I had not planned on posting anything today but then Krista Tippett had on Sr. Simone Campbell, most well known as the lead figure of Nuns On The Bus. The program is of her on How To Be Spiritually Bold. I have to admit that I'd never heard of her order before, her short history of its beginning in the 1920s surprised me a bit, it sounds like something about forty years ahead of its time.
MS. TIPPETT: And many of them, we've heard — well some of them, we've heard a lot about. And this is one of these branches that's, I think, you've made well-known: the Sisters of Social Service. It's a really interesting — you follow the rule of St. Benedict. But it's a community with a long history, a long lineage of this intersection of faith and politics.
SR. SIMONE: Right, right. Because our founding was really in Hungary in 1923, and then in Los Angeles in 1926. And our foundress, Margaret Slachta, was the first woman in parliament in Hungary when she was the head of our community. And the sisters there started the first schools of social work, started — organized juvenile detention facilities that were humane and educated kids. And our foundress, Margaret, said that, well, if God would — bless the people who wiped away the tears of people who suffered. Wouldn't God also bless the people who made it so that tears were not shed? And it was that insight that combined the charity and justice aspect of our mission. And for me, it's been really a wonderful adventure.
That was only the beginning of learning things. One of the hardest was what she said about Paul Ryan, who I'd have to do lots of work over before I could be as open to taking a compassionate view of as she does. We all know we're supposed to love our enemies and pray for them but for me that is one of the hardest of all of the hard teachings. What she says about what a horrible place John Boehner is in because he's the head of two parties in the congress and that means he can't keep the position he's always wanted more than anything, to be Speaker, except by not doing anything, was an insight I'd never thought of before and probably wouldn't have. He must know that he's going to be considered one of the worst Speakers in history. He really has gained his world and lost his soul. She also reveals why the mega rich want even more money that they'll never have life enough to use, the obsession to win that has come to mean to make the most money. That is what's behind the world-wide corruption of politics to allow a tiny number of people to hoard more than half of the world's economic resources while billions of people are impoverished and even the American middle class has been suckered into thinking that's the way things should be. She didn't mention how, in their desperation, they have been suckered into blaming exactly the people who have the least to do with squeezing them dry.
She even found inspiration in her group, NETWORK, being named as what's wrong when the Vatican went after the Sisters. Sr. Simone is a Zen practitioner as well as a Nun living what seems to me to be a good way to live the teachings of Jesus and the prophets. She's got a great sense of humor. That's important.
Anyway, you might want to to read the transcript of the show and to listen to it but to also listen to the unedited discussion.
Nice way to start the day.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm trying to resist adding that Jeffrey Tayler would have to accuse Sr. Campbell of "FDS," I suppose (it's his new post at Salon), and tell her to get out of public life, too, along with her nuns and her bus.
ReplyDeleteWhat's interesting is how many comments this morning (unless it's changed recently) seem to think Tayler is full of it and is simply spewing invective rather than dealing in sweet reason.
Maybe the arc of the universe does bend toward justice, after all.....