Feels Like Home

Always, she could be the earth mother.  The one lost children might go to.  Young girls would want to put down their suitcases and root there.  Old friends would regret losing touch and want to reconnect.  If you were missing your mother, her presence would help ease the loss.  Like loons to a lake, you are drawn.  She is home.  She would like to be remembered like that.  When the time comes, she will be. 

“Dad, she’s sending me to a convent.”  That’s the text, intended to cause alarm, that my daughter Shana sent my husband when during her absence while studying abroad in Ireland, I, unbeknownst to her, signed her up for “Charity in the City”, a two-week intense outreach program in New York City run by the Sisters of Charity.   Shana has a Peace Studies minor and I thought the experience would benefit her in her work some day.  She was barely home from Ireland for a couple of days when she somewhat reluctantly had to pack her next set of bags and head over to Yonkers where Sr. Mary Lou McGrath lives.  The reluctance probably didn’t even get a chance to enter the front door as she found out pretty quickly that you could still be home when you leave home.  All you need is someone who makes it so. 

The literal version of what Sr. Mary Lou calls home is a beautiful house more than 150 years old whose very scent reeks of the past.   A friend of mine said it best at a later date when she and I would actually have the chance to visit, “This place has great bones.”   But for the “Charity in the City” weeks, Shana would find that in exchange for an intense, emotional and meaningful experience with four other college age students of varying backgrounds whose main commonality was immediate acceptance of each other for whom or where they were, as they performed soup kitchen and homeless shelter work, visited babies in hospitals, and toiled in organic gardening, Shana learned that charity in the city was way too limiting of a term.  It’s hard to do charity in the city without taking it back to the country when you get back home. 

You may wonder how one ends up devoting a life to complete and selfless service, compassion, love and humility.  I had the opportunity to serve as a personal historian this week to Sr. Mary Lou for the “Celebrate Wisdom” project in which I am engaged.  So think this which I just learned:  when she was a young girl, she used to sit with her father on their porch in Elmhurst, New York where he would encourage her to stare up at the sky and determine how small they seemed in relation to the world and the people out there and ponder what was their meaning and place in the universe.  How lucky for her.  Most people don’t have philosophers for parents.   These talks and experiences inspired a lifelong desire for her to always know what was happening worldwide and know her place in the universe and the value of every life she encountered.  How lucky for us.

Since then she has spent years studying and serving, as a teacher in elementary schools in Manhattan, as a principal, as an auxiliary police officer in the early 70s when the lower east side was a dangerous place, in Guyana, in Nigeria and now at the College of Mt. St. Vincent where she is an ESL instructor and mentor for many young people, one of the many hats she still wears.  She is very home with the Hispanic community back from her days at St. Brigid’s on the lower east side.  I am sure they are as at home with her.  After all, she is home. 

She shared many stories but one in particular stood out.  Back in the parish in which she grew up in Queens, more than 60 years ago, whenever someone would die, the rectory would be notified immediately and certain members of the parish would be called out to come to the rectory.  Bells would toll and everyone in the area would know that someone died.   People matter.  Lives matter.  We showed that back then.  Sr. Mary Lou has never stopped showing it, after all these years. 

So amidst any negative memories of nuns who were mean and unforgiving many moons ago, amidst all the scandals the Catholic church has been involved in the last few decades which have, understandably turned many away….amidst the perception, again, understandable, that the Church focuses on the wrong things or is out of touch with the lives and concerns of Catholics and indeed, of others in the world, amidst any perception that its relevance has been greatly diminished in today’s society, one might want to take pause.  One person can make a big difference in altering that perception, particularly when she arrives in the form of a Sr. Mary Lou.  Snowy egrets could probably stand statuesque knowing she is their refuge.  Maybe that can change a human opinion.  Even just one. 

The Sisters of Charity who are nestled in this house in Yonkers and nurtured by their earth mother, Sr. Mary Lou McGrath know they are a dying breed.  They do not expect the institution to last for all that much longer, as many of the sisters grow old and die.  A look back at history reveals that few institutions of this type have lasted more than two centuries.  For Sisters of Charity, there is no retirement date.  They are expected to work until the last day their health allows.  Young women willing to take the same vows are not replacing them.  But that’s ok with them.  All they hope is to pass along some of their compassion to anyone in the secular world who will carry at least a portion of that torch into the future. 

I am not yet sure where this “Celebrate Wisdom” journey will take us, practically and financially.  But one thing I do know.  It sure feels like home.  

Faith

     I don't remember what she got on the test.  It was of small significance really.  What mattered is the lesson learned that day that has stayed with me for over forty years since and still counting.
We are in 6th grade I think,  maybe 7th, definitely middle school years, and we were students at Blessed Sacrament grammar school in the Bronx.  We were taken to Church during a period of the day and when we got back to class, a graded test was being returned to all of us that had caused a lot of angst.   We were kneeling on the plush carpet at the altar and Nora seemed to be praying particularly hard.  "Come, on, they're calling us, we have to go," I remember saying, but she wouldn't budge.  "I have to say extra prayers before we get the test back, " she whispered.  Knowing, the grade marked in red was already on the batch of tests we had already seen the nun take out of her worn leather briefcase and place almost ominously on her desk, I couldn't for the life of me imagine why she was praying so fervently now.  "It's too late Nora, the grades are already in," I said,  knowing that a grade back then was marked by sheer and utter permanence, no matter what story or plea a student could concoct.  "You should have been praying like this for wisdom before you took the test.  What good is it now?"  She looked at me steady and strong and said, "But that doesn't matter.  I don't know what I got yet.  It's still in God's hands."
     I never forgot that day, my first elementary lesson in the concept of fate and free will, which would be presented once again, on a formal level, by Irish Christian brothers in college a decade later.  And through many life lessons in the years ahead.  As someone who up until that point always felt the need to bring sense and logic and orderly thinking into prayer requests, I was floored by Nora's faith.  I have been for many years since.
     Over ten years ago, Nora was diagnosed with a brain tumor.  Non-cancerous but malignant and her prognosis was scary.  There was a chance surgery could curtail it but there was also the chance it would continue to wreck havoc.  She went to see what was just a handful of doctors in the country at some of the finest medical institutions that were willing to operate.  She chose one and over ten years later, besides some relatively minor side-effects, she works and leads a full, rewarding life.  The testament that is to the surgeon and research facility that worked on her case aside, what is just as miraculous is the positive outcome achieved through the fervent prayers, healing masses and constant devotion she has always and continues to pay to the Catholic Church and her religion.
     So, this Easter, while reflecting upon the origin of my own faith, and the awe-inspiring Holy Thursday
nightly service, and the feet washing, and the somber, quiet time at Good Friday services, followed by obvious jubilation on Easter Sunday that I was fortunate enough to experience and be awed at my entire childhood, I sill give credit to one of my oldest and dearest friends.  She nailed what faith meant a long time ago.  I'm grateful she has given me the chance to go along for that ride.