Funny and Kinda True

Fr. Joe and I met about a year and a half ago when I went to him for confession at an ACE retreat, saw he was wearing a Salesian pin, and spent twenty minutes talking about how much we love the sisters before we even got to my confession.  He was taught by them as a child and has stayed part of the family ever since (once a Salesian, always a Salesian!), so he knows most of the sisters I know.  Now that we work together, he and I will not uncommonly have sessions consisting mostly of gushing about the Salesians.  He recently returned from a trip to Mexico and then to the first profession of vows for the new Salesian sisters.

Fr. Joe: Wouldn't it be great to take a bunch of ACE people down to Mexico City?  Just to learn about Mexico and the people and how it all affects what we do here.

Me: Yeah!  I mean, we've got this whole campaign that kinda centers on that.  Let me help you with that if it happens.

Fr. Joe: I'm going to think about that.  It's not very expensive, either.

Me: And I bet you could get a benefactor to help fund it, or even cover the whole thing.

Fr. Joe: It's very possible.

(He leaves, then pops his head back in my door as he returns to his office, wearing a mischievous grin.)

Fr. Joe: You know, I can tell you're loosing your Salesian roots.  The sisters would have said, "Maybe we can have a bake sale to help raise the money".  You say, "Just get a benefactor!"  That's Notre Dame talking.

Love

Salesian Sisters' Provincial House
San Antonio
May 2008

A Look Back, a Little Early

Just like last year, here's a photographic, slightly epileptic, look back at this year for me. Highlights:

• My 2nd VIDES formation camp, this time having a clue
• My 2nd semester teaching, still without a clue
• The St. Vitus Fools, our drama club, and our production of "Looking Glass Land, which was a sucess largely because no one could tell none of us had a clue.
• More nuns, all indescribably wonderful.
• Leaving the nuns, with a full heart and some tears...
• ...and arriving at Notre Dame to start ACE...
• ...where I met some of the most incredible people ever, and certainly the heaviest concentration of awesome I've encountered yet
• My second convent full of community mates, this time unconsecrated my own age
• My second year of teaching, with a little bit of a clue
• And meanwhile, my family continued to be awesome and weird

Please note: There are two people who were as important in my life this year as anyone else, and more important than most, even though I only saw them once in April for a few hours each (hence the painful dearth of pictures and sinful under representation). You know who you are. This year would not have been nearly as wonderful without your constant long-distance support, laughter, and presence. Thank you. I love you more than I know how to say.



All the pictures in the movie are available here, should you be inclined to take a more leisurely look.

When I Stared VIDES

Yesterday, right as I was falling asleep, I realized that sometime last week had been the one year anniversary of when I arrived in San Antonio for the first time for VIDES formation.

What a difference a year makes.

My Letter to the Sisters

[On the occasion of my departure at the end of my term of service, read to them last night after supper.]

“These desires are supernatural. They arise in a soul on fire with love. Such souls want the Lord to see that they aren’t serving him for pay. They try never to motivate themselves to serve God with the thought that they will be compensated with glory for anything they do. Their only desire is to satisfy their thirsty love. It is love’s nature to express itself through service in a thousand ways.”

-St Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle

My Dear Sisters,

These last few weeks, as they ripped right past me, I realized that I feel no (alright, almost no) apprehension about graduate school, not even at an institution like Notre Dame – actually, I enjoy bragging about that a wee bit. Rather than having nerves about opening the next chapter, I am quite preoccupied by the pangs of closing this one.

Ever since I arrived here in August, my abilities as a word smith, meager as they were to begin with, have failed me. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve tried to put into words all the remarkable things I have witnessed and lived here in the St. John Bosco community, indeed within the Salesian community, but nothing I produce begins to do it justice. The quiet, miraculous wonders I’ve seen in the last nine and a half months are far too subtle and too extraordinary for my linguistic bumbling – I might as well be trying to recreate the Rocky Mountains with mashed potatoes.

There is something sublime about the life you sisters lead. The world is sliding further and further into a mode of thinking where selfishness if the norm. The idea that life not only can be lived for the good of others, but should be lived so, is increasingly foreign. The suggestion that there is right and wrong, even good and evil, is scoffed at. God is not ignored, he is exiled from our history. In the midst of this, you, my dear sisters, quietly love. In place of self-interest, you have self-sacrifice. Instead of material gain, you seek souls. Rather than hold grudges, you give pardon. In short, you love, truly.

I think I figured out why I’ve been having so much trouble putting words to the things I’ve seen and the lessons you’ve all taught me. It’s because what I’m seeing is no human feat. What I am seeing is Jesus, Himself, living, walking, and acting on this Earth. You are, in some sense, the Word made flesh. By your life, your vows, and your sacrifice, you make the Incarnation present and felt over and over for incalculable numbers of people. Words cannot begin to capture something so near to God’s heart.

So, finally, I get to the point of this letter. Before I fling my things into boxes and bags and move forward from this chapter of my story, I must thank you for letting me take part in your story. It’s a cliché for a volunteer to say she got much more from her experience than she gave, but it’s also a truth. I am so grateful to you all for the life you’ve chosen, and for letting punks like me join you in your work. Words, once again, fail me as I try to explain all I’ve learned and gained in my time among you. I am thoroughly and deeply changed, and equally as thankful for your support and friendship. Although I’ll be leaving you soon, it will be a long time before you leave me.

Thank you.
Love and God’s peace,
Andie

My room exploded

I havent cleaned up at all following my back to back trips that had me out of town six of the last nine nights. Guess what im doing tonight.

VIDES+USA Movie

At Sr. Gloria's request, I put this little movie together. I was trying to sum up with a bunch of pictures and a few words what VIDES is about. Enjoy, and I welcome your feedback!

Not a Movie About Africa

At dinner.

Sr. Rosann: Did you see No Country for Old Men?
Me: No, but I wanted to. It's supposed to be incredibly good, but dark.
Another Sister: It has black people in it?

Gratitude Day

Alright, so I'm a little late. This was all last Saturday.

Each year, the FMAs and Salesian lay people gather to express their thanks to their provincial for everything she does for the sisters in the province. The provincial, in secular terms, might be likened to a governor, except that she is not only responsible or the practical care and functioning of all the schools and communities in the province, she is also charged with the spiritual leadership of all the consecrated women entrusted to her (Britney, you read this, if I'm off base, for Heaven's sake, correct me). This is, appropriately enough, called Gratitude Day.

The community at Mary, Help of Christians in Laredo hosted us this year. We had lunch, entertained by mariachi players, and a program by the school's 5th graders. As I've mentioned, one of the best things about the Salesians is the very real way their family spirit manifests itself, and I was happy to once again run into some sisters and lay folks I've met along the way this year.

In the afternoon, we scattered to the four winds. Five or six sisters, three pre-nuns, and I went over the border to Nuevo Laredo to see the mission the SDBs are building up there with the help of the FMAs. Nuevo Laredo isn't the kind of town tourists really flock to to begin with, and we skipped right by the nice part of town to the more rustic, shall we say, outskirts.

As is my custom, I took a few pictures, and I think the pictures say more about the place than my words could.

You can click on the logo on the bottom right of the slide show to go to the album if you want to see larger sizes of the pictures.

. .

Sr. Esther

March 18, 2008

Im in Mexico!

Which is, i realize, not a huge deal, but believe it or not i've never been before. Were visiting a salesian mission in nuevo laredo. More on that later too.

Road trip to Laredo!

Its gratitude day! Ill explain what that is when i get back. In the meantime pray for us. Sr Ester is infamous throughout the province for her crazy speed demon driving.

"Aw, I'd Rather Eat Dirt!"

It's Friday night in the convent.

What does a 23-year-old do in the convent on a Friday night?

She watches movies her mother introduced her to.

But it's a fantastic movie, and I'd do this even if I wasn't in a convent.

REC pt 3: Salesians Never Say Goodbye

Previously, on your humble (award-nominated) blog:

REC over, and plenty to say about it. In short:

• Universal Church good
• Salesians awesome
• Blatant disregard for Church teaching bad
• Liturgical dance silly

Salesians have been around for about two hundred years now. The Salesian brothers and priests (SDBs) are the second largest order of religious men in the world, and the sisters (Daughters of Mary, Help of Christians, or FMAs) are third. They've been in the United States for over one hundred years. In that time, they have cared for and educated thousands upon thousands of children, and thousands of lay people like myself have been fortunate enough to join them in their mission.

The core of Salesian education is the Preventive System, which I am far to inept to condense effectively. The vastly over-simplified idea is to prevent kids from making bad choices, rather than punishing them after the fact. It has been said that "family" is a sort of synonym for the Preventive System, and since I arrived at St. John Bosco I've heard the term "Salesian family" almost daily. As I've mentioned before, one of the things I love about SJB is how truly a family it is, but I didn't realize the full depth and breadth of the Salesian family until I worked the Salesian booth at REC.

First, I re-met all sisters who were at the Chapter in November, as well as the young women in formation to become FMAs (who I shall henceforth collectively refer to as "pre-nuns"). As soon as I walked into the house in Bellflower, I felt at home and perfectly at ease (which never happens to me in new places), because it was Salesian. They, likewise, welcomed me right in and treated me like I'd been there all along.

The first day of congress, Jonathan met up with us. He's a VIDES who did his formation here in January, and in no time flat we were chatting it up as if no time had passed. Jonathan and I are both, at this point, sort of superficially Salesian, still being pretty new to it, but we've both lived with them for a few months and immediately had that to talk about, as well as how awesome the Salesians are.

Then on Friday when we got to the booth, I saw Patricia, a former VIDES who helped do my formation last summer, and who has worked with the Salesians in California for years. It hadn't even occurred to me she would be there, but it made perfect sense and I could hardly have been more excited to see her again. She introduced me to all the SDBs floating around the congress, and again, in no time flat we were all old buddies.

I met some of the collaborators, the tertiary order. I saw some other lay delegates who'd been at the Chapter. I met Adam, the director of the SDBs' volunteer program out east, and a bunch of the other lay people who work with and for the Salesians in California. Then there were the droves of current and past pupils who just wanted to linger around the booth to soak in the Salesian juices. The whole Salesian hoard of us -- VIDES, FMAs, SDBs, colaborators, teachers, students, and miscellaneous -- were one big happy family. It was as though we had known each other for years, and while some of them had, what was incredible to me was that we all felt that way.

It was absolutely amazing.

At one point, I was talking to a young guy who was curious about VIDES when in my periphery I saw a woman stop dead in her tracks as she saw out big poster of Don Bosco. Her friend, in Spanish, said, "What?"

The woman didn't say anything at first. Finally she took her hand from her mouth and pointed. "Salesians!"

Her friend laughed. "Yes, good reading."

"No," the woman said, coming towards us, "You don't understand."

Brother Al smiled at her and greeted her. "You know us?"

"Yes! You taught me when I was a little girl in Colombia. I grew up with the Salesians." Her eyes started to well up, and her friend chuckled.

"For God's sake, don't start crying."

"I haven't seen the Salesians in years... forty years." One of the other SDBs scrambled to get her some contact information for the Salesians in L.A. The woman was crying for real now. "I'm so happy you're here. I'm so happy to see you."

At that point, of course, the kid I'd been talking to and I were just transfixed by this. After a few minutes talk and hugging, and her friend teasing her, the woman moved on, still wiping her eyes. I looked back at the boy I was talking to and smiled.

"So, you wanna join us?"

"That was incredible," Brother Al said, rather dazed. "That's what this is all about."

At the end of the day on Sunday, as congress attendees and Salesians alike are dispersing, I looked at someone and said, "You know that feeling you get at the end of a party you wish wouldn't end?" He smiled and said, "I was just thinking that." As we cleaned up the booth after close of business and got ready to go, several of them said to me, quite seriously, "So you're coming back next year, right?"

"You should just move out here," one said.

As I left, I felt I was leaving people I'd known for much longer than three days. Even so, I can't say I was sad, because I am positive our paths will cross again. As people scattered, no one said goodbye -- everyone said "See you soon!"

Happy Bloggaversary to Me!

Last year, while I was sitting in my student teaching class room and should have been observing and learning from my cooperating teacher, I made my very first entry on this blog. In the year since then, I have blossomed as a blogger, and with my direction and purpose clear, I foresee great strides in the year to come.

[Scoff] That's a total lie.

This thing is as scattered and schizophrenic as ever (like its writer), and it's going to stay that way. With a mix of family fondness, teacher tales, and fumbling reflections on faith, I will never have a solid audience, except my parents and their siblings.

And doggone it, I'm okay with that.

A smattering of some of the high points from this last year:
Heartstrings, pt 1 (on my leaving college and going to mission)
A View (explaining this weird-o blog title)
Heartstrings, pt 2 (on leaving my family to be a big girl)
Into the Deep (when this whole thing became "real, whatever that means)
A Day in the Life (monotony is funny when you only read one day's worth of it)
Mildly Inappropriate Convent Humor (still probably the funniest thing all year)
Officially Addicted (my first teacher Christmas)
A Falling Out (when words abandoned me)
Talking to an Affectionate Wall (the density and cuteness of sixth graders)
The 2007 Retrospective
Killing Time (a theophany at a cold wet bus stop)
Why This is Worth It (and it so is)

A Question on the Difference Between "Miss" and "Ms." Lead to This

Student 1: So you're not married.
Me: Right.
Student 1: And you've never been married either.
Me: Ri--
Student 2: Of course not, stupid, she's never even had a boyfriend.
Me: (Quite taken aback) Um... excuse me?
Student 2: What, you have?
Student 3: Of course, dummy, she's a grown up. When, Miss?
Student 2: (With great disdain) When she was a senior in high school, probably. Or in college.
Me: (Gestures to suggest she's totally mental) [Student 2's name]... wha... huh?
Student 2: Well, Miss, you live with nuns. And you're too nice.
Me: Are you saying I have to be a jerk to have a boy friend?
Student 2: (shrug)

...So that's my problem!

Seriously, I haven't the vaguest idea what to make of that.

Sister Carmen

October 2007

"What is She Eating?!"

September 2007

Sr. Ngan and our assistant principal's dangerously cute pre-k kid.

Why This is Worth It

"Everything we have and everything we are is for you."
-Sr. Roasnn, on behalf of the Salesian Sisters, to the St. John Bosco School Community.

On Friday night, St. John Bosco School commemorated the closing of its 50th anniversary year with a gala at the Gunter Hotel (I picked a good year to volunteer here, because I keep getting to go to these wonderful events that only happen every so long). I don't think I have, in the almost six months I've been here, spent adequate time describing how unique and wonderful a school SJB is. I cannot imagine a better place for my first year of teaching. I went to eleven different schools before I graduated high school, and several of them were of incredible quality, but none compare to what I've experienced here. At other schools, "family" is a buzz word that really means, "We mostly get along and will ask favors of each other when we need to". It's a truth here.

It's more than the fact that we have kids whose parents went here, and even a few teeny ones whose grandparents attended decades ago. It's more about things like the fact that I know almost all of my 79 students' parents, and they know each other. The members of the SJB family back each other up in things great and small. This school would literally shut down in an instant of all of our involved parents dropped out, but what's more remarkable is how willingly and gladly those parents do the work they do. So many students and parents at SJB stay connected for years -- decades, even.

Two things, I think, are responsible for the closeness in this community. The first is common love for the children and commitment to whatever is in their best interests. The parents are, even by parent standards, admirably devoted to their children, and to their education and well being. The teachers, who make half of what they could at public schools in San Antonio, stick around for upwards of twenty years not because they get any special compensation or renown for it, but simply because they love these children. Everything we do, everyday, is not just about doing a job, keeping the kids occupied, and getting them out the door. We're all hell bent on teaching them everything we can, not least of all how to be a good Christian and a strong individual. The sisters, of course, have literally given their entire lives to this purpose.

St. John Bosco, co-founder of the Daughters of Mary, Help of Christians (the Salesian Sisters' formal title), said education should form good Christians and honest citizens; that teachers must not only form the mind but the whole person. Secular educators are getting around to this idea in the last few years, but the Salesians have been doing it for over 150 years, to the exclusion of just about everything else.

And this, I think, is the second reason SJB is so tightly woven: we share a common love and wonder of these sisters, who live a life so contrary to what the world tells us we must to be happy, who act in every moment of the day for the kids, whose have given up everything else to be in the service of Christ, and to that end they walk with these children selflessly and tirelessly. At the gala, we premiered a commemorative/promotional video about the school, towards the end of which one of our more active mothers was interviewed and said, "Thank you isn't enough to say in response to what these women do for our children." She paused and teared up, searching. "We're very grateful," she said, pausing another moment but still only being able to quietly say, "very grateful."

There are days here, especially lately, that I am so tired and burned out and uninspired, I honestly wonder if I will make it to the end of the year without prompting a revolt from my kids (or the sisters). But then Sister Carmen comes into the dining room smiling and laughing after hours in the kitchen, Sister Thuy goes on and on about all of her kids in a jaw-dropping display of how possible it actually is to never quit caring, and Sister Gloria spends hours upon hours alone in the VIDES office while the rest of us are at school so that more people like me can share this incredible life, if only for a little while, and I have to sit up a little straighter, push myself a little harder.

They have this effect on all of us. It's hard not to love the obnoxious punk(s) in your class when you have these witnesses to Love walking around in those conspicuous habits all the time. Their holiness, and the love that comes from it, comes from them like vines that wrap around the school -- from the teachers to the parents to the cafeteria ladies, from the desks to the rafters -- and keep the whole thing upright. It is a living, breathing, growing discipleship. It is Christ among us. It binds us.

I haven't talked much about "what I'm getting out of this", mostly because it goes to deep for me to be able to finagle into words. What I can say is that I hope I walk out of this convent with just the smallest speck of the devotion, first to Christ and then to his work, I see in these women.

A Dragon's Heart

The lighting was horrendous, from a photographer's perspective, and my photo editing software is light-weight at best, so I gave up on making these pictures look good and went straight to surreal. Yes, they look rather awful, but I sort of did it on purpose, which makes me feel a little better.

Last night, the sisters took me along to a mass celebrating the Vietnamese New Year at Assumption Seminary, followed by dinner and assorted dancing and music in the seminarians' dining room, including a dragon dance (two, actually, and each with two dragons). We have three Vietnamese sisters just in our St. John Bosco community with a few more across the street at the Provincial House and one a the other Salesian school in town. Five of these sisters went last night, and it was such a joy watching them enjoy the evening. At one point they tried to drag me up on stage with them when the seminarians asked if the Vietnamese sisters would sing a song, but I put my unconsecrated, non-Vietnamese foot down and stayed back to take pictures.

I did end up teaching Sr. Suzett to cha-cha, which I was more than happy to do, because I'll take any chance to spread the joy of Latin dance.

When I spend time with the sisters in a more social setting, I invariably end up remembering a comment a dorm mate from college made, something along the lines of "Being a nun is for girls who are afraid to have fun." Needless to say, this girl had never met a sister in her life. Every sister I've ever met, especially the Salesians I've been so fortunate to live with these months, are full of more joy than most of us would know what to do with, and moreover are hilarious. I suspect this springs from their intimacy with Jesus and the real, deep satisfaction of a life lived for others.

Meanwhile, if I remember right, this dorm mate didn't make it past first semester of freshman year. I guess we all have our priorities.