticed that what really impressed the representatives at the UN, when they were trying to raise money, for example, for human trafficking projects. What really impressed the representatives at the UN was when they had a survivor of human trafficking come and tell their story. It was worth five hours of the representatives talking to each other, to have one woman come in and talk about her experience with trafficking. So I've always been convinced that stories are what it's all about.

Sister Maxine  
In your role with Global Sisters, you're helping sisters to tell their stories because they write these pieces. They're almost like essays. In their own words.

Sister Michele  
Yes, yes, they are their stories. And that's one of the most satisfying parts of my job is to help them craft interesting stories. For example, sometimes they will write a story that's rather academic in nature, you know, footnotes and all that. And I'll say, "No, we want to know your personal reflection. How do you feel about this? Or how did that make you feel? Or was your community proud of this?" And so I try to lead them back and make it very personal. And those are the ones we usually get complimented on, are the ones that are really personal.

Sister Maxine  
In Global Sisters Report, which is a journalistic publication, how do you reconcile that deeply personal account with a journalistic approach?

Sister Michele  
The sisters tell their own stories in the columns, what we call the columns, and the journalists we have on the staff write the articles. And so we don't have to hold the sisters, when they write the personal stories, to the same kinds of standards--

Sister Maxine  
The objective?

Sister Michele  
Yes, yeah. Instead of being objective about this, I want to know how it makes you feel. Sisters are freer to be themselves when they write their columns, as opposed to the journalists, the staff, journalists who write the articles. And if you look at the articles versus the columns, you will see a difference in feeling.

Sister Maxine  
So it's a first-person account that weaves together their experience, whether it's experience looking at certain kinds of data, but always at the heart of it--what is the lens that they look through? What is it that they have experienced? Is the emphasis.

Sister Michele  
Exactly. And how does your culture change this lens or modify this lens?

Sister Maxine  
That's an interesting observation. Because even across cultures and all the different places, if you were to say, you know, there's themes that you see coming out about religious life itself, certainly the sisters work in so many different areas, I'm sure there are connections there. But if you were to say, what in all of these that I have read, if I were to say, "This is what religious life is about"--what kind of themes do you see emerging across the board? If any.

Sister Michele  
The thing that has impressed me the most is that sisters are sisters, and religious life is the charism. I have become so convinced that it is not this little charism, or that little charism, or that little charism, although all of them are wonderful and rich, it's like a Thanksgiving dinner. But those are not as important as the charism of religious life itself. Religious life is the Big Gift to the church. And then all of the individual charisms are the little gifts wrapped up inside the big gift.

Sister Maxine  
And for folks who may not be familiar with the word charism, how would you describe that in a different way? And when you talk about the charism of religious life, and then the charism of different congregations.

Sister Michele  
I really hesitate to do this because I know our community, when we were writing our constitution, spent about two summers wrangling over the word "charism" and exactly what it meant. And our staff at Global Sisters Report periodically goes through hand wringing decisions about "Well now, wait a minute, let's talk about charism." But I think we all have a generalized understanding of charism as "gift." And if you think of the unique community personality of Franciscans, whose charism is wrapped around the concept of poverty, or Dominicans, whose charism was wrapped around the concept of preaching, all of the communities have some particular gift that they bring to the church and to the world.

Sister Maxine  
So in the responses that the sisters write for The Life, do you hear that charism? Like for readers, if they're reading closely, will they see the charism of that spirit of the congregation there as well as the overall spirit of religious life?

Sister Michele  
Oh, I think so, too. Let me give you just one example. When I first came, Donald Trump had just won the presidency. And sisters were anguishing over the fact that he didn't always tell the truth. And they were really sort of wringing their hands about this, and I was getting columns written about it. And I said, "Hey, Dominicans, why don't you all get together and have a series on the truth? Who can do it better than you can?" And so one Dominican sister organized a group of other ones, and they wrote a wonderful series on truth. And a couple of people have used that in parish work and so forth.

Sister Maxine  
The different types of religious orders have those gifts to bring to create that one voice among sisters.

Sister Michele  
Yes, and yet, as I said, all of these little individual charisms are wrapped up in the whole bigger package of religious life. And I think we will see that as smaller congregations maybe disappear. The charism of religious life is being carried along. And as some of us get smaller and maybe even disappear, there are other little congregations springing up all over. Like I love it when I get columns from the indigenous communities in Africa that have just started, say within the last 50 years or so, and to see what they focus on and what their charism is.

Sister Maxine  
And so you see the spirit of religious life taking root in new ways through your work here Global Sisters.

Sister Michele  
Exactly. And that has been so exciting.

Sister Maxine  
It's time for a brief break. This is In Good Faith, a program of A Nun's Life Ministry. We want to thank our sponsors and individual donors like you, whose support makes the In Good Faith program possible. Please visit anunslife.org to make a donation or to become a sponsor of the ministry. We'll be right back.

Welcome back. You are listening to Sister Maxine of A Nun's Life Ministry and my guest, Sister Michele Morek. We talk with Sister Michele about her work at Global Sisters Report and her life as a Catholic sister. Be sure to check out the website globalsistersreport.org. And while you're there, also check out GSR in the Classroom, which is for parish groups and many others, as well as a new collection of articles about the ways that Catholic Sisters help to improve people's lives by contributing to the United Nations goals for sustainable development. Sister Michele, I want to back up just a little bit. When you were working at the NGO there at the UN, what is it that attracted you to Global Sisters?

Sister Michele  
That work was so rewarding and challenging. And I learned so much. Well, one thing: I was I was living in New York City. And I was living by myself. And I like to live in community. I've always been a big community person. And we had sisters in Kansas, which is where National Catholic Reporter is located. And I had written a column for Global Sisters Report about my work in New York City. And my predecessor, the sister who preceded me in this job, Jan--

Sister Maxine  
Sister Jan Cebula.

Sister Michele  
Sister Jan Cebula that called me and said, "Hey, Michelle, how would you like to apply for my job?" And I said, "Oh, well, tell me what you do." So when I found out it involved writing, and storytelling, and working with sisters--I love working with sisters, I love my relationships and contacts with all the different sisters and from all different countries. And I love writing. And I love reading. And here's this job that just combined all of those things. And then when the editor interviewed me, she said, "Would you object to the fact that it might involve living in Kansas City?" And I said, "Well, you know, I have actually been thinking about moving to Kansas City and working there anyway." And she said, "You have? Who would leave New York City for Kansas City?" And I thought, "Well, you know, if community is involved, you might." So was how that was how I got the job. And it's been a wonderful job. I just love it. You know, every job that I've ever had, each time I look back, I think, "This is the best job I've ever had."

Sister Maxine  
You mentioned National Catholic Reporter. Can you explain a little bit about the relationship of National Catholic Reporter and Global Sisters Report?

Sister Michele  
Yes, National Catholic Reporter is an independent national Catholic newspaper. It really should be called International because it involves international news as well. But I had always read National Catholic Reporter, because it's independent. It's run by laypeople. And being a bleeding-heart liberal from way back, I always read National Catholic Reporter. And they got a grant from the Hilton Foundation to run this new program called Global Sisters Report. Mr. Hilton, the hotel guy, always thought that if you wanted a job done well, you should give it to the sisters to do. He had had experience with a lot of sisters in his life. And he really respected them and the work they did. So Global Sisters Report came out of this project funded by the Hilton Foundation. And it's been going for--how many years? We celebrated our fifth-year anniversary already, probably six years.

Sister Maxine  
You mentioned moving from New York to Kansas City. But may I say I think your accent probably isn't from either of those places.

Sister Michele  
[laughter] You're right. I'm sorry, I have never had the incentive to work on getting rid of my accent. People always ask me where I'm from. And I always say "Well, in case you wanted to know where the accent is from, it's West Texas. But I grew up in New Mexico. I was raised by a bunch of West Texans." Some people think, "Oh, she's from a Kentucky Community. That's why she talks funny." [laughter] But the sisters in Kentucky will not claim my accent either. And I told this story the other day, I was in an elevator with a girl in New York City. And she said, "Where are you from?" And I thought, "Oh, I don't want to go through this whole long story." So I said, "Kentucky." And she said, "Oh, I thought you sounded like you might be from West Texas or New Mexico." [laughter] Oh, I'm never gonna get away from it.

Sister Maxine  
So as you were growing up in New Mexico with some West Texas influence, as you think back on your early childhood, your young adulthood, what would you say at that time were some of the spiritual influences that would eventually play into the direction of your life?

Sister Michele  
Oh, my. I read a book once and I wish I could remember the name of it. But it was about your spirituality is shaped by the region you came from. I really believe that is true. What shaped me in my region was the expansive view. The land, the space, especially the mountains. My symbol for God is still, has always been, a mountain. And I grew up in a huge diversity of people, Hispanics, native cultures. I went to school with Hispanic kids, Navajo, Apache, Ute, Pueblo kids, so many different cultures. And I believe that shaped my love for diversity.

Sister Maxine  
I could see where in your work at Global Sisters, I could see how that would truly be a gift that you bring, having that ability to hear and appreciate different cultures.

Sister Michele  
Oh, yes. And an enthusiasm for them. Not just willingness to listen, but relishing the different cultures. And my mother was a social worker and a bleeding-heart liberal also, so she inculcated her social justice values. So if you work for Global Sisters Report, you have to enjoy social justice.

Sister Maxine  
And it sounds like that was a deep part of your family life as well.

Sister Michele  
Yes, yes, it was. Come to think of it, I had a couple of aunts who were also social workers. And my mother was from a large family of 13 kids. And most of them had been teachers of some sort. One of them was an archaeologist, and I loved going out with her and digging in ruins. Two or three uncles were rock hounds, and I loved geology that I learned from them.

Sister Maxine  
Were they also some of your spiritual influences?

Sister Michele  
Oh, yes. My major spiritual influence is nature, creation spirituality. And I thought I didn't have a spirituality. I thought that was just for holy sisters. Until I was 40 years old, and I read a book called Original Blessing. And then I read about creation, spirituality, and I thought, "Oh, I do have a spirituality. That's it!"

Sister Maxine  
As you think about your ministry at Global Sisters--you know, we've talked about other experiences, but in particular, at Global Sisters, working with sisters around the world--how has that affected the ways that you understand God, your view of God?

Sister Michele  
Well, it certainly made me more global. I have had tastes of global before. Once in graduate school, when I took parasitology, of all things. You say, "What?" But my parasitology teacher would tell us not just about the disease, but about where it was in the culture of that place, and how the culture contributed to the spread of that disease, and how you would approach that disease. So even biology can tell you something about culture. And then when I was teaching biology in our private liberal arts school, Brescia University in Kentucky, I constructed a course in marine biology. And I also created a course in environmental science. And both of those took me into other cultures and other viewpoints. And it makes you global. And so I had this little taste of global that I loved. And then I went to the UN and developed it some more. And then Global Sisters Report, it's the culmination of that, and understanding other viewpoints. And God image. After everything you go through at the UN and Global Sisters Report, if you're not convinced, until then, that God is not white, and God is not male. That'll do it.

Sister Maxine  
Well, that raises another question. If God is not those, then what is God globally?

Sister Michele  
Oh, this is coming out of creation spirituality. But I imagine God as uncreated energy. So everybody has to have their own image of God. I remember making a workshop once on God image, and she gave us a piece of clay and she said, "Here, sculpt a picture of what you conceive God to be." And I didn't want to show God as a female any more than I wanted to show God as a male. So I sculpted an Egyptian mouth breeder fish, which opens its mouth and lets all of its babies in and nurtures them. And the males and the females both do it, so I wasn't being sexist. But another definition I like of God is all-nurturing abyss. So God as nurturer, and God as a bit is too big for us to wrap our arms around.

Sister Maxine  
Those are beautiful images.

Sister Michele  
Well, they wouldn't appeal to everybody--but remember, I'm a scientist, and a creation spirituality person. So everybody has to have some image of God that will satisfy their longing.

Sister Maxine  
You know, it's interesting that you mentioned the connection between biology and creation spirituality. Would it be that every person might want to look at where God's acting in their life and where God is moving in their heart, and to recognize there's probably a connection there to spirituality?

Sister Michele  
Oh, I think that's the way to go. When I moved to New York City, I got a spiritual director, and my first meeting with her, she said, "Now, Michele, go out into the city and find God. See what the city has to say to you about God." And so I think that's what we need to do. wherever we find ourselves, we have to go out and find out what that place in our life or that physical geographical place has to say to us about God.

Sister Maxine  
So Michele, as we close our conversation today, I have one more question for you. I know that The Life series is very popular among readers, and as you're beginning your fourth year of the series, what is it that you hope readers take from that series and what they can apply to their own lives?

Sister Michele  
How alike and how different sisters are, and communities are. How alike and how different. Because that gets you into the gift that each one gives to the world.

Sister Maxine  
And by extension, the gift that each person--everyone, not just sisters--the gift that each person is to the world?

Sister Michele  
Oh, yes. And that's another thing. Let me just put this in as a little PS. Not only sisters write for us. We encourage associates of sisters--they call them different things in each community. But if a person is an oblate or an associate of a religious community, they are also free to write for us. And that has been a very rich source of meditation--how these lay partners of ours develop our charism and carry our charism to the rest of the world.

Sister Maxine  
And Michele, if someone would be interested in writing, how could they get in touch with you?

Sister Michele  
Write to me at mmorek@ncronline.org. There's an info button you can click on the website. And that will take you to me also.

Sister Maxine  
Michele, thank you so much for the conversation today. It was wonderful to talk with you.

Sister Michele  
Oh, well. Thank you. You're a good interviewer. I forgot to be nervous.

Sister Maxine  
Oh, that's very kind of you. Thanks again, Michele. For our listeners, that is our show for today, friends. In Good Faith is a production of A Nun's Life Ministry, helping people discover and grow in their vocation by engaging questions about God, faith and religious life. The music for today's show was provided by Kevin MacLeod. This program is made possible through the grace of God, the support of the sponsors of A Nun's Life Ministry, and you, our listeners. We are very grateful for your prayers, encouragement, and support. Visit us at anunslife.org. God bless.

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.