Sister Doreen’s Reflections
February 9th, in our 140 years as a Community!
Our Celebration of the life of our Mother Foundress, Hannah Grier Coome
Today we remember our Mother Foundress, Hannah – by prayers, scripture readings and songs, and we celebrate with thanksgiving, joy, and hope her life and her vision for our Community. Today is also an opportunity to bring into the present our own reflections on how that life and vision continues to nurture and guide each one of us individually, and how that life and vision continues to nurture and guide our community today. I’d like to share some reflections with you and hope that whoever you are and wherever you are, there might be a small gift of inspiration and encouragement for you in your own life and journey with God.
In the memoirs of Hannah Grier Coombe, our Mother Foundress, the following is written of her: “The nineteenth century gave many great men and women to the Church, whose ‘names live for evermore’. Not least the Foundress of the first Anglican Order of Sisters in Canada; one well fitted by her vigorous mind, her active brain, her patient, clever hands, to undertake this great work for God, and to tread with untiring feet for thirty-seven years, the thorny path of the pioneer in the arduous task of founding a Religious Order in the Church and land of her birth.”
A vigorous mind, an active brain, patient, clever hands – are these alone the secret of Mother Hannah’s being well fitted to the task? What does her example show us in her memoirs and our corporate memory of her? What of her vision? What enabled Mother Hannah … what enables us, me and you, to walk this same arduous task of creating Community?
She traditioned on to us that deep commitment to a life of prayer from which authentic servant ministry flowed. This clearly was the source of the secret to her success in the arduous task. The Song of Songs passage used today in our scripture readings makes it clear that Love is what we long for and were created for. Love is what we are as an outpouring from God. Love is not about safety; it is about being open and available to our Lover. ‘Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm.’ God sets Gods seal upon our hearts. Mother Hannah responded; we have responded by setting a seal upon our hearts …. inside our ring is inscribed the words ‘My Beloved is mine and I am his.’ It is an outward and visible sign of that inward seal upon our heart.
Mother Hannah and us, me and you … called to the arduous task of creating community together. We have set God as a seal upon our heart, each of us. It is a sign of the fire of God’s love that stops at nothing, that sweeps everything before it. ‘Many waters cannot quench this love, floods cannot drown it, torrents of rain can’t put it out. This love can’t be bought or sold.’ (Song of Songs). Mother Hannah, and me and you, responded to God’s desire, God’s love, God’s longing for us. God chooses invitation – an alluring and mysterious God who called Mother Hannah – and who called me and you – to leave all else and simply enjoy being with God.
It is hard work – living together with differences, creating community, an arduous task – passionate, burning, difficult work. Transformation is never easy, almost always frightening. We can often find ourselves wanting to slow down the process, make sure we are safe. We may want to hold onto things that have given us a sense of security. God however wants to sweep us off our feet and blow the embers of our love into a fire. I am reminded of a song that used to be popular some years ago … “it only takes a spark to get a fire going …” But the fire of love doesn’t solve all my problems …. it doesn’t take away anger, being frightened, anxious, sad … it doesn’t exclude the darker emotions … in fact I think that sometimes is sharpens their impact! The hard work, the arduous task of struggling with one’s own shadow self, facing interior conflicts and moral failures, undergoing rejection and abandonment, daily humiliations, abuse, limitations … as we learn to live together with all our differences … gives us a window into the possibility of living with not either/ or but with both … of moving into the contradictions of ourselves and of life so that we become living icons of both / and! It is that great love … that fire of God’s love for us, that opens the heart space and the mind space.
An icon of contradiction reigns over our chapel – a man offering love from a crucified position. It is the icon of the transforming, redemptive love of God – this spendthrift lover God who gives us everything, who doesn’t count the cost, whose tenacious love will never let us go. In this arduous task of creating community, Mother Hannah – and me and you – God has set God’s seal upon each one of us, we have chosen to set God’s seal, the seal of God’s love upon our hearts.
This clearly was the source of the secret to her success in the arduous task of creating community … the source in our arduous task of creating community today. Thank you, Mother Hannah.
Why did Mother Hannah choose to call this Community the Sisterhood of St John the Divine? She loved the parish church of St John the Divine, Kennington in London, England where she worshipped when in England, but … What was the important value in her heart and mind?
A look in those Memoirs again, we find a letter from someone knowing that we were to be named after the Beloved Disciple John, and we read that those who loved us and blessed us in our beginnings left us with this challenge:
“May the name which it is to bear, be an indication of the Love which is to pervade and animate it; that all the members are indeed in a very special sense “beloved of the Beloved”; are ever mindful of the words “Little children, love one another”
Another source of the secret to Mother Hannah’s success in the arduous task of creating community. In Ephesians the letter talks to the beloved of the Beloved … we are the beloved of the Beloved, and challenges us to love God with all our heart, to love God with all that’s in us, to love God with all we’ve got! The letter remarks that with both feet planted firmly on love, we’ll be able to take in with all the followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. So – Mother Hannah, and me and you, are to “Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God. And this is my command: Love one another the way I loved you. Remember the root command: Love one another.” (Message translation from Gospel of John).
Our history has been lived under that root command: love one another – we have had traditioned on to us from Mother Hannah, and from the past, the challenge that this root command brings: to love one another, to learn to live together with differences, to be a safe place for each other – to love each other tenderly, truly, tenaciously. We have struggled together, argued together, cried together, laughed together over the years, and into today – and always the faithful God is with us, smiling, and invites us to be God’s home.
Beloved of the Beloved … it is hard to believe that God finds me so beloved, so beautiful … it is a mystery that God loves me the way God does. Each one of us … each one, me and you are the beloved of the Beloved … beautiful with God’s beauty inside and out … each one of us become for each other the skin of God … that root command ‘love one another’ is set upon the seal of our hearts … the fire of God’s love for each one of us.
The arduous task … one that Mother Hannah embraced … one she traditioned on to us by our naming … that hard work of living with the contradictions of life together under the root command “love one another” … an experience that can give us a privileged window into the sacrament of the present moment… gives us a window into the possibility of living with not either/ or but with both … of moving into the contradictions of ourselves and of life so that we become living icons of both / and! It is that great love … that fire of God’s love for us, for me and for you, that opens the heart space and the mind space. An icon of contradiction reigns over our chapel – on the cross, God offering love from a crucified position. When we can be really present to each other – we are in the Real Presence, we become the Real Presence – God’s skin for each other. And from Ephesians again we hear that “God can do anything you know – far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! God does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, God’s spirit deeply and gently within us”. Thank you, Mother Hannah.
And the place where our treasure is, is the place we will most want to be, and end up being.
