Demographic collapse is tough ground to build a case for
hope on. Yet, that's exactly where Marcia Allen, CSJ, began her presidential
address, entitled "Transformation – An Experiment in Hope," to the
Assembly of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) last week.
She didn't talk about diminishment or downsizing, as women
religious are apt to do. She didn't sugarcoat the facts or put on rose-colored
glasses. No, she stood as a leader of the largest association of the leaders of
congregations of Catholic women religious in the United States and spoke the
truth: Membership is collapsing.
"Our members are virtually evaporating!" Allen
declared as she provided the statistics to support such a claim. What once
served the leaders of 150,000 to 181,000 members will by 2025 serve the
leadership of fewer than 29,000 sisters.
I can't imagine anyone in the room was shocked, but, as I
read and reread Allen's remarks later, I was struck by the clarity and realism
with which she spoke and wrote. What might at first seem tragic, struck me
instead as awe-inspiring. This was real — and when we face reality, whether it
is in ourselves or in the systems we are a part of, there is potential for
growth. If demographic collapse was being so frankly discussed on a public
stage, there might be hope. After all, the topic at hand was transformation,
not desolation.
I have often said that as a young woman, I came to religious
life knowing full well the reality of religious life. To the extent that I
could, that is true. Yet, as with all things that we come to as an outsider, I
could only know so much. At times, the reality of collapse is starker than I
ever realized and in certain moments, it is actualized in ways I never would
have imagined. In time, I've come to grapple with it more fully and to
understand what exactly it means for me and the women I call sisters. Some days
it spurs hope, other days it brings gratitude, and on even more days it causes
me to wonder if change is possible.
The amalgamation of these thoughts and emotions is what
Marcia Allen's poignant words struck on in me. And in her upfront naming of
reality, I recognized that this, in fact, is the reality we need to move
beyond.
Our task now is not to develop a new way of seeing the old.
We're not meant to rearrange what we have, to make a new plan or to remodel
what has been. The task at hand is to allow for a totally new view ― to
recognize a new horizon.
The only way to see a new horizon, though, is to change
where you are standing. Like falling asleep on a road trip, we awake to find
that the cityscape we once saw has given way to fields of green and a flat
horizon. Perhaps that is the way it is with hope and the transformation of
religious life, too. For so many years, we've told ourselves numbers will
increase and change will come. The change, though, has come in a different way,
not in the form of new and abundant vocations, but in the inevitable impact of
time. As we have waited and worked in hope, collapse has taken its toll.
So much has already changed, but still, no matter our
numbers, we choose from where we see, and we have the opportunity to take in a
new horizon. To see, as Allen puts it, "a whole horizon of possibility, a
landscape filled with potential and unlimited opportunities." We cannot
just sustain what was, we must develop questions that move us beyond now,
meeting the needs of the future.
Reaching that new horizon, however, requires shifting our
stance. It means approaching religious life in new ways, deconstructing
systems, and gambling on the essence of our foundations. This isn't easy. No
one ever said it would be.
In futility and desperation, we might shout out: "Tell
me where to stand!" No one can, though. Like the Israelites in the desert,
we wander. Taking in our surroundings and our reality, we keep our eyes on the
horizon, bracing ourselves for what is to come. We remember too, that God works
in the darkness. The wind blows through the night to part the Red Sea; in
darkness, the Spirit hovers above the waters of Creation to bring forth life.
As a newer member in religious life, this wandering can be tiring but it is also formative. Just as Marcia Allen says that transformation is an experiment in hope, so is religious life today. It is an experiment that we take part in — that we give our whole selves to. In faith that leads to hope, we traverse the landscape.
And that is where Allen's words speak particularly to the new reality we face:
After all the rational has been tried; after the solutions have been articulated and failed; when old language turns to ashes in our mouths, then we are reduced to silence. That is when hope is activated. In the belief that something will come of the ravages of collapse, hope is forged. Against a far horizon, revealed obliquely in the periphery, the big question begins to emerge already articulate in new language. In the exchange with one another you began to see clearly what you are creating and why; that is, you began to see where the exploration of reinvention begins.
This is as true for elected congregational leaders as it is for sisters in the everyday.
In dialogue with one another and with God, reinvention begins. Collapse becomes the means for resurrection, and new life surfaces on a horizon you never saw before.
That is the life, however uncertain and imperfect, that we choose to live. It's an experiment in hope, a search for new horizons and a belief that faith can transform the world.
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