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DOMINICAN WOMEN THEOLOGIANS
Meeting in Lima, Peru, September, 1997 |
The dynamic of this work was to record the reflections and actions that flow from the intentional daily living of many Dominican women. From this meeting were not born elegant academic theological expositions, but rather a series of reflections on our daily lives best understood as manifestations of the Spirit. In small working groups we shared our experience of the path we have traveled with our people, looking at this journey through the eyes of our spirituality. The simple participation of each of the sisters and lay women present was very important to us; together we could compare experiences, communicate with each other in the language of women, and recognize that we participate in a history that urges and even carries us along to make a theological manifestation that reveals an experience of God from life.
During three days of disciplined work, we focused on those themes which are pivotal to our Dominican spirituality: preaching, study, compassion and contemplation. We endeavored to describe their significance by examining what we have come to understand through experience about preaching, study, compassion and contemplation. In our reflections we discovered some of the pressing needs and challenges of these aspects of our Dominican vocation.
PREACHING
The point of departure is to ask ourselves, "Why do we preach?" Essentially there are two
principles: it is done from life experience and preaching sets us free. Preaching depends on the
hearing of the Word as revealed in the Bible text and in the lives of the men and women with
whom we work and share our lives.
Preaching is also a collective action, in as much as the religious community which preaches has to give back to the community the word which it itself preaches. Preaching is no more than contemplation in a loud voice, a voice which is born within and which cries out from our very existence. Preaching from the community is a reaction against the individualistic style; the collective testimony of the group is more profound than the testimony of the individual. From this we can say that it is important to try to preach with the words and works of the community.
It is recognized that the people preach with songs, with colors, wit the gestures of women. Here we se that another important aspect of preaching is linked to art. How do we read the message which the people bring us, the inspiration of God through art in many different cultural expressions? We see how the people are inspired to express themselves through the beauty of art, especially in ceramics, music, and dance. It is very important to preach toward and to preach from the interior of the Dominican family. This requires us to be mendicants; we humbly await and receive the riches which come from others. It is evident that our work limits and or can be an obstacle to our contemplative gaze of reality. It is necessary to arrive at a personal, direct contact with reality, to touch life. The Word should pass through life, and thus the Word may be the Good News. Preaching without contemplation is not possible.
Preaching is open, it has neither limits nor frontiers; preaching does not give advice nor propose theories. To preach as Dominic preached is to say that all persons are good; this man, because he is a man, is good; this woman, because she is a woman, is good. To preach is to share experience, it is to discover relationships, it is to enter into a dialog with the other, to seek an encounter, to speak from our own wounds, healed and unhealed, to experience with the other the merciful love of God, to preach grace, hope and resurrection. Discovering the truth requires an ecumenical attitude and the ability to learn to live with differences. The preaching of women today gives hope to women as it is the woman who carries life to create and enlighten the community. We women must speak profound truths in simple, understandable language which at the same time requires more prayer of us, more creativity, more study and preparation. Our mere presence also preaches; it is good to be able to count on, to go out to meet, to take the initiative, to stay at the side of. This obliges us to be permanently disposed to go out to others, to have a kind of interior itinerancy, to let go of our priorities in order to create a bond with the other, to make a profession of faith with the other: This God is mine and yours. Preaching is not only speaking; it is also remaining silent. It can be given with signs, and it is always written from the culture.
From whence do we preach? .... from the truth, from the poor. To preach is to have the same destiny as humanity. To belong to humanity is easy; to share the destiny of humanity is a problem. This requires us to discern where we are inserted and requires us to ask if we are preaching the compassionate face of God. We are called to preach from those opposite frontiers of life and death and from the history of persons, touching their lives and our own lives as something sacred. We learn the mystery, discovering the life of the other and being discovered before the other. Therefore the content of preaching is in history, in all those we see and hear. It is enough to ask ourselves "Is the religious life present in the actions which defend life in this place and time?"
Today and always preaching requires coherence in life. It is man and woman manifesting faith in God through different cultures and in different moments of life. It is confronting those socio-political situations without fear or suspicion, overcoming confusion and ambiguity. It is giving space so that the Holy Spirit might teach us to live life as we were created to live it. What have we received from those others? It is necessary to risk, to have confidence in our intuition. We must present the Word, not as if we were its owners, but as Word and Bridge, and accompany it with our presence.
STUDY
Study In Dominican spirituality is part of contemplation. It is a permanent attitude of searching
for the truth; it meditates on humanity, the truth of God and of the relations of God with his
creatures. The study itself and that which is studied are no one's property; the dynamic is to return
the truth, hand it over, let it be known. There is a risk of making of study a power; then we must
ask, how do we give it away?
There are three things to consider: the study is not restricted to a mere systemization or mental exercise; rather it is humanized with compassion. Secondly, it requires that we investigate with a rigor which permits us to understand, search for, recognize, confront and give back that which has been studied. Thirdly, the study should be filled with deep apostolic zeal.
We wish to emphasize some central ideas in the following points:
Study is a right of all. Here we reject the idea that women are not students. Study is a creative space of personal growth and development. We are impoverished, we are not re-created when we stop studying. Study is made flesh when is shared in preaching and in contemplation. From this rises the anxiety and hope that in the Dominican family there be a fund of support on the international level for study and for the planning of projects of communal study and development of our lay brothers and sisters.
It is human discipline (academic or not) which teaches us to think, to evaluate the currents of our times and to give human replies from the faith and the critical sense. From there we can infer the idea that study is at the service of life (without being trapped by the pleasure of accumulating knowledge). But we must not lose time in that which is not life. Study is a living, collective act springing from solidarity.
Service to life is a key element for preaching; it should accompany the experience of God and be open to the differences and changing moments of human history. It is study which seeks the truth of the real world, in men, in women and in God. This is the ascetic part of Dominican spirituality which it is important for us to redeem in this moment when religious life has put more emphasis and value on work than on study. It is even more of an error that we, as women, have not given ourselves the free space for study because we are always moved toward work.
It is also a permanent disposition to search for the truth. An essential part of contemplation is to share (give and receive) in gratitude, and at the same tune, in a dynamic of constant transformation and conversion. A better description of search for the truth is to say seek to love and respond to the reality in which you live; that is, walk and study with the truth. These challenges require that in the spaces which we have gained, we engage the Dominican family in a interdisciplinary dialog that makes a serious effort to give and to receive the experience of God by taking advantage of the communication media.
Study is something which has been prostituted and devalued in the world of the new liberalism (in order to be someone, one must be competent, win the trophy). From whence do we study? Why and for what? It is important to locate ourselves, to take a position. Study imparts to us the wisdom of the simple ... are they our masters? ... How much time do we spend with them? Study goes hand in hand with contemplation, work, poverty and justice, and is the true origin of hope. How does study break through our internal barriers? How does it open us to communion with others; how does it conquer distances of time, history and mental attitudes to bring us to fraternity, communion of the Spirit and universality? On one hand experience must be systematized, and on the other it must be pulled out from the heart and guts to give us the life force to go on creating.
Study humanizes us, it makes us more conscious of ourselves and of others; it promises to help us grow. It opens us to others and it opens our eyes so that we can make critical judgments about our own internal structures. It connects us to reality and helps us to discover in reality the traps and frauds of the system and in the structures of society and the church. It also brings us to the discovery of the needs of persons and groups. Study is, therefore, a personal and communal responsibility.
COMPASSION
Compassion is the feminine dimension of our spirituality because it is related to the heart. It is to
suffer with the other, and with profound love to make the sorrow of the other one's own. The
personal experience of God carries us to concrete attitudes which move us deeply; its fruits are
expressed in gestures of peace and delight. Compassion propels us out of our exclusive and
individualistic world and forces us to rub shoulders with the other as we encounter and respect
process. It is thus that we are called to bind ourselves to share the same fate as the rest of
humanity and help them move from where they are. Grounded in the existential reality, we divest
ourselves of moralistic platitudes. We learn to accompany the other person by emptying our
selves in order to put on his shoes. If we are to be witnesses of Christ, we must make our own the
sorrow of the poor, the handicapped, and the , indigent.
It is a gift, a call which is not a triumph. It is a contract with the life of suffering which takes possession of the heart, a gesture of friendship that breaks through our privacy. Compassion is the way God educates us in order to convert us; we learn to deprive ourselves, God does not deprive us. It comes from the Spirit and is the Spirit. It is an encounter which does not move us gently, nor let us give birth; it causes us to empty ourselves so that others may penetrate us with their own genuine newness. Reflecting this way, we see that poverty creates in us compassion, a heart and guts of mercy. Study facilitates a compassionate heart, ignorance marks out distances; not to know leaves us far away.
It is usually difficult to live compassion because we tire of doing so. It is not a programmed action, rather it is a process; it is falling in love with ... belonging... being a part of... There exists a great risk that we see others as work for ourselves; many times we think of ourselves as proprietors of the culture, of the schools, of ideas, of the truth. Few times do we admit that we suffer, because this implies a confrontation with our inability to accompany the other. The structures harden our hearts, distance us, weaken our compassion. We ask ourselves if we really are part of the human condition to which we belong; compassion is all that is given to us in the dynamic of the community: to belong, to understand, to suffer allows us to grow in our flesh, it allows us to claim compassion through the community. Belonging is a gift; you give it to others whom you invite to enter. It is not possible to speak of compassion without love; the Dominican compassion is the force of love which conquers the fear of falling in love with the real world. It is the same passion that St. Dominic possessed as he gathered together in himself all the energy of compassion which our humanity can muster.
Compassion is a ministry which in a world so wounded and suffering requires us to console with mercy and tenderness as much as is possible and without moral judgments. Moral judgments and structures attack compassion; it is necessary to think and feel from our guts more than from our ideas. We must ask ourselves if the religious life today is marked by its structures of compassion or of separation.
CONTEMPLATION
For Dominicans contemplation is an exercise that cultivates within us an intimate relationship with
the mystery of God which is at once tender and effective. From this relationship is born a concrete
manner of living the Incarnation, an Incarnation which is the knowledge of the other as it enters
into the profound intimacy of our own being (what we think, feel, live and behold). It is the
presence of God made visible in persons and human situations.
Contemplation is a gift, full of gratitude for all the human condition. It is manifested in the Word who makes explicit in a concrete way what it is to live a personal experience of God and to carry it to the community. Contemplation, therefore, is seen as enriching the common life, from which it provokes the conversion which helps us to cure wounds, to empty ourselves and to liberate us from the attachments which prevent us from giving life.
This contemplation is the keystone of the community and helps us comprehend that we are part of humanity. We are its servants and companions, on a prophetic mission, fortified with the courage and the force we need to be with the other, to lose those fears which prohibit us from participating in life, especially in the lives of those whom the system considers to be the waste products of humanity, the offscourings of daily life.
Contemplation is a personal experience which is not exhausted in the person herself, but goes on multiplying in the measure with which we share with others. It is silence and Word, it is presence and learning measured by our love for our brothers and sisters. It is a simple but loving gaze on reality which also implies that we care for and guard the mystery (Today, grieving humanity must sell all its secrets in order to survive; it has prostituted itself in the neo-liberal world which does not want the people to contemplate).
Contemplation is the capacity to ponder that which is not beautiful, but as part of reality, has life. We can not forget that in the Order special times for contemplation do not exist, but that the contemplation flows from daily routine, from life itself.
It is a personal process and a community process with roots in reality and from which we are discovering a world which is beginning to come to life, to resurrect. We are never alone in contemplation because each one is a part of a whole universe; our mission is to announce the mercy of God because we have contemplated it, and as women, to integrate sensibility and feeling in our experience of contemplation.
The people with whom we work are profoundly contemplative and know how to connect themselves with earth and heaven; they break dualisms and conceive of the universe as a kind of communion. Here we have a wide road to travel. We will discover that life often pulses more strongly within these cultures than within our own; that these cultures are closely bonded to life and cry out for greater humanity. This implies a profound exercise of contemplation, silence, listening, respect and much humility in order that we may allow ourselves to embrace and admire that which lives through the mystery of God in the different cultures of our peoples. Perhaps this is showing us a new way to be religious and to verify that the plans which flow from the dynamics of our life respond to the urgent demands for the humanization of the real world. We tend to think that only we are religious, but humanity is religious. The pride of the Church is a continual danger that we must guard against.
It is important that from our contemplation we replant continuously within ourselves the values we abide in and cherish. How are we accompanying our lay sisters and brothers who wish to live a religious life? How do we accompany the people whose lives we share? Whom do we love, our conception of God or the true God?
CONCLUSION
In this way we closed our encounter, celebrating as a community the life and reflections realized
in those three days; but we must mention the contemplative dynamic we experienced from art.
Our sister Joana shared with us the dimensions of our spirituality expressed in painting, opening
space for the Spirit to preach to us with the resonance which the image has in each one of us,
touching our different experiences of life which we share with the people with whom we live and
work.
It was also very important that four lay women, members of the Dominican family, with their presence and word in a relationship of equals, emphasized positively the dynamic of fraternity in the Order; we consider it very important that they were not only present, but that they shared their reflections and experiences.
The contributions of the sisters who, without formal academic credentials, transmitted their profound- experience of God from the life experience among the indigenous peoples of the jungle of Ecuador, opened for us new perspectives, sowing hope and expressing their fears, which will help us to strengthen our sense of mission and our faithfulness to the Dominican charism.
Finally, the initial criteria which we had for the encounter were sufficiently rigorous that we can confirm their academic viability and the value of theological reflection from the experience of life.
The CODAL (Conferencia Dominicos America Latina) invited Dominican Sisters to participate in regional reflections on Dominican life and mission. The conference for the Andean countries was held in September, 1997, in Lima, Peru. There, 28 Sisters and 4 lay women from eleven Dominican congregations theologized and reflected from their life and mission experience around the four pillars of Dominican life: preaching, study, contemplation, and compassion. Sisters Germaine Conroy and Thoma Swanson of the Congregation of St. Mary of the Springs, Columbus, Ohio, and missioned in Chimbote, Peru, were also in attendance. This paper is the product of the reflections of those who attended this meeting. We invite you to enter into their spirituality and share their points of view as a way of understanding the directions of Dominican life in other cultures.
Another meeting is scheduled for August 1998 in Cochabamba, Bolivia, and will include representatives of regional conferences from all of Latin America.
English Translation: Thoma Joana Swanson, OP, St. Mary of the Springs, Columbus, Ohio
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