Rev. Dr. Nancy Parent Bancroft
Pastor Paula’s theme this summer has been, “Stories from the Spirit, Stories from the Heart.” I will continue with that theme, but instead of reading excerpts from published books like she has done, I’ll share stories from my experience of living in Lyon, France for three months this spring.
« Elle a enterré cent cinquante sœurs ».
“She buried one hundred and fifty sisters.”
That’s the first thing that I heard said about Sister Marie Therese after she died.
But let me start at the beginning.
I arrived in France on Sunday, April 7th. The following Sunday, Sister Rita, who I was living with, suggested that we go to visit the sisters at Vernaison.
In 1823, Mother St. John Fontbonne, the sister who re-established the Sisters of St. Joseph after the French Revolution, bought a building in what was then the country, and is now the town of Vernaison, to enable elderly and sick sisters to reach a peaceful end of life. It’s a lovely place with beautiful gardens and now serves as a nursing home for the general public as well as for sisters. When we arrived at Vernaison, Sister Marie Therese greeted us warmly. A retired nurse, at eighty-six she was still working full-time caring for the spiritual needs of the sisters in the home. She was the one primarily responsible for accompanying them in their dying: learning about their last wishes, interacting with their family members, spending time with them and preparing their funerals. Marie Therese let us know that Sr. Bernadette, age 105 and who also had been a nurse could use a visit. Sr. Bernadette is now blind but has her full mental capacities. Though a strong woman of faith, she finds the transition from an active ministry to spending most of her days just sitting around quite challenging. Though I was meeting her for the first time, she shared openly with us and I was pleased to see that she was smiling by the end of our visit.
Next stop, Sr. Genevieve, only eighty-six. She was an educator all of her adult life, including some time in Africa. After she retired, she spent ten years working with the gypsies in France. She traveled from place to place driving a caravan set up as a one-room school house. The caravan had a shower and full clothes closet that the gypsies could use to wash and change into something clean. She returned each day to teach the children until the authorities found them and forced them to move. When that happened, she would drive around until she found them in their new location and minister to them there each day until they were again forced to move and she would have to once again search for them. Sr. Genevieve had scrapbooks full of pictures of her gypsy families and could have entertained us all day with her amazing adventures. But it was time for Rita and I to head back to Lyon.
On our way out we met Sr. Marie Therese again and she insisted that we join her for a cup of cocoa, coffee or a cold drink before we left. She was a warm and charming person and little did we know that just that week she had been diagnosed with a virulent form of leukemia and had only a very short time to live. Though very tired, she continued to work full time assisting the sick and aged sisters. It was a surprise to everybody when she entered hospice care a week before I returned to Maine. I attended her funeral the day before I flew back home. It was held in the large chapel at Vernaison which was packed with people of all ages who loved her. Three generations of family members, lots of sisters, the nursing home staff, and townspeople including the mayor all participated. Many spoke, highlighting her ability to listen deeply, encourage warmly and create a loving community atmosphere. Many described her simplicity and love of life. And several commented that in her twenty-three years there, though officially retired, she had buried one hundred and fifty sisters.
I’ll come back to these stories in a bit, but let me jump to this morning’s scripture readings.
The reading from Kings is an interesting one. Scripture scholars tell us that it is one of the passages that give evidence to the fact that even though Solomon lived 1200 years after Abraham, the father of Jewish monotheism, he likely worshiped other Gods besides Yahweh. Solomon had several foreign wives and he built temples for them so that they could offer sacrifices to their gods, and Solomon sometimes worshiped with them. But even though we read in Exodus that Yahweh is a jealous God, the fact that Solomon « offered sacrifices at the high places, » in other words at many temples, God didn’t seem to mind. God loved him and came to him in a dream to tell him so and to gift him. And we hear that God is pleased that Solomon asks for Wisdom. In this context he is asking , to know God better – similar to the woman at the well who asked Jesus, where should we worship, where you say or where the Samaritans say?
What pleases God is that Solomon is seeking a deeper relationship with him.
The modern-day mystic, Episcopal priest, writer, and internationally known retreat leader. Cynthia Bourgeault defines Wisdom as an underground stream that feeds and nurtures the life of all religious and spiritual traditions. This wisdom, the wisdom of Solomon, is a universal body of truth and reality that is deeper and more fundamental than any religion. It’s the essence of the Sacred.
And Bourgeault says that in a very fundamental way, just as water needs a vessel to receive it, consciousness is required for us to benefit from true Wisdom. We need to be alert, open to, aware of Wisdom. This consciousness has many names: Thomas Merton and Thomas Keating referred to as a luminous seeing – a silent way of knowing. It’s an emptiness of content, what Pope Gregory I called, “resting in God.” This awareness, surpasses our senses and our mental ability. We just know. But this Wisdom does require a consciousness, a mindfulness, an awakening.
There are many spiritual, mental and physical exercises promoted by numerous religious traditions and spiritual practices that foster this awakening; what Cynthia Bourgeault calls “not snoozing in your life.”
Our religion, Christianity, is Incarnational. We believe that God is in the world in all of its beauty and messiness and that we can experience the Divine everywhere and in everything. Some people experience a closeness to God most especially when we celebrate the Eucharist on the first Sunday of each month. For others, hearing the Word of God here in church or quietly reading scripture alone is the most common way of experiencing God’s presence. For others it’s in Nature, or through relationships.
God is TOTALLY present in all of these and in other ways. Most of us like to celebrate annual feasts, but really it’s always Christmas – Emmanuel, God-with us. And it’s always Easter. The Risen Christ is always in our midst, presenting the possibility of an individual relationship with the Sacred. It’s us that is more or less present to God through these experiences.
You know what I’m talking about. You’ve had those moments of just knowing that you are in the Sacred. And it affects you.
It’s important that this contemplation, this luminous seeing, this resting with, not be an intellectual exercise. Because thinking can get us into trouble. Thinking opens us up to doubt -“How can this be? The Divine in personal relationship with little old me? ”
So contemplation, needs to be whatever and however we can fully step away from our distractions, our preoccupations, our anxieties, the activities of daily life that cause us stress and engage in an activity – walking on the beach, which we’re so fortunate to be able to do here on a regular basis, biking on a country road, sitting at a peaceful spot, kneeling, being with, serving in some capacity – whatever keeps us open , awake, alert and present.
It is then that Wisdom will move us, heal us, comfort us, challenge us, present new ways of being, new forms of serving, emerging new possibilities.
Bourgeault says that growing in Wisdom is about moving steadily in consciousness and compassion so as to be able to fully engage in the world and become active participants in its transition to its next evolutionary unfolding. What Revelation refers to as, “A new heaven and a new earth.
Please pick up and look at your bulletin. Each week you’re handed one by a cheerful greeter. The picture on it changes, as does the date and the theme of the service, but every bulletin has the same heading each week: “Union Church …peace and presence by the sea.” Yes, it is this place, this lovely 160-year-old building that brings us comfort when we enter it. But WE are the church. We are called to be Peace and Presence by the sea and everywhere else that we go. We are called to incarnate the Devine. And like the sisters I told you about this morning, we don’t retire from this. And it is growing in Wisdom, being increasingly aware of the Sacred in and around us, that will help us be witnesses to the Divine.
Although I kept quite busy in France, as those of you who read my Facebook entries can attest to, I did, for some reason, experience both a more constant awakening to the present as well as a quieting, a slowing down, which did lead to a deeper level of knowing. In part it was being in a new place, a beautiful place as I’ve described. It was being away from the familiar. Routine can be comforting, but it can dull us. It can cause us to take our daily blessings and beauty for granted. And awakening, becoming more conscious of God’s presence, was in large part a result of living with and meeting so many strong, compassionate, and dedicated women like the ones that I told you about this morning.
Many of you know that I’ve been invited back to France to live there for a year and that I’ll be leaving soon. Some of you have asked me what I’m going to do there. The answer is, for the most part, I don’t know. Actually, an important lesson that I’ve learned in retirement, is that what we do is not nearly as important as who we are. Wisdom, awareness of the divine, affects how we position ourselves in the world; open, courageous, generous, peaceful and present. I pray that I and you take the time and opportunities that we have, make the effort to be awake, and accept the grace to grow in Wisdom so that we can be a witnessing presence, so that we can impact the world by a quality of presence , a shift in energy, infusing compassion and perhaps impacting social platforms that make the world more just.
May we all take the time and make the effort to grow in Wisdom and be Peace and Presence.