Age differences and culture gaps

Sister Rejane  
This Random Nun Clip is brought to you by A Nun's Life Ministry.

Sister Maxine  
Welcome back to a Motherhouse Road Trip edition of Ask Sister. You're here with Sister Maxine and Sister Julie of A Nun's Life Ministry and our guests, Sister Cynthia Serjack and Sister Mandy Carrier of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, in Silver Spring, Maryland. And so our first question comes in from Heidi in the Philippines. And she says, "I'm discerning religious life at a young age and see advantages to entering younger. From your experience, what are the advantages that you see for younger members in the community? And what challenges do you think I should anticipate? And how do you think I should face them?"

Sister Julie  
Well, Heidi, thank you so much for the question. It's wonderful that you're thinking about religious life. And being at a young age, that is awesome. You're at that place in life where there are so many possibilities in so many different directions that you can set your heart on. So I first just want to encourage you to be open to all the possibilities.

Sister Maxine  
It's interesting, because we touched on the issue just a little bit earlier about age and community life. And Heidi here, she doesn't say what advantages she might see. And I wonder, Sister Mandy, if you would mind talking a little bit about some of the advantages that you've seen. And maybe you've talked with your friends about.

Sister Mandy  
One of the things off the top of my head that comes up a lot is that, you know, the average age of community is in one place, and I'm 29. And at that point, you get into this major culture gap. And I think the advantage of being young in that is that it's obvious. We all know that I'm from a different culture. And the sisters I live with grew up in a different time; they grew up before the Beatles. So it really creates this gap. And I think that the blessing in that is that everybody knows it. People are willing to talk about it and address it. And once you can talk about it, it's not that big of a deal. You start to learn more about each other. I've learned new words like druthers -- I never knew what a druthers was, things like that. And it becomes a learning experience that you can laugh about and share.

Sister Maxine  
And do you find that in those kinds of conversations, you learn other aspects of religious life? I'm reminded that when I entered and one of the things I did was I played cards with the sisters. I played euchre. And they told me more stories about the congregation. And it was a way for me to like live into that part of the tradition. I don't know if you've had experiences like that. In your conversations, you learn things that you probably wouldn’t find in the history books.

Sister Mandy  
There are certainly a lot of stories you wouldn't find in the history books. I think it comes up in those moments where you get to compare notes, especially with just being in the novitiate. I was home for Christmas break during my canonical year and people started sharing stories about the crazy things they had done. One sister had kept a pet duck in her room. I don't know how she managed to get away with it. Until it got out and found her like at prayers one day.

Sister Maxine  
Well, ducks are drawn to prayer life.

Sister Mandy  
They are drawn to prayer apparently. Things like that come up. And they're the fun stories. And I think it adds the richness to the history that we already get.

Sister Maxine  
Sister Cynthia, in your ministry, Vocation Ministry, what might you offer to Heidi here? And she's thinking, what challenges might I encounter?

Sister Cynthia  
Well, I think what Mandy has already said, which is often being in a situation where there's a big gap between you and the next oldest person. But that also has the opportunity to bring something new to the group, to call them to be renewed and to be changed. Our young women live in what we call welcoming communities. And when you talk to the sisters who've lived there, they talk about how much more they've received than what they feel that they've given. Because again, it's the new life that's coming in our midst. I think as a young person, you also have the opportunity to shape the future. You'll probably be called on for leadership much earlier in your life than some of us would have been. And so that can be really exciting to people, I think.

Sister Julie  
When I was joining the community, I was also in my late 20s, early 30s. And I remember one of my struggles was that I was having a hard time knowing if I was learning something because it was part of religious life, or I was learning it because it just happens to be a 50-year-old, 60-year-old, 70-year-old's way of being a religious. And what was really cool is in religious life, because there are people with a variety of experiences, I found sisters really encouraging me to be myself. And so it was like this process. It was a challenge at first, but it was this process of kind of knowing myself better. And knowing that I had my own distinctive way of living religious life, like I didn't have to use the word druthers if I didn't want to. It wasn't part of religious life.

Sister Maxine  
Although I did hear that.

Sister Mandy  
I mean, once I learned the word druthers, who doesn't want to use that word, really.

Sister Julie  
It behooves us to use that word. [laughter] But yeah, there are some of those challenges, but I think either the bigger challenges are when we're not tuned into God, when we're not tuned into each other. And those are the things that, I think, are the real challenges of religious life. But as you said, just opening the door and talking to one another and putting it out on the table solves so many problems in terms of just like, okay, there it is, and let's move on.

Sister Rejane  
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This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.