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Sr Sue CosgroveTe Hikoi – The Journey In 1981 I swam without a costume for the first time! With the feeling of unease and daring, was an overwhelming sense of freedom. I was held up by the swirling waters and somehow it felt right. I touched my nakedness and vulnerability – I began to discover my strength. Looking back I see this event mirrored in the important decisions I was to make a few years later. I had been a nun for 19 years. My overwhelming desire was to serve God, and give myself totally to Him-high ideals of a 17 year old. I lived until entering, in a small South Island city. I was the third eldest (and a twin!) in a family of seven children. Our family life, with an English mother and a New Zealand father, was secure and fairly predictable. My mother was a convert to Catholicism, and on reflection I realise that this was a great gift to us as a family. It brought a freshness in terms of faith, we didn’t have a legacy of guilt-ridden fearful Catholic tradition! When I eventually talked of "entering the Convent" my father was open and supportive, my mother distressed with the mystery of it all. She knew I had potential and secretly, I think, felt "all would be lost!" I entered in 1968 when Vatican II was barely making an impact on my Congregation. I was "processed" according to the regulations of a New Zealand Congregation founded by a charismatic French woman, Suzanne Aubert. Her life had made, and continues to make a huge impact upon New Zealand. As a Sister of Compassion I was being prepared for a monastic way of life, engaging 12 hours a day in "apostolic" activities (and I really did enjoy working in the laundry for 3 years!) amid the call of the Church to "Renewal". Religious sometimes dwell now on the senseless regulations, the repression of feeling, the loss of personal identity, the power wielded arbitrarily by "superiors" that they feel characterised Sisters’ formation in pre-Vatican II days. I wouldn’t deny that all those elements were present. I was 17 years old, more or less straight from a relatively small all girls school, (I spent 10 weeks working in an antiques shop!). The novitiate life offered a rhythm of work, prayer, study and play. It was all-consuming and was lived without too much question. Initial formation took place south of the city of Wellington, surrounded by hills to wander on, and a rugged sea coast. Looking back I do experience some sorrow that the life was neither good nor bad, merely peculiar. Much energy was wasted on the minutiae, and much creativity on the need to live in a way that was acceptable to the elders of the Congregation. Immediately after my Profession I spent 3 years working in the Nursery with tiny infants. My daily routine (i.e. 7 days a week) was 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., with times out for prayer and community activities. I was then given the opportunity to begin nursing training. I found a whole new world I didn’t know about! I could leave the confines of the Convent in the early morning, embrace the adult world of a different reality, and return in the late afternoon. This period of my life opened challenges to me.
I began to see much more clearly what renewal of religious life meant for me personally. I was grateful to begin seeing a weakening, even a dissolving of some structures, that really impinged on the life of vowed Catholic women. Women religious mostly joined their Congregations seeking a higher, more perfect way of life, a surer path to God. We were rudely faced with our own elitism when we began to listen to the voice of the Vatican Council "Fathers"-religious life was no "higher" or "holier" state of life. For many religious it was a slow, often excruciatingly painful process to ‘give up’ the sense of privilege, the elitism. For me I began to experience the Spirit freeing me from these structures. Freedom is born of pain, however. I became aware of so many great ‘constants’ that really made little sense to me. Faced with the unease that these questions posed to me, I completed my nursing training, and made my Final Profession. My Final Profession renewed my desire to serve God and to continue growing in love. As I completed my training I was voted by my fellow students for the Zonta Award (recognition for personal and professional skills – an award given by a Professional Women’s Group). Now back to a different reality again Convent life, more work, the hospital this time. After 3 years, suddenly and without warning, an appointment to a totally different apostolate-School Nurse with an Aboriginal community in the far west of New South Wales, Australia. The moment I arrived in Wilcannia I felt ‘at home’, within a week I felt, and was, very settled. Sadly, this appointment was only temporary. Four months later I was back home for Christmas, and an appointment to the Home of Compassion for elderly and disabled men. I’d had space away from the ‘big’ institution, time to reflect, I had been in a situation where I was encouraged to think for myself. I loved the new work, or should I say my whole way of life with these people. I came back to Island Bay with new energy and freshness. My apostolic sensitivity had changed. I was no longer there just to do a job. My life began to assume a wholeness that was liberating and fulfilling. There was space to allow the God in me to touch the God in others. Many of my friends resonated with this. A further appointment back to the hospital found a group of us anxious to put our ideas and experiences into practice. We met regularly in the convent attic-we prayed together, laughed together, and shared our vision and hope. 1986 dawned with the usual promise of a bright future hope. But by 1st February of that year I had asked for, and been granted, a year’s leave of absence from my Congregation. A year followed – a year with mixed reactions and responses. With two other sisters, a "new" community was founded. There arose the need to support ourselves, independent of the Institute, new friends, a simpler way of life. What were the great issues of our life that we were grappling with, that we were needing to grow through and grasp? Was it the oppressiveness of obedience as we had been living it? Was it that we often reduced the Gospel mandate to the level of cheap labour for the sake of the establishment? Was it that often we lived alone, altogether, in the name of community?… and so it goes on. Seven years have now passed. I remain in Christchurch. My links with my Congregation are well re-established. I work as a Social Worker and have a special commitment to the people living with HIV/AIDS. Our community is small and enjoys a simple lifestyle. We are sustained, along with committed lay-people by a rhythm of prayer that seeks to find Christ at the centre of all that we do and are. My life now really reflects the birth of my spiritual awareness occasioned by my appointment to the Aboriginal community in Wilcannia. I profess to be a Christian. Here I found that a life based on the life of Jesus became a continual command to look back into the eyes of other people,–those of the Aboriginal people. Warm, candid eyes-masking a backdrop of harsh judgement, rejection, of homelessness, powerlessness, poverty, confusion. I had to look into the inner world inside bodies of flesh and blood, people with names and addresses. This became a journey into the real world, not out of it. The contemplation that this led me to had to do with vision, with learning, to see what was really there. It had to do with the unmasking of an illusion, the exploding of a myth, the facing of reality. It meant I was open to the whole story, not just the ‘nice’ parts, of what the incarnation is all about. How was it that I found it so difficult not to be able to see beyond the melee, the unemployment, the apathy, the haze of alcoholism that shrouded every home? Was it because I hadn’t fully explored who I was as a person, so I transferred to my brothers and sisters a whole lot of that deep subconscious which I hadn’t faced in myself? I discovered that growth and integration were but a process of becoming more truly the person that I was. Not some dream or ideal, but truly myself. It is not easy to live with a known self, no matter how many depths of light or darkness that self holds! But let the seed begin to burst, and within the context of what it means to be Christian, this growth is but a process of Incarnation. Incarnation involves dying in the flesh before birth, growth, takes place. This death says a lot about loss to me, and Jim Baxter’s words (a New Zealand poet) ring loud and clear:
The cold bare truth of ‘winter’ spoke volumes in Wilcannia. Detachment had come as a part of life for the Aboriginal people. Detachment from money, bodily comforts, prestige, etc, etc. For me looking on, it was hard:
This death also spoke of powerlessness and poverty. I beheld Jesus the powerless man—a man who knew poverty. And to know this somehow allowed the real resources of human life, through God’s creative power, to be revealed and become more effective. Because I allowed it, poverty became humanly enriching. So often amid the harsh realities I saw a human spirit that was not crushed. Poverty of Spirit involved sharing the spirit of poor people. It involved feeling and touching the pulse of their life, sharing the night of their anguish, fighting with them for justice. It taught me that "only the poor have eyes to see". I guess that is what my life is all about—to become poor enough to see Him and embrace Him in His Incarnate Word, so that nothing else at all really matters again. The revolution that took place within me happened, only happened
I now know my life—my vocation—is a state of search, opening, listening, changing, growing. It is not a checklist of apostolic and spiritual directions. Sameness is no longer equal to sanctity. Growth is—growth in God. My life isn’t as tidy and orderly as it used to be, but much more exciting! Susan Cosgrove |
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