Spirituality | Neville Ann Kelly, D.Min., Ph.D.

Tapestry in Time: The Story of the Dominican Sisters Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1966-2012. Edited by Mary Navarre, OP

March 4, 2016 By Neville Ann Kelly

This compelling, collaborative history chronicles American Dominican sisters’ experience of significant changes following the Second Vatican Council’s call for ressourcement and aggiornamento. I am privileged to know many religious sisters, and this book invited me to more intimately participate in their congregations’ energetic, transformative, and sometimes disorienting reforms in the decades following the Council.

This is a story that needs to be told by those who lived it.

Joining other recent works celebrating the immense—but often overlooked—contributions and lived history of religious and monastic women, this book paints a vividly detailed portrait of how the sweeping reforms affected sisters’ individual lives and their communities. A sequel to Period Pieces: An Account of the Grand Rapids Dominicans 1853–1966 by archivist Mona Schwind (Grand Rapids: Sisters of St. Dominic, 1991), this work uses primary, experiential sources to discuss events within the changing theological contexts that prompted them.

Among these Dominicans, response to the Council inspired extraordinary transformations of liturgy, spirituality, education, community life, and ministry, each considered in four distinct parts. An introductory preamble situates the volume in the upheavals of the twentieth century and reflects on how the sisters’ varied responses to change resemble the community-stitched liturgical tapestry in the renovated Marywood Chapel. Like the textile, these interwoven strands represent the simultaneous unity of the congregation and the diversity of its members.

Where once a clear hierarchy, large group living, and a monastic-styled interior focus had structured daily life for centuries, Vatican II called these sisters beyond “the trials of childhood dependency and the adolescent turbulence of fierce independence” to “the give and take of adults living and dying in interdependence and mutuality” (p. 149). Turning to the originating sources of Scripture and the Dominican tradition, and guided by the signs of the times, these sisters boldly implemented reforms through a collegial creativity and dedicated commitment to “find Dominic’s tune for this nuclear space age” (p. 61).

Part 1: Challenge, Innovation, and Experimentation

Part 1 discusses landmark changes to personal and community prayer. Experimentation with different forms of prayer remained distinctly faithful to Saint Dominic’s ecclesial—yet innovative—tradition, allowing measured experimentation with new ideas and practices. A section on sisters’ first use of the vernacular English and Spanish in communal liturgy allows post-Vatican II readers the opportunity to discover this beauty as if for the first time.

Dominicans’ intense involvement in developing inclusive language for sacred texts and psalmody followed, along with other innovations all eyeing retrieval of order’s original, founding spirit. Discovery and development of charismatic gifts, liturgical dance, expanded annual retreats, architectural renovations, and a particular emphasis on sisters’ ministry of preaching led to a number of pioneering educational conferences and institutes. Uniformity of observance gave way to collaboration, dialogue, creativity, diversity, and social consciousness, yielding a renewed focus on the Dominican charism of study.

Part II: Shifting Identity and Mission

Covered in Part II, intellectual and spiritual formation involved extensive revision of sisters’ approach to theology and its concrete application in the world. Inspired by Cardinal Suenen’s Nun in the World: Religious and the Apostolate (London: Burns & Oates,1963), insightful leaders like Sister Aquinas Weber (prioress 1966-1972) guided the congregation through the challenging implementation of Perfectae Caritatis. The pre-Vatican II emphasis on external symbols such as uniform clothing, gave way to a deepened understanding of sisters’ essential identity and mission, and expanded their potential in professional theology and secular arts and sciences.

Parts III & IV: Interpretation, Conflict, and New Horizons

Not surprisingly, Part III on the common life and Part IV on ministry both reflect the profound conceptual shifts underlying post-Conciliar reform. Issues of conflict over the many changes reflected sisters’ varied interpretations, and disagreements arose at times. For example, modification of the traditional Dominican habit, essentially unchanged since its medieval design, required prolonged discussion, debate, and experimentation. Living in non-convent styled houses without an appointed superior offered another difficulty that required finding new ways of intentional community life, “not dependent on common walls, but common hearts” (p. 145).

As Vatican II opened the windows to the world, sisters opened their daily lives to others, religious or laity, including those who had left their community and lay associates. Formation of a collaborative novitiate and numerous coalitions assisted sisters in an expanded vision for Aquinas College while supporting establishment of missions in New Mexico, and Chimpote, Peru while serving in varied ministries of peacemaking and justice worldwide.

Remaining Faithful

Narrator Mary Navarre concludes this compelling, well edited and exquisitely organized compilation of theologically grounded memoirs by reflecting on why “this is a story that needs to be told by those who lived it” (p. 282). This approach succeeds in opening an illuminating portal into both the profound and mundane transformations of post-Conciliar Dominican life. While some readers may wish for inclusion of critique of the Roman Catholic hierarchy’s recent investigation of the American Leadership Conference of Women Religious, Navarre insists that while “investigations and assessments flare up, come and go” (p. 284), sisters are more imminently concerned with living authentic lives of deep prayer, study, common life, and socially conscious service, while viewing “always in the distance—the shadow of the cross” (p. 286).

TAPESTRY IN TIME: The Story of the Dominican Sisters, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1966-2012, edited by Mary Navarre. ISBN 978-0-8028-7255-5. Eerdmans, 2015, pp. 336. $20.00 pb.

Reviewed by Neville Ann Kelly. Excerpts from this review were originally published in Catholic Books Review.

Excerpt, Bernard McGinn’s “The Future of Past Spiritual Traditions” | Benedictine History

May 19, 2015 By Neville Ann Kelly

Any religious history brings about new inquiry into the spirituality that birthed, sustained, and continues to effect its interpretation. As past events remain grounded in their specific contexts, they speak to us in ways informed by our own. Eminent spiritual historian Bernard McGinn considers “The Future of the Past Spiritual Traditions” in the Spring, 2015 issue of Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality. An insightful excerpt:

How are we to relate to tradition? All too often those who proclaim themselves the ‘guardians of tradition’ have insisted that they are handing down what was ‘always the same’ (semper idem) from the time of the Apostles. Nevertheless, as many modern studies of tradition, both theological and philosophical have shown, the act of handing on (traditio/ paradosis) necessarily involves both similarity and dissimilarity, sameness and difference: we can never hand on precisely what we received, because we cannot plumb all that it meant to those who gave it to us, nor can we know all that it will mean to those who receive the gift from us and try to live it.

For many people the word ‘tradition’ implies a weight from the past inhibiting freedom and creativity, but I would side with Hans-Georg Gadamer who said: ‘To stand within a tradition does not limit the freedom of knowledge but makes it possible.’ I also like to cite a statement attributed to G. K. Chesterton, which defines tradition as ‘the democracy of the dead.’ But let us remember that in this election both the dead and the living get to vote, and the living can outvote the dead when the reasons are serious enough.

In the process of conveying the spiritual wisdom of the past to a new generation, I think we need to avoid the triumphalism of insisting that everything is semper idem (a temptation perhaps more pressing on institutional leaders than academics), as well as the contrary error of thinking that the wisdom of the past can have no real place in our brave ‘new world,’ precisely because it is past and our world is new.

Our task is to learn how to present spirituality/ mysticism in all its rich diversity in ways that facilitate informed decision and effective action, individual and communal, in a situation where we recognize, as Certeau put it, that ‘the past is not our security.’ There is no future without risk.” (p. 14)

Bernard McGinn. “The Future of Past Spiritual Traditions.” Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality 15.1 (2015): 1-18.

Source: Excerpt, Bernard McGinn’s “The Future of Past Spiritual Traditions” | Benedictine History

Revising Benedictine History: A Caution, Call, and Possibility

March 19, 2015 By Neville Ann Kelly

San Benedetto Altarpiece, Lorenzo Monaco (1407-1409)

Having spent a good many years as a member of a new monastic community, I had anchored my early experience in a sometimes misguided hope. I often—though unconsciously—presumed that such an intentional life, guided by a Rule, would transform its practitioners into paragons of virtuous charity and spiritual perfection through a kind of spiritual osmosis.

Wisdom proved otherwise with the course of time, and I began to understand that commitment to a particular way of life could—indeed—be immensely transformative and life giving. But the “osmosis” I presumed was not a universal given, nor did spiritual growth always look the same.

Inspiration in the Annals

I struggled to understand the disillusioning fragments of human frailty and failure as I discerned stepping away from my own community. Quite unexpectedly, I found a paradoxical source of inspiration in the annals of monastic history. The perpetual alternations of wisdom and folly I found there was a mirror of humanity, extraordinarily hope-filled at times and abysmally desperate at others.

Providentially, during this critical time of growth and discernment I became a student of Sister Ann Kessler, a Benedictine nun-historian who had made telling the story of monasticism her life’s work. Returning from numerous research forays to monastery libraries and archives around the world, she continued to share her extensive knowledge for over five decades at Mount Marty College as Professor of History, social activist, politician, and now retired monastic historian.

Benedictine Roots & History

During her active career, a number of Sister Ann’s students, monastic formation directors, and other academics persuaded her to collect her varied manuscripts, lecture notes, and illustrative handouts that accompanied her courses, lectures, and seminars into a book. Published by Sacred Heart Monastery in 1996, Benedictine Men and Women of Courage: Roots and History came to life as a detailed description of the development of the Order of Saint Benedict. The book presented an inclusive and comprehensive history finally available for its eager readers, uniquely interweaving the histories of both monks and nuns.

Called “monumental” by monastic historian Esther De Waal (2001, p. 162), the publication had long sold out and was no longer in print despite its demand. As a student, I meticulously photocopied the library’s volume for my coursework, and later digitalized—with the help of a near-heroic work-study study student of mine—its 540-plus pages. With Sister Ann’s permission, I placed the book for free download on the Web, not realizing I was destined to spend nearly a full year—over a decade later—extensively editing and revising the book into its new, more readable form.

The time had come for this important work to not only resurface, but to be made much more widely available. As I have written in the books’ new Preface, the book Benedictine Men and Women of Courage: Roots and History, Revised Edition (2014)

invites Benedictines and non-monastics to comprehend our present through the lens of both favorable and tragic past events, personalities, and contexts that continue to ground our present and shape our future. Sister Ann’s tireless zeal for monastic history and its implications for life within both the monastery and the world make this book a timely outpouring of love, caution, and possibility.

As Laura Swan, OSB writes in her Foreword to the Revised Edition,

People are looking anew at the possibilities of Benedictine spirituality and the monastic way of life. Intentional communities based on the Gospel, a Rule of Life, and with a commitment to works of justice continue to emerge. These new communities and traditional monastic communities are connecting. Families are basing family life and the raising of children on the Rule of Benedict. Increasing numbers of people are becoming oblates, bringing the wisdom of Benedict to their communities.

Beyond the urgency of this drive for connection, new contexts and questions arise. Monastic life continues an archetypical call to a deeper wisdom (Panikkar, 1982).

Deeper Roots, Emerging Wisdom

The appeal of the monastic values of grounded place, welcoming openness, and contemplative action transcends religious affiliation to reveal an intrinsic longing to lay down roots in the rich spiritual soil of an ancient lineage.

A life-encompassing Rule exerts its power in unexpected ways and places, without regard to its varied interpretations. The divergent response to “race along the way” (RB Prologue 49) makes the fifteen centuries of Benedictine change, decline, restoration, and renewal discussed in this book worthy of its new edition.

During years of an uncertain caution, I was called to consider new possibilities. Knowledge of monastic history had opened me to the complex unpredictability of the spiritual life. No longer an “osmotic” certainty, transformation takes shape differently across centuries, cultures, and individuals. It occurs in the presence of crisis and disillusionment, of banishment, censure, and annihilation as well as in the stable quietude of daily lives of prayer and work.

To order Benedictine Men and Women of Courage: Roots and History, Revised Edition and for more information, please visit the book website.

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References

De Waal, E. (1984/2001). Seeking God: The Way of St. Benedict. Collegeville: Liturgical Press.

Kessler, A. (1996). Benedictine Men and Women of Courage: Roots and History (1st edition). Yankton, S.D.: Sacred Heart Monastery.

Kessler, A., & Kelly, N.A. (2014). Benedictine Men and Women of Courage: Roots and History, Revised Edition. Seattle: Lean Scholar Press.

Panikkar, R. and North American Board for East-West Dialog. (1982). Blessed Simplicity: The Monk as Universal Archetype. New York: Seabury Press.

Integrating Direction

October 9, 2014 By Neville Ann Kelly

Christian spirituality relies upon faith, knowledge, understanding, compassionate action, and transcendent love. As we grow, we emphasize one or another of these dimensions, learning to integrate them consciously with time and practice.

Along the way, our different gifts, particular communities, and unique personalities can both help and hinder us in becoming all we want to become.

Just how each part of ourselves fits together into a whole can be quite a mystery! But discerning just this is often an essential step toward significant progress, but it rarely takes place independently. We need the experience of others, and the perspective they give us from the outside.

A skilled spiritual director recognizes that all these dimensions—and many more—contribute to the spiritual journey, and helps you discover how to distinguish each toward increasing wholeness and balance.

What is Spiritual Direction?

The idea of consulting with experienced guides has a venerable history across the world’s spiritual and religious traditions. Christian spiritual direction developed in the earliest centuries after Jesus as large numbers of men and women made their way to the Middle Eastern deserts seeking to pray and listen to those who later became known as desert fathers and mothers.

Over the centuries, Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Christianity developed distinct approaches to this ancient practice in their varied communities. While their settings, emphases, and practices differed, all held a common understanding that spiritual direction was a threefold relationship between:

A person seeking growth.
A listening companion.
The divine presence.

Who is a Spiritual Director?

A spiritual director differs from a pastor, counselor, or life coach. While the traditional term “director” seems to imply one person telling someone else what to do, its use in this context describes the process of mutual listening, support and challenge that originate in the client’s relationship with God, Spirit or however the divine presence is understood by that person.

Conversation with an experienced listener assists that individual identify and discern their own direction as revealed over time. A skillful practitioner relies more on an adaptable and personalized process of discernment than on exacting models or techniques, though traditional methods may be used as a starting point.

A spiritual “director” is more of a companion that listens with you to Wisdom, the true Guide. Supporting your development, the relationship challenges your blind spots and calls you to expand your vision beyond what you presently see.

Why Would I Want a Spiritual Director?

While churches, religious communities, and other organizations can offer teaching, mentoring and support for their members, your spiritual path may call you to a time of deepening and increasing growth. Such times can be greatly assisted by a qualified spiritual director who can companion you in venturing beyond your familiar territory.

Some people find periodic spiritual direction a key part of sustaining them through deepening and transition. Others establish long-term relationships with directors that may endure for decades. I have had the privilege of this kind of sustained relationship with a director.

Understanding your desire for direction and your options for finding one will help you discern your particular approach.

How Do I Find a Spiritual Director?

Traditionally, finding a director occurred either by an intentional search for a qualified person or serendipitous discovery of a compatible guide. As the ancient adage, “when the student is ready, the teacher appears” suggests, the latter means of discovery occurs naturally at the moment one is ready for it. When this occurs, it is a remarkable blessing of great worth!

If such a gift seems slow to occur, there are many resources available for finding a director, both online and in varied church communities and organizations. Many retreat centers offer spiritual direction, and a call or email to one nearby may be all you need to do to find just the right person. One helpful online international directory is the Seek and Find Guide from Spiritual Director’s International. There are many directors offering online, telephone, and face-to-face sessions that you can find by searching the Internet and contacting them.

Since spiritual direction usually lasts a full hour each session, most directors and retreat centers charge for this time-intensive ministry. Fees are commonly based on comparable services in the director’s geographical region. You should receive a clear outline of what your director charges and how you should pay them during your first session.

How do I Know a Spiritual Director is the Right Person for Me?

This is an important question, and is part of the initial discernment process you and your new-found guide will pursue. A director should provide introductory sessions that allow you to easily step away from that relationship if it does not meet your needs nor seem to fit.

A director will also be discerning whether he or she is the person for you as well, and may suggest colleagues or other resources that can assist you more fully.

Knowing whether the relationship is the right fit is a mutual discernment and an important step in both your journeys.

My Approach to Spiritual Direction

As a Roman Catholic with a strong Protestant background, I integrate Benedictine, Franciscan, Ignatian, and Carmelite spiritual traditions with contemporary developmental insights, upholding ancient wisdom while drawing from emerging knowledge about human interior growth. As a young Protestant, I was profoundly influenced by Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline, a book that began my hunger for a fully integrative approach to Christian life, service, devotion, and discipleship.

I esteem one’s faith tradition as a rock to build upon, but I also know there are many times those traditions are either absent or seem to come up short at intervals in our lives. There are other times we feel called to deepen and extend our interior lives, but are not sure how to proceed.

With over four decades of contemplative Christian life, ministry, advanced theological and spiritual direction training, I work with a variety of Christian and other adults desiring to deepen their interior lives, whether due to a simple sense of calling to “more,” or during faith challenges and transitions.

How I Work With People & An Invitation

In the early 2000’s, I attended a two-year spiritual direction formation program that has deeply confirmed and influenced the way I approach the spiritual direction relationship. The program’s title, “Listening to the Wisdom of the Heart,” summarizes my intention as a director. I value personal integrity, transparency and compassion, and honor the wisdom already present in each heart as primary spiritual guide.

I serve a small number of Roman Catholic and Protestant individuals, as well as those from non-Christian religions and those who consider themselves “spiritual but not religious,” by offering both support and challenge for their journeys. Sessions take place via prearranged telephone, Skype or in person when geographically practical. I charge a negotiable, income-based sliding scale rate.

I am currently available to companion a few new clients. If you would like to arrange a conversation to discuss possibilities, please feel free to contact me via the form below. I will respond to your inquiry as soon as possible.

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The Gift of Dispersion

June 16, 2014 By Neville Ann Kelly

The story of the Tower of Babel is an important key to stepping outward into the margin where we can see “inside” ourselves.

labyrinth of stairs

We previously noted how traditional interpretations of the dispersion of people after Babel (Genesis 11: 1-9) have labeled the event as God’s punishment. We also noted the difficulty of this interpretation since this presupposes the imposed differences to be undesirable, suggesting a divine preference for sameness and homogeneity that lacks evidence in the very diverse acts of creation elaborated earlier in Genesis.

Additionally, judgment upon folks coming together to build the story’s tower curiously appears in opposition to the natural drive for cultural solidarity, identity and belonging that has often contributed to human safety and preservation. Why would following this natural inclination incur divine wrath and retribution?

A Simple Gift

More questions arise as some interpreters take the scattering as a profoundly positive—rather than punitive—occasion for greater interpersonal growth. For one theologian, dispersion provides a space for “subtle and sensitive conversations, to the plurality of meanings, to nuances, poetry, creativity, and individuality” (Moyaert, 2009, p. 230) yielding authentic, self-transcending, and hospitable dialogue even across imposing barriers.

True as this may be, if you’ve ever read the rest of Genesis, that does not seem to be what happened to these folks (or to many of us when we are suddenly surrounded by a strange crowd). Rather than spaciousness, human beings seem more fundamentally to experience foreignness as a threat. Think about how you guard your valuables on a crowded subway!

We might see this story differently if we move outside of traditional or idealized interpretations. Beyond divine punishment or cultural opportunity, there is something very fundamental here we can easily miss. This simple idea can make all the difference in our ability to flourish and grow.

Dispersion to the Margins

Essentially, building this kind of metaphorical tower is a natural human experience. We come together with others to create things that cement our collective identity, and that give us a name and a place. Realizing this inclination as part of our human nature, God’s intervention results from humanity’s natural desire to find identity and solidarity with other people. In this light, the divine act of dispersion simply moves the tower builders away from their comfort zones.

The scattering moves a unified “us” to a far-reaching multitude of very diverse “others.”

Rather than judgment inveighed against Babel’s builders, verses 1 – 4 of the story describe what people naturally do: join together, uniting individuals through a common identity. This fundamental perspective provides a critical clue to understanding the divine response of scattered dispersion in verses 5 – 9.

Dispersion, rather than punishment, sends us to the margin where we can begin to step outward to more fully see ourselves and our religious and spiritual traditions. As such, this well known Hebrew story suggests the need not only for the solidarity of cohesive identities, but focuses us on stepping out into divergent uncertainty. From this scattering, we are gathered to our commonly held, multilingual otherness.

What might being on the periphery mean for you?

What do you see when you look in on yourself, your spirituality, or your religious tradition?

References

Hiebert, T. (2007). The tower of Babel and the origin of the world’s cultures. Journal of Biblical Literature, 126(1), 29-58.

Moyaert, M. (2009). A “Babelish” world (Genesis 11:1-9) and its challenge to cultural-linguistic theory. Horizons: The Journal of the College Theology Society, 36(2), 215-234.

This is a story that needs to be told by those who lived it.