Seasoning
by Joellen McCarthy, BVM; Peggy Nolan, BVM and Mary Ann Zollmann, BVM

Dear SALT Readers,

Welcome to this issue of SALT with its theme of “Home Places—Home People.”

A sense of home has been an integral part of our BVM heritage since Mary Frances Clarke and her four companions left their home in Ireland and eventually made a home for themselves on the Iowa prairie. BVM stability sprang from a common home, a common educational ministry, and a common life grounded in the Rule.

While cherishing a sense of home throughout the years, BVMs also knew that August 15 was never very far away. On that day “changes” were announced and every sister was prepared to be ‘missioned' across town or across the country as soon as tomorrow arrived. While not everyone received a change in a given year, each sister lived with a sense of readiness to pack up and move on at a moment's notice.

Living with the reality of mobility in the midst of a stable life form has served BVMs well. In the last 40 years mobility has become the currency of our restless society. When “home places” change often, how do any of us manage to live as “home people,” creating a sense of belonging wherever we may find ourselves?

This issue of S ALT explores various responses to that question by highlighting different facets of home.

Home is

• a geographic place, several different places, an inner spiritual place;
• a convent, house, shelter, apartment, motel room;
• a nuclear family, an extended family, a congregation, a parish;
• a place of disorientation, uprooting, loss.

Home is

• people working together and growing together;
• people grieving together and believing together;
• people caring about and belonging to each other.

It may be that the archetypal longing for home hidden in the depths of each of us keeps us ever vigilant to the presence or absence of home in our lives. It is a longing that spills beyond a roof and four walls and searches for a sense of belonging and meaning wherever it can be found.

Cecil Day Lewis, in his poem, “Departure in the Dark” writes:

“ …It is nature's ruling that we should be nowhere
more tenacious settlers than amidst wry thorns,
yet nurture a seed of discontent in our ripest ease.”

Perhaps in our mobility and stability we are being lured by Jesus' words in John's Gospel, “Make your home in me as I make mine in you.”

We recognize home as a mysterious blend of the mundane and the holy. As you enjoy these SALT stories, may the mystery of the “home people” and “home places” of your own life be ever more apparent.

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©2006 Sisters of Charity, BVM