A radical commitment

Sister Rejane  
This Random Nun Clip is brought to you by A Nun's Life Ministry. Hello, I am Sister Rejane Cytacki, the director of A Nun's Life Ministry. Join me today as I talk with Franciscan Sister Julia Walsh, as we discuss her book entitled, For Love of the Broken Body: A Spiritual Memoir. So, Julia, let's talk a little bit about the vow of celibacy. You know, a fair amount of your book you really talk about that kind of wrestling, that challenge. Even at the beginning, on your dedication page, it says, "To all the men I love." Can you share a little bit about your personal journey with the vow of celibacy?

Sister Julia  
[laughter] Oh, boy. Okay. Actually, one of the things that I think is kind of amusing, or maybe even ironic about me becoming a Franciscan Sister is that back when I was a teenager, my friends would tease me about how I was boy crazy. And so much of even my early discernment was influenced by different men that I was in relationships with in different ways. Some of them were just completely platonic friendships. For example, one of my friends in college was the one who encouraged me to look at my congregation, FSPA -- Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration. But there were also other people that I had affection for, or romantic feelings for. And in those relationships, I was sort of sorting through who I loved the most: was it God? Or was it them? Who was I most interested in pleasing? And I recognized again and again, I was really most interested in pleasing God, and giving my love to God more than these beautiful people that I really love and really care for. So that was always a tension for me. And I think part of discerning a vocation of any type is, if it's done well, it will bring you to choices between different things that are good. You're not choosing between good and bad, right. And to choose between living a life of, of marriage, of motherhood, that would have been a very good and life-giving way to, to share my love with God and with other people. Absolutely. Yet, gradually, I arrived to the decision, as the readers will discover, that being a sister and making the vow of celibacy -- I came to sense that it was the way that I could give most fully of myself and dedicate my body, mind and spirit totally to God, and to the church, to allow my love to be more expansive in a way that would help me to continue to grow and shine and ultimately, to be an adventure with God as things continue to unfold in my relationship with God, and who God was making me into. I came to know my relationship with God as a life of partnership. Like, we're co-creating this life together. And it's not just about me doing what God tells me to do. But it's a real relationship, right? And God and I are doing this dance of love and creativity and all sorts of action. That is the love that captured my heart and my imagination and my mind and, ultimately, my body more than the thrill of thinking that people were -- like certain men I'm thinking about who just were so adorable. I would have loved to have dated them; I think it would have been a really fun time. I think the story's in the book and there's one of those Before Convent -- BC -- men --

Sister Julia  
I love it. I like BC!

Sister Julia  
I was really young. And so it's kind of feels like a very silly story to admit publicly, but it's true. That I was just like, "Why  won't you be my boyfriend just so I can have the experience of having a boyfriend?" [laughter] The right motive, right? Oh my goodness, I wanted to use him. Have mercy on me, God, for these sins, right? I wanted to use him just so I could have some sort of experience that I felt like would help me to become a more normal human or something. I was resisting and wrestling with this call that I was feeling. So that was part of how I was working through it. Anyway.

Sister Rejane  
What did he say? How did he respond?

Sister Julia  
Yeah. He said, no, because he said that he knew that I would choose God over him and he would be heartbroken.

Sister Rejane  
That's profound!

Sister Julia  
And we didn't even really know each other that well, which was so amusing. And he didn't even believe in God, which is also amusing. [laughter] But he was right. He was absolutely right. I couldn't argue with him. I couldn't try to talk him into like, "Oh, come on, let's go ahead and try this." I could see how in the end, it would have just created more chaos and confusion to my own discernment. And so in the end, God was using him -- amazingly. God uses everyone to speak to me and to help me choose what was ultimately the best thing for me. Yeah. So yes, this this tension is a major part of my discernment story. It's not for everyone who's discerning their vocation, but it certainly was for me, because I think I've always been a person who's just in love with the goodness of people, right? And bedazzled by how amazing everyone is, and really desiring to celebrate and get to know the goodness of everyone and their beauty. Obviously, some people are easier than others, some people I'm more attracted to than others. I am a human here. But those that I was especially attracted to, I really would have loved to have explored the depths of the goodness of who they are as people, and come to know what commitment to them would have looked like. But that wasn't the best way for me to proceed. So in the end, I took this vow of celibacy. As the story tells, as the book unfolds, I really had to wrestle with these questions about sexuality and celibacy and choice and call and what type of life of love was the best fit for who I am, and for my spirit, what type of love would ultimately help me to give myself wholeheartedly to what I was committing to. And I've been reading a book by bell hooks called All About Love. And in this book, she explores how in our culture, we really don't define love, but we use the word love so much without really teaching people what it means and what love truly is. And sometimes in relationships, part of the conflict is that we have different understandings of what it means to love each other, because we're not talking about what love means. She uses the definition that I think M. Scott Peck offers, which is really about willing the spiritual goodness of the other is what true love is. Which, to me, fits with my understanding of love and what I'm talking about when I say love, which is agape love, the type of love that is used in the New Testament scriptures, where one is giving of themselves. They're making a sacrifice of their own will and pleasure and their own desires, for the sake of the other person, so that other person can have what they need. So as a mother gets out of bed in the middle of the night and responds to her crying baby, that is agape love. As Jesus hangs on the cross and gives totally of himself for the sake of everyone's liberation and redemption, that is agape love. As a person who is completely dedicated to the restoration of an ecosystem will go to great dangers and risk their life, and risk all their resources and time and energy and sometimes their own health, their safety, for the sake of the restoration of a certain place on the planet or for the protection of an endangered species -- that is agape love. And that's the type of love that Christians are meant to offer. And that's the type of love that we give to God, when we profess our vows, including the vow of celibacy. In the offering of ourselves, and the offering of our love to God, giving of our bodies and our wills and all of our possessions over to God, then there is a power that is offered, that allows more people to somehow know freedom. That's what we trust in. That's what we believe in. And our tradition teaches this again and again through the scriptures too.

Sister Rejane  
Wow. That's, that's so beautiful. And I also loved how the end of the book, you've also kind of come to see the vow of celibacy -- it is a choice, but it's also kind of a radical choice. By saying no to marriage and commitment with your body, you are being in solidarity, to some extent, with people that have been abused.

Sister Julia  
Yeah.

Sister Rejane  
Do you want to talk a bit more about that?

Sister Julia  
You know, if you don't mind, I actually think it might be best if I if I could just read that excerpt from the book. Is that okay?

Sister Rejane  
Yes. That'd be great.

Sister Julia  
Okay, so this is part of this is part of chapter 40. When I'm on my retreat, right before I profess my first vows, and I'm working through my questions and responding to the encouragement of my spiritual director on the retreat, who said I needed to really relinquish the potential for marriage and sexual relationships, romantic relationships, and also relinquish the potential of being a mother. So in order to do that, I found a rock and prayed with it, and I did some art on it, and I thought about all that I was letting go of and who I was letting go of. And then I took a walk through the woods with this rock in my hand and tried to find a place where I could throw it where I could never retrieve it once again. So here I am describing myself on this rock. "I feel my throat clenched as I think of women who have been beaten, sexually assaulted, raped. Women who tried to raise their voices and demand equal rights but are called horrid names, talked down to, manipulated, silenced. I think of homeless youth I know who were gang-raped. I remember my students who have cried in my classroom telling me how their boyfriends, dads, grandfathers, and uncles have hurt them. I despise how reporting and abuse is an ordinary part of a teacher's role. I worry about the women, and men too, who are being damaged and destroyed by the sex industry and human trafficking. I think about my allegiance to the Catholic Church, and how the body of Christ I love so intensely has caused harm. Priests have abused nuns, young girls, boys. Practically every woman I know has a story of a man taking advantage of her, hurting her. Could my vow of celibacy be a form of resistance, a type of feminist act? Yes, of course, sexual energy is good and sacred, able to produce union and love, to heal, but it is also often dangerous, destructive, and harmful. For them, in solidarity with all who have been hurt by sexual violence, I renounce marriage and sex. I say, No, thank you." So you know, Sister Rejane, the situation of injustices and human rights violations related to our immature understanding of sexuality -- globally, but especially in the United States culture -- is causing serious harm. And I don't really understand the mystery of it. I can't explain this very well, but somehow it feels to me that if other people are in oppressive situations against their will, rand because sexuality is harming -- I don't even know if it's sexuality then. I can't speak about this well enough, but because of that immature sexuality, people are being harmed against their will. Then perhaps if I use my will, and I say no to that oppression, perhaps that power will somehow offer some transformation and some healing. It's just a hope. It's a trust. It's a prayer. It's an offering. But I can't know for sure. I do know for sure that I'm extremely disturbed by the reality. I mean, in 2019, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children estimated that one in six endangered runaways reported to them were likely sex trafficking victims. One in six children. And the International Labor Organization and Walk Free Foundation estimate that there are 4.8 million people trapped in forced sexual exploitation globally. 4.8 million people. I mean, if one person is being harmed in this way, it's enough for each of us to offer some sort of protest or resistance with our own bodies, love, and lives. And one way that we can do that is by saying yes, radically, to God's love and to the power of God's love, and refusing to cooperate with any system of oppression.

Sister Rejane  
Wow.

Sister Julia  
You can hear my passion.

Sister Rejane  
Yes. That's powerful, and you're passionate. I just thank you for sharing about the vow of celibacy. Because in the book, you kind of see this arc. It's very, very personal. And that's what you've been talking about in our podcast, how taking the vows is sharing it with the world and sharing yourself with the world. And that's just beautiful. And hard.

Sister Julia
It's so hard! So difficult.

Sister Rejane  
Yeah. And at the same time, it's a lived prayer. That's what I was thinking when you were talking about that. It's your lived prayer for those whose bodies have been harmed.

Sister Julia  
Speaking of prayer, it seems to me, Sister Rejane, that we don't emphasize enough in our faith tradition, how praying is an embodied act. Prayer is embodied, right? So we are kneeling, we're standing we're sitting, we're singing, we're breathing, we're eating, we're drinking. We'll do all this just in an ordinary Mass. But then if our lives are a prayer, what we're doing with our physical bodies, where we put our physical bodies, who we align with, who we stand with, what we stand up for, what we stand against. All that is also acts of prayer. The ways that we bring our bodies to the margins, and we serve those in need. The ways that we tend to those that we share life with, or whether it's our sisters in our community, and just simply caring for their wounds, cooking for them, feeding them, praying with them, sitting with them in prayerful silence or even watching television, laughing together or playing a game, these are all embodied acts of prayer, where we show up with our will and our good intentions, and we're choosing to offer our hearts and our focus and energy on what is good and what is necessary. I was privileged years ago to walk the Camino de Santiago in Spain. And it was all mystery to me. So much of it was mystery, just as our faith is. But my main takeaway from that experience was how faith is really an embodied act. It can't be a mental act. It can't sometimes even be something we do just with our will. We can't just think it or speak it. We actually have to walk the walk, and we have to show up and be present to Christ in the sacred spaces and on the margins and in the in the people of God by how we love and serve and stand with others.

Sister Rejane  
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This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.