“Sisters is a one-hour documentary film that takes us into the lives of five American Catholic Sisters.
It is a film about faith and hope, love and death, seen through the eyes of five women who have committed their lives to the service of others in the deepest way. Without narration, their stories are told in the honest words and actions of the women themselves. To purchase a DVD for group screenings contact Char Gardner at: char@gardnerfilms.com”
Source: from the Vimeo page for this documentary
Buddhist Techniques for Silence & the Catholic Imagination as Archetypal Portal
I think that Buddhist meditation, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, Tonglen (for a world that is falling apart), Metta Bhavana, Vippassana, the 32 Parts of Body, the Body Scan and various other Buddhist practices combined with the Catholic imagination, writings of the saints, contemplation on the events of Salvation History can create fertile space for *Annunciation, Acts of Perfect Contrition, Illumination of Conscience, ‘God breaks through’ or the development of an interior voice. I guess one just has to find a practice that leads to silence, and then ASK (I didn’t know you had to ASK until I found Theophan the Recluse) and then just wait and listen.
Listen to Sister Karen (above) from about the 39:55 min mark.
I waited years to have an opportunity to tell the Catholics about this experience. They wouldn’t listen. I guess it isn’t in the interests of a corporation that says the Holy Spirit only comes through infant baptism they provide to hear the story of a convert. The Catholic Church still behaves as a hegemon though it’s not. The People of God are central to the Mystical Body of Christ, and ordination is a call to service, not domination. I want to look further into the dysfunctional co-dependency that is clericalism. Would the chosen co-operation of human beings who are awake not be a more powerful force for good? In this talk from Thomas Doyle in early 2020 at Emory University on the topic of lay involvement in the institutional Church, he says that there is nothing a Catholic cleric loathes more than an adult Catholic. This seems very true in Canada. Then again, we are still learning how to discuss and disagree well; until recently, superficial harmony and ‘niceness’ was enough.
*I still speak Christian as a Second Language (CSL) and might be using these vocabulary items incorrectly. I apologize to native Christian speakers for any misuse. It is not ‘intentional’. Experimentation, opportunities for practice, regular good quality interaction with native speakers, gentle corrective feedback, explicit instruction are all essential to successful adoption of a new social identity and fluency in a new language / worldview.