Module One: Preparing for Our Emerging Future: What is the World Asking Us to Be?

This material may be downloaded as a PDF below.

September 2024 - November 30, 2024

REFLECTION PRIOR TO GATHERING WITH OTHERS

Watch on your own this 24-minute video excerpt taken from Re-Envisioning Charism: Now and For the Future." The excerpt is a presentation by theologian Maria Cimperman, RSCJ who addressed the question: "To what is the charism of religious life inviting us today?" If you wish to watch the whole video which also includes presentations by theologians Addie Lorraine Walker, SSND and Juliet Mousseau, RSCJ, it is available here.

Re-Envisioning Charism: Now and For the Future: Maria Cimperman, RSCJ

Maria Cimperman, RSCJ offered reflections on stances, ways forward and horizons that are before religious life today.

Stances

"Answer the darkness" by being light
Give witness that is public
Great interior freedom and depth

Ways Forward

A culture of encounter
Creating space for hospitality, healing, growth
Offer the world our way of being community: synodality

Horizons

Global sisterhood
Intentionally living interculturality
Together, as religious, offering a response to the cries of our time

Reflection Questions for Your Personal Use (can be shared later at a gathering)

What evidence of these do you see in your community?
Which of these do you find attractive or challenging?
How are you being drawn?
What do you believe the world is asking of you and your sisters?

Reading:

This is a critical point in the evolution of religious life that calls us to see the charism and identity of religious life as gifts of the Spirit joining us together in broader and deeper ways that transcend our individual identities and institutes. God is bringing forth something new in a growing collective consciousness that realities of deep change are presenting an opportunity to strengthen religious life and one another through intentional solidarity and renewed commitment to greater interdependence. -- Excerpt from LCWR Assembly 2024 presentation, "Discerning Our Emerging Future: Learnings from the Journey," by Anne Munley, IHM.

Song:

“Song Like a Seed,” Sara Thomsen (click on link to play)

Ay, what to sing about in these days
What rhyme of melody, turn of phrase?
What is your story now, where is your gaze?
Ay, what to sing about in these days?

Towers are tumbling, tumbling down
Fortresses fumbling, crumbling crowns
Governments grumbling, as they drown
Towers are tumbling, tumbling down

Plant your song like a seed
Hold your heart like a prayer bead
Give your breath like a tree
Set your soul’s deep love free

I know a woman who walks and prays
Follows the river’s old rambling ways
Eagle flies over and butterflies play
Watching the warrior walk and pray

What is your story now, where is your heart?
This is a one-act play, what’s your part?
In every ending there’s some new start
What is your story now, where’s your heart?

There is a garden that grows at night
Then in the winter it tucks in tight
Drifts off in dreams about birds in flight
That carry seeds of this garden’s life

Gathering with Other Women Religious

(Designed for a 75-minute session)

Leader welcomes all and reviews the plan for the gathering

Opening Prayer: Esther, Women of Strength, Risks Everything for Her People

Antiphon (All): Perhaps you have come for just a time as this. (Esther 4:14)

Leader: Remember who you are! Speak . . .

Response: Perhaps you have come for just a time as this.

Leader: Esther listened to Mordecai’s prophetic challenge. She knew herself to be stretched between two lives. . .

Response: Perhaps you have come for just a time as this.

Leader: Resolve seized the heart of Esther and she chose.

Response: Perhaps you have come for just a time as this.

Leader: Her words were carried out by faithful messengers . . . Three days they fasted.

Response: Perhaps you have come for just a time as this.

Leader: Her face radiated joy and love; but her heart shrank with fear before the king.

Response: Perhaps you have come for just a time as this.

Leader: He said, ‘Take heart; you will not die.”

Response: Perhaps you have come for just a time as this.

Leader: In the land the people rejoiced with feasting, with dancing.

Response: Perhaps you have come for just a time as this.

(Excerpts from Miryam of Nazareth by Ann Johnson, 2005 edition pp. 40-42.)

Breakout Sessions - Round One

Allow approximately 25 minutes for this conversation in groups of 4-5

Participants briefly introduce themselves and then share ideas on the following questions using contemplative dialogue. Please allow each participant in your group an opportunity to speak once before anyone speaks a second time. After all have spoken , participants listen carefully to what was shared and note the emergence of shared wisdom in the dialogue.

What evidence of the stances, ways forward, and horizons noted by Maria Cimperman, RSCJ do you see in your community?
Which of these do you find attractive or challenging?
How are you being drawn?
What do you believe the world is asking of you and your sisters?

Large Group Sharing

Allow approximately 10 minutes for a few people to speak

Leader invites anyone who would like to share briefly about one key insight that emerged in the breakout session conversation that might be helpful for all to hear. Keeping the insights brief will allow the group to hear many of the key insights.

Breakout Sessions - Round Two

Allow approximately 25 minutes for this conversation in groups of 4-5. These will be different groups from round one.

Large Group Sharing

Allow approximately 10 minutes for a few people to speak

Contemplative Pause

Closing Prayer

All: Perhaps we, women religious, have come for just a time as this.

Additional Resources for Continuing Your Reflection and Conversation

Cimperman, Maria, Religious Life for Our World: Creating Communities of Hope, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York, 2020
Occasional Papers, “Mission: An Ever-Evolving Vortex of Love,” Mary Ellen Higgins, IHM, Winter 2024, 18-19
Occasional Papers, “Watching the World with Wonder: An Interview with Padraig O’ Tuama,” Summer 2024, 8-11
Williams, Shannen Dee, Subversive Habits: Black Catholic Nuns in the Long African American Freedom Struggle, Duke University Press, May, 2022
Video: “The Civil Rights Act of 1964 After 60 Years: Challenges and Questions for Voters and the Nation in 2024” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rDYBIBOMvE
Video: “The Vocation of Journalists in a Time of Testing: Lessons from David Carr,” June 18, 2024 https://catholicsocialthought.georgetown.edu/events/the-vocation-of-journalists-in-a-time-of-testing

Module One Materials as Downloadable PDFs

You may wish to download and print both the personal reflection sheet and the material for the group sharing (which may be used with your own community or on the LCWR Zoom sessions open to all women religious) below.