Our community is very blessed to have Kathleen Pangan discerning religious life with us. She shares her story below of visiting our sisters in Pennsylvania and New York.
May God Bless Kathleen in her discernment!
_____________________________
“She has a heart of gold,” one sister nodded with a smile to me as she described another sister, “and she is the nicest person you’ll ever meet.” That is how every sister describes every other sister in the community. And I think they really mean it. Every time I would hear one of those descriptions of another sister (and it happens often), I would shrink a little deeper into myself because I don't feel like anyone would ever describe me that way; and it’s hard to imagine anyone ever describing me that way… Even though all the sisters in this community I’ve met so far have been so welcoming and seemed happy at the prospect of my looking into this community, I felt pretty sad, a little sick, and a little panicked about what I’ve been doing – until my vocation director told me even St. Francis felt unworthy and emphasized on how his friars were minors and all else was major; and until I read about how these kinds of feelings are normal. Whew!
I’m 24 years old, was born and raised in sunny San Diego, California, and I’ve been discerning religious life for the past nine months; looking into different communities and visiting some of them. I feel that I am perhaps most called to this Neumann community; so after flying from California to the east coast last summer for a couple weeks to visit, I came back this winter for an extended stay and am scheduled to shadow a couple sisters.
For the past week and a half, I’ve been in Buffalo, N.Y., shadowing Sister Kim at Vive, Inc., a place where refugees from all over the world can go on their way to seeking asylum in Canada and the United States. With a master's in biology, and a bachelor's of science in biology (with a law minor), I thought I was well-educated. But the time spent in Vive taught me that I am really ignorant about what happens in the world, and that there is so much that I do not know and would like to learn. There were refugees from countries I had never heard of (I remember glancing over at someone’s passport and reading République de Djibouti, and I thought, Woah… what language do they speak there…??), and from countries I definitely had heard of but didn’t even know what problems were occurring there. We’ve heard about Tibet so much in the news, but it was a real eye-opener to find out about all the other kinds of people that would need to seek asylum in a different country: race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion. It was so sad to see people having to leave their homes because of land wars, wars over water sources, because someone in their family was a political target… One of the refugees that stood out in my mind was a man who was a brilliant nuclear physicist who had developed a way of making clean nuclear energy for his country, but his government wanted him to work on nuclear armaments instead. It seemed like there was an endless list of reasons people were there.
While the primary focus of my stay in Buffalo was to shadow Sister Kim and learn more about her ministry, I must say that I had a blast with the sisters that live in her house. They treated me like family from the moment I stepped into their home, and thinking about that house puts an automatic smile on my face. They are so funny and fun and made me feel so at home and comfortable. I was calling one of my friends back home and telling her some of the stories about my day and she told me, “How is it that you meet all the crazy, fun nuns?? I always met nuns that are prim and proper and kind of boring and just nice and strict!” I laughed because I think a lot of my friends couldn’t understand why I’d want to look into religious life because they think of sisters as a certain stereotype, and they don’t realize that sisters are really all human beings!
This past weekend, we drove over from Buffalo to Pittsburgh, Pa. to go to a talk for people in formation (the early years of religious life) and the people in their houses. It was a really interesting talk given by a brother about the "shadow self", or the part of the unconscious mind that every person has, that is our weaknesses and shortcomings that we don’t want to admit we have. Not only was the talk really intriguing, but being in a room with dozens of young men and women who were all getting into religious life made me feel, well, normal! Some seminarians from southern California found me and we talked about how we saw snow for the first time recently and how fun and new it was for us (but not so much for anyone else from this area!), and I felt especially normal! But not normal in a mundane, boring sort of way – normal in a sort of self-affirming kind of way.
I have to admit that I really miss that convent in Buffalo, and I felt a little bit sick when Sister Kathy (the vocation director) was driving me from Buffalo to Syracuse, N.Y., where I’m now shadowing Sister Caryn for the week. Maybe it was actually just car sickness, but I think it was mostly because I felt a real bond to the people I stayed with and wish I could have stayed there longer (or forever, haha!). After a week and a half, I fell in love with all the women there!
This week I’m shadowing Sister Caryn at Alverna Heights Nature Center. After getting my degrees in biology with an emphasis in ecology, I’ve been looking forward to this! Shadowing someone who worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for 13 years, what more could I ask for?
Sister Caryn says she lives in a good house (which is what everyone seems to say about their house…), and everyone she lives with has been wonderful and hospitable to me. I’m looking forward to the rest of my extended stay!
-Kathleen Pangan
Photo- left to right: Sister Kimberly, Sister Pat, Sister Renee, Kathleen (me), Sister Christine enjoy one another's company at dinner!
0 comments:
Post a Comment