Wisdom Keepers: Healing a Divided People

-The churches are closing, the schools are down, but there is a growth coming.

There are younger women and younger men looking at a new kind of religious life themselves.

We allow them to form their own group and find where the spiritual life is leading them, and then they want to take that spiritual life.

It's exciting.

-We're all seekers, searching for answers to life's biggest questions.

There are people who have made it their life's work to explore and uncover the wisdom we all seek.

In this episode, I speak with renowned author Sister Joan Chittister about spiritual life and her journey as an advocate for peace and justice.

This is "Wisdom Keepers."

Sister Joan Chittister, welcome.

Great to be talking with you.

-Thank you.

Ray.

-In the 21st century, there are a lot of ways to live out a religious vocation, and one of the great gifts of talking to you is that you bridge... -Yes.

-...from an era when choosing the religious life was quite different.

What have you seen happen over your long life as a religious that's sort of changed the job, changed the work, transformed who a nun is in society?

-I can remember my first book, Ray, and it was way back there in in the early '70s or something.

I got a call from a producer who wanted me to write a book on Benedictinism.

And the guy on the other end said, "We want to know what you want to know, Ray.

We want to know what you do now.

What goes on now?

And how did that happen?"

And my answer was, "Oh, you mean you want me to tell my mother what we're doing?"

The guy said, "That's right.

That's right."

The people know.

I'm convinced that the people know that in these convents of all flavors and histories, there is one driving moment, maybe two -- the spiritual life and the presence of the people, being present with the people.

Now, for 150 years in the United States of America, being with the people was teaching school.

They were all immigrants then.

Sorry to break the news.

We know now we don't have to worry about teaching the kids.

That has all been taken over by the government, by great schools, by wonderful stuff.

Yeah, we can have one or two here for special reasons, but they are not our entire ministry.

They are not all the people who are working with us now.

The question you ask is the right question, and it can't be answered because you said, "What are you doing now?

What is different now?"

Answer -- all of it.

-[ Chuckles ] -The only thing that isn't gone is that the prayer life has deepened.

The prayer life is in English, and it is crying the cry of the prophets.

And when you hear the cry of the prophets every day, what you're taking out into these streets now is that continual sense of Emmanuel, God with you.

God is with you.

We can get through this day, Ray.

Emmanuel.

Emmanuel.

-When I look back to growing up in a dense urban ethnic neighborhood, one of the pillars of that neighborhood was the convent a couple of blocks from my apartment building.

When nuns would come by, almost always in pairs -- I don't know why, but almost always in pairs... -Yes.

And the suit.

Yeah.

-...my playmates would stop what they were doing, stickball, handball, whatever we were doing, and stop and say... -And everybody said... -..."Hello, Sister."

-"Good morning, Sister!"

And they ran across the street for the right to do it.

-That world is gone, as are the habits of those women that marked them out as separate people in our little world.

-Yeah, that's right.

-Did we gain when we did that, when we made religious more like the people they were living among and not these separated, austere, and removed creatures?

-That's exactly right.

-Did we lose something when we made nuns and brothers more like us and less like neighborhood royalty?

-It's a question that deserves good attention, and the answer is yes and no.

Some of us are right here.

We're in normal civic clothing, but we're here.

And some of us are on the street feeding people.

But you know what, Ray?

Every one of them is known.

"Hi, Sister.

Are you still here, Sister?

Gosh, it's so good you're here, Sister."

I went to a food store.

I got up to the cash register, and I heard them saying, "Hi, Sister."

I said, "Did you say Sister?"

And the kid said, "Sure.

You are a sister, aren't you?"

I said, "Well, how did you know that?"

And the kid said, " You smiled at me, and you called me Tom."

Now, I can't want anything more than that out of life.

That little kid came off of the worst street we had.

He knew who the sisters were.

And there are a thousand of those stories.

-Here in the building, there are lovely old historical documents on the walls with the early generations... -That's right.

-...of these sisters in their habits.

-That's right.

-Do you remember when you put yours aside?

And what were you thinking then?

-Well, we had decided as a community.

We took our time.

We took months to answering your question.

And there was tension.

I want you to know I don't -- This was the tough one.

What about our habits?

And the community wasn't dividing, but it was split almost down the center.

So, when that happened, there was a Marist brother from Australia, a PhD in psychology, and everybody liked him.

And we saw this thing getting tighter and tighter.

So we invited him in.

And he was with us maybe three, four, five times, a gentle man, a gorgeous man, a highly psychological man.

And one day, he turned at the whole community, and he said this -- "You know, we've been voting on this and voting on this and voting on this, and we're really not getting much place, are we?"

"No, we aren't, brother."

And he said, "Let's stop voting for this."

And I was sitting in my seat and said, "Oh, God, no, we have to work through this, or we will be forever cemented apart.

Please don't do this."

And he said, "Now, here is the new sentence that I'll ask you to accept."

I held my breath, and he said, "I vote for the right to trust my sisters.

And whatever any of them want to do, I will support and accept."

When we got to that point, I knew that these Benedictines could solve anything.

And we just got stronger and stronger, and the people got more and more familiar.

And the women, believe it or not, were delighted.

The men?

Not so much.

They're into uniforms.

They like uniforms and flags.

The women said, "I don't see why you can't say I'm a Benedictine if I don't have a hat on."

-[ Chuckles ] -That's where -- Every word of that is true, and there is no tricks about it.

We simply worked it through, and it was painful.

-Liberating, though?

-Oh, very liberating.

Oh, my gosh, yes.

We had been, um... kewpie dolls for a long time.

[ Imitates train chugging ] We were more military than the military.

But we had people who were bursting out of talent and love and stretching us and them.

And you saw happy people.

It wasn't an asylum of asceticism.

It was asceticism that was -- had joy.

-Joy is a pretty big part of the mix.

It has to be for this to work, isn't it?

-Yeah.

Oh, yes.

Yeah.

I mean, you learn that we really -- We take loving a sister seriously.

A group of sisters and a group of young monks wound up at a conference in this country about 30 years ago, I would say now.

And all the electricity went out.

Everybody lit -- We found a piece of something and lit it so all you could see were people's faces.

They're black, and I think it was -- We were still black.

I'm not sure about that.

But at any rate, we talked.

All you heard was a voice in the darkness.

And some really great conversation was going on.

And then all of a sudden, what you would call one of the oldest of the brothers said, "Can I interrupt?"

"Sure."

He said, "You know, fellas, we came down here to ask the sisters, were we like one another or are we different than one another?"

And he said, "I just got my answer."

And one of us said, "Really?

That's great.

What was your answer?"

And he said, "Listen.

Have you listened to these women talk?

Do you know what they're saying?"

And I had a sign over there.

Another young brother said, "Yeah, I have, and I know what you're talking about."

And the older man said, "What do you think it was?"

And he said, "When the sisters talk, they all talk about going home to the community."

And the brother said, "Well, what do we say?"

"We go to the abbey."

"We go home to the Abbey.

They go home to the community.

And they work at keeping this glue among themselves before.

We don't have that kind of glue.

We have private rooms.

And that's where our study and our output comes.

They go out on the streets with the people, and they come home to the people, their community."

There was more in that than I'd ever heard or read on anybody's description of religious life.

-Is there an aspect of that that has to do with gender, and not only gender in the way that we talk about it in the 21st century... -Yeah.

-...but a 2,000-year-old way of thinking about men and women that's embedded in Christianity?

-You are absolutely correct.

The men are only now -- And if you keep up with psychology -- and I think you do -- there is a great amount of psychological texts trying to help men learn to cry.

Why do we get so much alcoholism?

We got to have some way to push out the dangers of our lives.

And so men everywhere are going into group work to learn when too much crying is sick crying and too little crying is loss crying.

And women, they've always -- And there was always a guy here saying, "Don't cry.

Don't cry."

You know, "Don't -- You can't do that here.

Just go up and say you're sorry."

And the woman says, "You don't understand."

It looked as if we had two sexes, two genders, two splits.

But the funny thing is, we live in the century where this is called humanity.

-Not without pain and discomfort, though.

-Not without -- Yes.

You got that right.

-You don't get over 1,900 years of doing something one way... -No.

That's exactly right.

-...that easily.

That's exactly right.

But we know -- or men seem to know -- They know what they need most.

And they want to go home and cry on some woman's shoulder instead of have to pretend that what they just lost at work didn't bother them a bit.

And so, if they can't pour out their own selves, how do they teach the kids?

How do you do that?

How do you keep the marriage if we are two separate emotional deciders for one another?

-We are sitting in a part of the world where there's been a lot of loss.

There are towns that have been hollowed out, empty factories, emptying streets, and with that real estate are 10,000, 100,000 stories of grief and loss, lost hope, lost horizons, along with the loss of the jobs that made these communities coherent, has been a tremendous amount of loss in religious congregations themselves, churches that have emptied out, shuttered, downsized.

Are those two things moving in tandem?

-Yes, I think they are.

In the first place, the Scripture is pretty clear.

"Unless the seed fall into the ground and dies, itself --" We're at a cusp.

You brought it up quite designedly and very fruitfully.

And you're right.

But I see that there's grass coming up through cement.

There are younger women and younger men looking at a new kind of religious life themselves.

They don't know a thing, these young women, about what we went through or what the suppression and oppression of thinking was.

They have not a clue of that.

But they do know, and they are here for the spiritual life.

And then they want to take that spiritual life, and they're doing a marvelous job of it.

There is -- There is a growth coming.

But growth is not going to come from here.

So I have become fond of saying to religious themselves, "Numbers will not save you, and numbers will not destroy you.

Know who you are and do it.

And reach out to those who also want to know who you are and how you do it."

People are out there.

The churches are closing.

The schools are down.

But I have an empty spot.

I have a place where the magnet is pulling me, and I don't know where I'm going or how to get there.

You know, when I put up the sign on my computer that said "Monasteries of the Heart -- a Benedictine community without walls," 25,000 people showed up.

Now, they are looking, and they -- We don't -- We don't demand anything.

We provide all manner of education on these computers.

We allow them to form their own community group and find where the spiritual life is leading them.

It's exciting.

Yeah, the numbers are down.

Numbers will neither destroy you, nor will they deny you anything, nor will they build you again.

-We're getting to a point where someone with a religious vocation might not even share enough of a common language with someone who's a seeker.

How to even talk to them is not as apparent as it might have been in another time.

What does a nun have to say to a secular person in the 21st century?

How do you explain something as big or as small as who God is, what a Benedictine sister thinks God is, to the world?

I mean, huge, huge questions that people have been pondering for 2,000 years, but now you're dealing with a large number of people who are totally removed from it.

It's not an active part of their lives any longer.

-How do you answer that?

You don't.

You model everything.

You will have laypeople moving around this place for two, four, five, seven years.

They keep coming back.

They're telling us something.

And every once in a while, somebody asks for an appointment.

But it's not like it used to be, Ray.

You know, you spotted a 17-year-old, you knew that that was a spiritual vocation.

So the sister went to the kid and said, "Have you ever thought --" "Well, I have."

"Well, then you better come and talk to us for a while."

That's not happening anymore.

They are coming, and pretty soon our prayer life is their prayer life.

Now, where is that going?

I don't know, but it's going somewhere good.

So, you kindle the flame, and people still come in.

They're attracted by what they see.

But we are in an age when more and more people say, "How can I watch the news at night and believe that there's a God?"

-Yeah.

-"And not just a Creator, which is far-fetched enough, but an omniscient God, an omnipresent God?

Is God present in that bombed village?

Is God present in that community that's just been run off into another country by marauding bands of genocidal attackers?

I can't believe that the kind of God you're asking me to believe in lets that stuff happen.

Who is God?"

-You really need a lifetime in this monastery.

I'll sign you up this afternoon because it's that slow.

You can be here for 60 years, as I have been, or 70, and the learnings are still there.

The whole question is, "For what are you yourself seeking?"

Because that God is here when you are here.

You will have to put heart and spirit into this thing.

You're not gonna get a free ride.

I am looking at the cusp.

As far as we have gone up this hill in that era, I am asking where we must be for the people in this valley now.

I'm not looking for the old days.

I'm not looking for some cute stuff that we do.

I'm not.

I'm looking for what is being looked for.

And I am big on outreach.

Big.

You're not gonna sit in this cave unless this shepherd comes and says, "Get out of this cave."

We're here to light that light.

So, this life is surging.

It is here if we'll release it, if we'll be it.

It's, uh -- It's the next phase.

I mean, look at this 1,500 years of Benedictinism alone.

You have got to be there in the fix.

You have to be ready yourself.

So, it's all there, Ray.

It's all there.

It's all perking.

It's all seeking.

And it's all doing.

And beautiful, beautiful things are happening.

The Catholic Church has come out, defined itself, put it up on posters and on computers, allows for its sins, notices its graces.

It is a place to be.

-But we find ourselves historically unchurched now, more than in 200 years.

-That's why you're gonna be it and we're gonna be it.

That's where people are finding these doors.

And it's amazing.

They're coming to Sunday liturgies.

And the people know that they can talk to these sisters at any time.

And they are.

And they come back again.

I am gonna live my life out here if for no other reason than I'm short on years.

I know that I have been enriched here.

I hope I have done some enriching of those who just simply hope to know that this was still here.

I didn't enter to perpetuate the Erie Benedictines.

I entered to live a spiritual life and to share it.

And it was very conscious.

I was 16.

I saw what they did.

I loved what they did.

I'd listen to their prayer every night.

And at the age of 16, the end of my sophomore year, I said to my mother, "What am I waiting for?"

She said, "Get out of here and go on."

-Well, it's 72 years later.

-[ Laughing ] Yes, it is.

-Do you have any ideas or, even now, convictions about the chapters of life, about the -- like the movements of a symphony?

Have you come to any wisdom about times in life that are just set apart and different from other times in life?

-Could we have this one privately?

Because you just hit the nerve.

-[ Laughs ] -Um...

I swore...

Uh, you know, I knew at the age of 14 I was a writer.

So I went to the high school library one night after school, and I opened every book in our library.

And the only thing I was looking for was a woman writer.

And there were three books in the entire high school library that was written by a woman.

And here it was in front of me, a large book like this.

And its title was "Poetry," in gold, "by a Nun From Stanbrook."

And that did it.

I said, "If a nun from Stan--" She wasn't allowed to put her name on it.

That was asceticism and humility.

And I said to myself, "I don't care about my name.

I don't care about any of that.

I just want to know that I'll be allowed to do it."

Some nun had done it.

Surely I could do it, too.

So I clung to that for years.

And so...

I'm on my last book.

I don't know if it'll work.

I don't know if I can do it.

But I want to do it.

And I want to write a book that is so honest about my own life that another person can pick it up and say, "If she thought that, did that, gave that, eliminated that from her life, I want to think about this for a while at least."

-In a world with so much heartache, in a world that's struggling for a kind of coherence and equilibrium now -- this is also largely a post-God world in a lot of respects -- if someone or a lot of someones say, "Sister, you know, I'm one of those people who doesn't believe in anything that he can't see, but, like you, I want the world to be a better place to live in and, like you, I want to sit with and ponder what it means to be a good person and good to all the people around me," is there enough in common for you to work with that person and look for the things that you do agree on, instead of emphasizing the things that you don't?

-I would do what I always do.

I would go straight to the "Rule of Benedict" because Benedict isn't -- He doesn't have a pope.

He doesn't have a monastery.

He doesn't have anything at all but us.

And what he lays out in that -- in that rule in 15 years is stunning.

So, for instance, here's a man who says, when anything of importance is to be determined in the monastery, let the abbot bring together all of the members, and, starting with the youngest, ask them what they believe should be done and why.

You are being educated immediately into the communal mind.

And as this thing comes up, you will hear more and more wisdom, see more and more seekers.

Will you be part of them?

Can you do that?

Or are you just gonna walk out?

And then the Rule in chapter 7 on humility is all about relationships, the relationship with God, the relationship with your mentors, what you know about yourself and have or have not pursued, and how you treat others.

All about relationships.

You are being formed into the mind of the Scripture.

-We keep getting back to Benedict.

-Yeah, we -- Yes, we do.

You notice?

Yes, we do.

The oldest religious institution and totally human, totally humane, and totally accepting.

He didn't go into Rome and try to baptize anybody.

He simply left the cave, went up on the hill, which is still there, and he sat down and he waited and somebody came along.

"Are you the guy who --" "Yeah, I am."

"Can I stay with you?"

"Sure, you can."

"I got a brother.

I'd like to get him, too."

"That'd be a good idea.

Yeah."

And little by little by little, here we are.

Here we are, 1,500 years later.

I mean, it's so beautiful, beginning to see this road to depth of person.

Now, please don't talk to me about how I get God.

Please don't ask that question again.

You don't get God.

You already have God.

God is within you.

God is around you.

God is holding you up.

But God is not a vending machine and not a magician and whoever else you've made Him, no.

But God the Creator is also in you because you are made of the very same things.

You are part of the universe that God has created for you.

You have everything you need.

And you have a community to take you with it.

-But this is also a world that you're a part of that is very rules-based, authority-based, hierarchical.

Do you sometimes bridle a little bit and say, "Oh, God, God, what are you so afraid of?"

There's a way for us to talk about these things that don't flirt with heresy... -Honey, they didn't -- -...that don't flirt with syncretism, that doesn't mean that I'm saying that this other person who's from a different faith is right about everything, but I'm ready to talk to him.

I'm ready to listen to her.

-That's right.

-I'm ready to listen to this other worldview that can inform my worldview, a kind of -- -I years ago began to say, "I think differently than you do."

It's my motto.

I can go into anybody under any circumstance, and I simply say something like this -- "I just want you to know that I think differently than that.

Having said that, I refuse to debate.

I will not be angry.

But I would love to hear what you would tell me about what you are learning right now in the Scriptures, with people, at any time in churches and schools.

I want to know more and more about God, and I do not know all of it, but I know that when we all do, we will be ready."

-Sister Joan Chittister, it's been a joy to talk to you.

Great to meet you.

Thanks for your time.

-Thanks for your time, sir.

You're a very good thinker, and we need more of it.

Thank you for allowing me to be here.