Journal of Sr. Carla Mae Streeter, O.P.

Not bad for an image of the Church today…taking the best of our past tradition…respectfully preserving it in a reconfigured presentation to delight those who get in touch for the first time…keeping the heart of worship central, from which all theological reflection flows…spilling out and in between food and the sharing of real life in conversation and care.

Yes, the new building speaks…and it says the future Church we all are here to help midwife into being. It is indeed good to be here.

I. My Place in the Cosmos…. (Creation)

I’m a Creature (Origin - being from the Greatest Being)
Where it all starts from (Love)
The Light (Love manifesting Itself - the Word)
My Deepest Self (The Indwelling)
Re-membering (Conscious Awareness of Who I really am)

II. What Happened? - My Wounds are Showing… (Sin)

A Choice for the Wrong Thing (Original Sin)
Soul-blindness (Ignorance)
Soul-anxiety (Emotional Confusion)
Soul-paralysis (Irresponsible Choice)
The Twisted Human (Personal Sin)

III. Healing is On the Way! … (Redemption)

God’s Part
Taking my image (Incarnation)
Taking my sickness (Paschal Mystery)
Giving me God’s own Self (Grace; Faith/Hope/Charity)
Giving me a Way Back (Jesus)
Giving me Compassionate Power (Holy Spirit)
Giving me a Community (Church/Sacramental Life)

My Part
Accepting who I am as blessed and broken (Self-knowledge)
Accepting myself as part of Community (Church)
Accepting ongoing healing (Conversion)
Relating to the Mystery (Basic Decision for God/Owning my Baptism)
Nourishing the Relationship (Prayer/Eucharist)
Listening to the Word (Scripture)
Acting in the Spirit (Commandments/Moral Virtue/Works of Mercy)
Building up the Community (Liturgy/Social Justice)
A Global Citizen (Ecumenic/Interfaith Catholicity)

IV. The Promised Happy Ending… (Eschatology)

The Human Finally Restored (Mary/Saints)
The Human being Transformed (Gifts of the Spirit, Fruits, Charisms, Beatitudes)
The Human Transfigured (Eternal Life)
The Community Transfigured (The New Jerusalem)

Surely this is but pious exhortation, yes? Really…isn’t it scandalously out of touch with reality? Light your lamp and look deeper. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor.” There’s the key to the mystery. In the depths of our souls…nationally, ecologically, and ecclesially as well as personally, there is a Presence and a power that holds us as the storm buffets us left and right. It is a creative Spirit-power that gives life to all that is. Bonded to the DNA that is the gift of my parents, this life-giving creative energy pulsates at the depth of my being. This is where the rejoicing comes from.

I rejoice that I indeed, like John, am a voice crying in the wilderness of the chaos around me…I rejoice that what I await has already come, has already grasped me, is already at work in my one wild little life. Yet I still wait with immense longing for that Guest within me to have full sway in my life, to be revealed in how I live, to be born of me. I wait to be able to give this gift to the world. Rejoice? You bet. I rejoice in the God who is the joy of my soul, who like the Mary who carried him, I cry out: “…for he has clothed me with a robe of salvation…a mantle of justice.” No, not mere pious exhortation, but fact…the facts of faith.

What might this vision offer? In its proposal, Aquinas Institute offers an authentic catholic vision. It offers no narrow sectarian catholicity, but a truly catholic openness to the truth wherever it might be found. Catholic means universal, not only geographically but intellectually, a catholicity that does not fear the truth it learns from others. Nor does it hesitate to respectfully voice the truth from its own deepest tradition.

To plan for a position among its faculty for someone who will keep us open and learning from the full human community is to set the Institute on a course of deep and full catholicity. It is to offer the church a window into those whose lives and worship differs from ours, yet who are our neighbors. It is to make available to our students the knowledge they will need to move with respect and awareness in the global community.

What if that point was to tell humankind that it was beloved, that it is the object of the wildest love as the Song of Solomon says? What if that precious book of scripture in the Jewish canon is the overture to a symphony? What if the Divine is using the Jewish Jesus to offer a paradigm of what the Divine wants to accomplish with very person, every people, every nation, every ethnic group?

I too must ponder this. It implies that Jesus is not just for Christianity but for humanity. It implies that this self-giving life is the pattern for mine…for ours…for our nation’s…for our world, and we live this out according to our distinct religious traditions…

just a thought…

Where is the Spirit hovering today to bring forth the Word? What fruits of the Spirit do we detect among our Jewish brothers and sisters, in Islam’s Q’uran? How do we speak of the Word of God today – that same Word that spoke on Sinai and through the prophets? That Word which has fused itself to human DNA taken from a young Jewish woman? Is the Word struggling to emerge in Iraq? What will it look like when it does? Who is this Jesus who so scandalizes us by his Jewish particularity? What if he isn’t “our” Jesus, but rather the one who has come to show all peoples what the wedding of God with their humanity looks like? He is either for all of us or he is not what we say he is. Much for us to think deeply about…to pray about…to try to find words for…yes?

The Catholic tradition is very clear that Jesus knew no sin, but became sin for us in his sacred humanity. By taking on our rejection of God, his passion shows us what we have done to ourselves and what we do to one another. In his flesh we see that sin shreds our humanity. In the mystery of the crucified we see the Word of God mute. We see the God of Sinai’s thundering word silent. We see the Word of God married indissolubly to human brokenness.

But what does this really mean? How do we speak of this in a meaningful way today – in our time, to our students, to our friends, and to ourselves? Is this but a worn out belief, and as such meaningless for our day-to-day lives?

The sinlessness of Jesus needs to be looked at anew. We might begin by admitting that we who do the looking are broken human beings. We’ve been broken and suffer the effects of the decisions others have made. We are often the victims of the decisions of parents, teachers, clergy, doctors, and strangers. We didn’t ask to be victims. We enter this world taking our place alongside our fellow human beings who suffer from its violence, corruption, and pollution. And all this as we draw our first infant breath!

But most of us also entered the world of someone’s love and care, of someone’s tenderness and instruction. Here we learned how not to remain victims. Here we learned hope and trust and even forgiveness. We learned how to live beyond our brokenness, beyond the urge for vengeance, beyond manipulation, corruption, and violence.

What would it look like for a human being to start out not being broken? What would it be like to start out whole? What if the ego was clear not opaque? What if the person was selflessly open, not cramped with selfishness? We really don’t know. We’ve not been there. This is simply not part of our experience of ourselves.

To be honest, my selfishness comes to my rescue. When I don’t want to listen to you, or to your opinions, I just shut you out. When past trauma engraves itself on my psychic memory and paralyzes my choices, I shut down. When I emotionally lose my cool, I chalk it up to inheriting the bad temper of my father. I escape – from my very self.

But what if there is no escape? What if my clear openness makes me see the truth you are trying to tell me? What if I can’t hide your rejection of me in the privacy of my psychic scarring? What if it’s right up front in my conscious awareness, right before my very eyes? What if I feel every human emotion without the escape that repression offers? I would love passionately and hate evil with all my soul. I’d long for what might be with all my being, and be repelled from what would rob me of it. I’d know spontaneous joy, and taste the depths of sorrow and compassion. I’d know the fear of losing what I love and the courage of choices true to myself. I’d hope for the full realization of all I could be, and realistically accept my human limitations. In other words, I would experience full human vulnerability and human beauty – without sin and its effects. I would be really me.

Perhaps that’s what we mean when we say Jesus is sinless. He knows the fullness of human vulnerability and beauty. Perhaps that’s why he is the Way, the Gate, the Door, the Truth, the Life. He shows me how to really enter into my very self.

Carla Mae Streeter, OP

Bush says we’re it. If the world doesn’t see it that way, tough. We’ve been made righteous. We really know what freedom is all about. It’s time the rest of the world should shape up. It’s time the rest of the world looks like us.

But a lot of us - I for one, and perhaps you, too - don’t see it that way. Maybe we can grab hands and like Alice, go through the looking glass. Our looking glass is faith. Like the pupil of the eye, it opens up our seeing. Without the pupil, our iris could flex all day trying to let in the light, but to no avail. God tells Catherine our reason is opened up by faith. The eye itself sees fully only when the pupil is healthy.

What will we see through the looking glass of faith? What really is the base of the “New” Community? Can we catch glimpses of it already here, or is it some far distant dream that comes only in the deep night of our sleep to haunt us? What is distorted about the point of view of the president of our nation?

Righteousness is easy to claim. It is easy to claim you are “saved” – you’ve made your decision for Jesus, and your salvation insurance is paid. Your word to the world is “Pay up, the rest of you out there – become righteous as we are righteous.” But what if your life says something else? What if who you are and what you do betrays what you claim?

Preaching the New Community does not begin with claims. Our lives speak. Our presence proclaims. The fruit of our living is either sound or rotten. We are worded women, worded men, before we open our mouths to say anything. It is here, in people, that we find glimpses of the New Community.

What we see first in the looking glass is people. Oh, yes, there are problems, but first there are people – people who might have problems. When we begin with the problems we tend to get stuck in them and miss the people. This is the base of the New Community, people who are bonded by a common humanity, and held in a Love none of us understands if we are truly honest.

Open your eyes. It is all around you, this new community. You will glimpse it in the hospital ward, where sick children of all races are being played with by volunteers; it is there in the Altzheimer’s unit where dedicated nurses make sure the patients are at peace and secure; it is in the military hospital where a team is tenderly fitting a soldier with a prosthesis; it is in the inner city classroom where the kids are putting on Shakespeare before a wrapt audience of parents; it is in the field where a group of farmers have decided to go organic because they are concerned about polluting the water table with pesticides; it is offering a job to a black applicant because she simply is better qualified.

Righteousness is not something we claim. Righteousness claims us, and we manifest it in the way we deal with people. As a nation, we have a very checkered record as seen through this looking glass. Could that be why others resent us so?

True righteousness can be easily spotted. Look for Love’s discretion. Another name for it is prudence. It means making sure you know all the facts – as best you can – before making a snap judgment - about anyone, about anything. In the meantime, you are respectful, tolerant, and open. Look for Love’s fairness. We call it justice. It tends to what others need. It spreads resources around. Keep your eyes open for Love’s courage. We call if fortitude. Don’t miss the little people. They have it in an amazing degree from their daily struggles. Look for Love’s moderation. Not too much, not too little. We call it temperance. To make it really simple, just keep your eyes open for the most courteous among us. Courtesy is a blend of discretion, fairness, courage, and moderation.

So, Mr. President, would you want to re-think this righteousness claim? When what I spot in our people starts to appear in our government as we relate to others around the world, then you will have my ear. Until then, I for one, offer our world neighbors a sincere apology for our arrogance, for so often not walking the talk. And I will rejoice when it is clear for all to see that we do walk the talk. That’s what I see through the looking glass.