Hearing Voices

Rumi was right; there ARE whispers in the wind, just waiting for your ears and mind and heart to open to them. It is the reason to meditate and to take time for quiet. 

In my childhood, I knew instinctively how to listen. Growing up Catholic, I was encouraged, and obliged to spend time in prayer, worship and contemplation. Then I got older and forgot, relying instead on prominent voices of society, of expectations, of being the best "me"; yes, but in order to do something that was always just out of reach.

One of these voices from the past returned to me, bringing a flood of memories and provocations, just the other day. The BVMs or Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary took front and center stage, out of the blue, rising out of the sea like a watery image from the past, great and vivid and life-like.

I accompanied my darling daughter, a junior in high school, on a visit to a couple of the colleges on her "where I would do anything to be able to attend" list in Chicago. Northwestern, the first on the day's agenda, was breathtakingly beautiful, on the shores of Lake Michigan, which, if you've never seen it, is most ocean-like in its breadth, color and beauty. The campus is self-contained and made up of a village of austere, New England-like buildings alongside brand new, glass-filled wonders. The scholarship is so renowned that they are not attempting to sell you on the school so much as inform you about the liberal arts program and the opportunities that are there because Chicago is there. I am for the liberal arts education model, in support of a well-rounded person capable of understanding the world on more than one level, so this held much appeal.

We made our way across the second campus of the day, and this took a leisurely moment, since the magnolia trees were blooming against a background of green sea-like lake and blue, blue sky, and each step was a marvel to behold; waves crashing against the rocks lining the campus. This was Loyola University. As we neared our destination, we came across a plaque mentioning the BVM's of Dubuque...my BVM's! Now Loyola is Jesuit (the scholastic branch of the priesthood, if you will), and these particular BVM's are to education what the Jesuits are to the same. Mary Frances Clark and her friends were the founders of the first college I attended, and a fearless bunch of educators hors pair. Early in their lives, they took on the mission of educating girls to improve their prospects; from Ireland to New York to Dubuque, Iowa. Clarke College, now Clarke University, was founded by the sisters in my hometown. Here they were at Loyola. Their mission, invited by the Jesuits to found a woman's college, was to help girls and women pull themselves out of poverty through education, especially immigrant women whose lives were entrenched in misery in factories full of danger, or worse. The BVMs I knew as a student were no less revolutionary and dedicated.

                                 Mundelein Hall: with angels Uriel and Jophiel standing guard
                           Them angels be  4 Stories High (like Ursula in the Little Mermaid)

The more surprising connection? Without knowing any of this, it is here that my oldest daughter is about to begin law school in the fall, in order to become an international law and immigration specialist, at Loyola. My alma mater had caught up to us in this odd, tiny, extraordinary way. 

       The graduate in her own space, with family; brothers on left, Dad, Grampa, Grama, Child,          Mama, siblings in front.

For me, this was a reminder of the kinship of all and of the impossibility of ignoring this fact as I walk upon the earth. There is no true separation between people and places, except for the one we attempt to create through divisions and labels that suit us. The interdependence of each nation, person and critter, as small as it may be, is reality. As a woman and a mother, it is the responsibility I have to leave the world a better place than I found it. The answer, alas, is not simply telling my children how to live their lives (not that I do not do that every single day), it is to model a deeper level of care, of faith and roots, which comes from that still place inside  I cultivate.