July 2010 ‘Messenger’ now available

This time it’s a big 24 pages, packed with news about the Sisters of St. Joseph jubilarians plus our three newest sisters. There are three PDFs: The first 11 pages, the color centerspread (pages 12 & 13) and the last 11 pages. Each of the three is created as two-page spreads so  you can see how the newspaper actually looked.

PAGES 1-11 (includes six pages on the June 13 vow ceremonies)

PAGES 12 & 13 (a color centerspread on the 2010 jubilarians)

PAGES 14-24 (includes cover of Discover Camp and the Junior CYO Camp)

The print version will go in the mail Tuesday, June 29, so those of you on our mailing list should receive it soon. And if you’d like to be on the Messenger mailing list, please send your name and mailing address to skrause@csjkansas.org.

After the fire: ‘Amazing’ generosity and kindness

Katrina and Emanuel Ramirez had been thinking about moving to Wichita or some other bigger city. They were married five years ago in Concordia, but some place bigger would be more job opportunities, they reasoned, and more activities for the growing family.

Then their home was destroyed by fire in the predawn hours of June 4, and they experienced first hand the generosity and kindness of people in Concordia. So now they’ve decided this is where they will stay.

“This is an amazing community,” Katrina said, sitting in the living room of her rented house just blocks from the home they fled in the middle of the night. “What’s happened to us in the last three weeks… Well, it’s not something you find everywhere.”

What happened started on the evening of June 3. As Katrina tells it, their daughters — 3 year-old Lily and 8-month-old Emma — were both fussy that night, “really fussy.” So instead of sleeping in their own bedroom downstairs, the girls were in their parents’ upstairs bedroom. Emanuel’s brother Javier was in his own bedroom down the hall.

As the hours passed, Emanuel and Emma were asleep but Katrina was still trying to soothe the fussing Lily. Then, about 2:30 in the morning, she smelled smoke. She woke Emanuel, who looked into the hallway outside the bedroom door to find “a tornado of dark smoke.” Katrina grabbed Emma and Emanuel grabbed Lily, and as the family headed toward the stairs, Emanuel stopped only long enough to pound on his brother’s bedroom door.

All five made it downstairs and out safely, but the fire was spreading throughout the home.

The one occupant who did not make it out was Ariel, a 7-month-old Golden retriever. Firefighters would eventually find her body in the living room by the front window.

Yet as the family stood outside on West 11^th Street with literally only the clothes on their back, watching firefighters trying to save the home they bought three years ago and waiting for dawn, they began to experience something that today they can only describe as “amazing.”

“Even that morning, standing there, knowing we’d lost everything,” 24-year-old Katrina said, “some neighbors went to Wal-Mart and bought us some diapers and baby wipes.”

The North Central Kansas Chapter of the American Red Cross arranged for them to stay at the Concordia Super 8 motel for four nights, until they could find a rental house. They were still at the motel when Sister Judy Stephens tracked them down, to see how she could help.

By Friday — a week after the fire — Sister Judy, a member of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Concordia, and Kim Krull of Cloud County Community College, had put together a plan to organize donations and plastered the town with fliers asking people to help. The Blade-Empire published a front-page report on the effort.

Verleta Moon volunteered the Catholic Thrift Shop to be the “drop off point” for donations, and the Concordia Homestore gave the shop free use of a storage unit so gifts to the Ramirez family could be kept separate from other donations.

Looking around the living and dining rooms of their rental house, Katrina pointed out one couch and a table with chairs. Emanuel’s sister, who also lives in Concordia, gave those — “but everything else, everything, beds, sheets, dishes, clothes, that’s all been from people who probably don’t even know us.”

They’ve also received gift cards from a wide range of local merchants, including one purchased by a teacher at Concordia High School who remembered Katrina (Class of 2004). That was for the Majestic Theatre.

“She said she wanted us to be able to just go to the movies — to see ‘Toy Story’ with the kids or whatever — and not think about all of this for a couple of hours,” Katrina explained. “In the midst of all this, she wanted us to be able to relax a little bit and not just think about what we’ve lost.”

Whether they can relax is an open question, but they definitely are not focusing on their loss.

“This was all material stuff, except Ariel,” 25-year-old Emanuel says. “You’ll get it back. We’re just so happy to be alive, happy to be going on with our life.”

That includes their jobs at Shady Cottage, for developmentally disabled adults in Belleville, and looking for a new place to buy once their homeowner’s insurance claim is settled. The fire was officially ruled to be “accidental of undetermined cause,” and Emanuel and Katrina expect a settlement within a few weeks.

While they wait, “going on with their life” also means recognizing in an entirely new way the kindness of strangers.

“It’s really amazing,” Katrina said again. “This is such a small town and people are so close-knit.

“You may think a small town will be like that, but you don’t really know it until you’re on the receiving end. You never think something like this will happen, and so you never know just how generous and kind people will be.”

Asked if there is anything the family still needs, Emanuel and Katrina thought about it for a moment before Katrina answered, “It’s only been three weeks and we have everything we need.”

She paused for a few seconds before adding, “I can’t even begin to tell everyone in Concordia how grateful I am to be able to say that.”

June 25, 2010: Sustaining peace in our lives and in our world, by Sister Carolyn Teter

If we are to have peace both as individuals and in our community, we must understand the importance of reconciliation and forgiveness.

These are the factors that sustain peace in our lives and in the world because they enable justice to prevail.

Reconciliation can happen only when the parties involved honor the dignity of one another and then truly talk about the issues and come to some agreement regarding possible resolution of the issues.

As Pope Paul VI explained it, “Before speaking, it is necessary to listen, not only to a person’s voce, but to their heart.  A person must first be understood; and, where they merit it, agreed with.”

These are wise words — and it is a wisdom that is also found in an ancient Persian mystic, Hafiz:  “Beyond the perfectly good and the totally wrong, there is a big field.  I will meet you there.”

Friendship and service are the hallmarks of true dialogue. This largeness of spirit seems to be lacking in our world today and thus we have violence in speech and behavior.

Forgiveness is a second crucial factor in sustaining peace in ourselves, our community and in the world. Where would we be without forgiveness?

Both and the other person(s) would perpetuate the hurt we experienced and then be predisposed to hostility and domination. That kind of resentment, with its corresponding anger, saps our energy and causes stress.  The stress in turn wears down our immunity system and as a result many debilitating physical and psychological illnesses can occur. We find ourselves stuck in the past and thus not able to live in the present with all of its joys and the possibility of new and nurturing relationships. And lastly, we may resort to vengeance so we can see the other suffer and be humiliated.  Then the cycle of violence continues and peace is not possible.

Forgiveness is not something that happens overnight.  It is a process and can take weeks, months, even years.  I believe that prayer, which manifests how God has forgiven us, enables us to forgive others.

When we do forgive, the cycle of violence is broken and we contribute to the establishment of a culture of peace in our hearts, homes and society.

— Sister Carolyn Teter has been a Sister of St. Joseph of Concordia for 55 years. She is on the staff at Manna House of Prayer and is involved in offering workshops and spiritual direction.  She is a member of the Concordia Year of Peace Committee.

New police chief believes in ‘a community informed’

Police Chief Chris Edin has been on the job just three months, but he’s already making an impression on the city and its police department.

“I think of it in terms of a ‘community informed’ vs. a ‘community uninformed,’” he told participants at Wednesday’s community needs forum at the Nazareth Motherhouse. “I believe in a community informed.”

The new chief then spent half an hour explaining to the engrossed crowd some changes he’s making and how he views Concordia.

The first of those changes is about ensuring that Concordia residents have information readily available about crime in the city and what the police department is doing about it. “That’s why I have a working relationship with the media,” Edin said, “and we’ll use the Internet and have a Facebook page. I don’t ‘tweet’ yet, but we’ll use Twitter, too.”

As a first step, the department now has a web page — www.concordiapolice.com — which Edin said is “a work in progress, but it’s up.”

He also wants to reach out to people in the community, in much the same way he did during his 18 years with the Thurston County (Wash.) Sheriff’s Office, where until leaving for the Concordia position he was a patrol supervisor-sergeant.

Thurston County, which includes the state capital of Olympia and lies just south of Seattle and Tacoma on Interstate 5, has a population of roughly 250,000. And while Concordia is just 1/50^th of that size, it faces many of the same challenges, Edin said. He then cited out some issues that he has already seen here:

• “We have a domestic violence problem here in Concordia, and it’s bigger than you think,” he told the 40 residents at the lunch meeting. “We have to address that.” He said he is putting together a task force and will work toward intervention and education, “but that all takes time.”

• “There are drugs here,” he said bluntly. “That’s about a ‘community informed.’ It’s not new, but it may seem like it to you.” He said U.S. Highway 81 is a “drug transportation alley — you can take it from the Mexican border straight through to Canada.” Nationwide, he said, in study after study, illegal drugs and drug abuse have been shown to be “the cause of 90 to 95 percent of all other crime.”

• In Concordia, the police departments volunteer programs — including the adult reserves and the youth Explorers — “have fizzled away.” He is particularly interested in re-energizing the Explorers for teens who want to learn more about law enforcement.

In one very bright spot in his short time here, Edin noted all the ways kids can be active  in the community. Ticking off a range of sports and other activities his own two children are taking part in, he said, “Kids who are involved are less likely to get in trouble.”

Making sure those kinds of activities exist is part of the community’s responsibility, he said.

He also emphasized that helping the police is another part of the community’s responsibility.

“We will aggressively enforce the laws here,” Edin said of the city’s police force, “but we need the community to help. If you don’t call when you hear the next-door neighbor beating his wife or a mom screaming at her kids, we can’t help. We aren’t proactive; we are totally reactive. You have to get involved, you have to be willing to call.”

A case earlier this month in which a Concordia woman was charged with mistreating dogs came from a concerned neighbor who called the police, Edin said. “Without that call, we probably would never have known about it.”

Other reports detail services for the poor

Forty people from throughout Concordia showed up Wednesday to learn more about services available to the poor and those hard hit by the economy.

It was the latest in a series of “working lunches” at the Nazareth Motherhouse and part of the Community Needs Forum organized by the Sisters of St. Joseph in January 2009. This was the 11^th meeting designed to identify challenges in the community and work together on solutions.

Those presenting information Wednesday included:

• Jen Warkentin of Big Brothers & Big Sisters of Cloud County, who discussed the need for adult volunteers to match with children waiting for “Bigs.” Her agency now serves children in Cloud, Republic and Mitchell counties, and together there are 23 “community-based” (or adult) matches of a “Big” with a child. During the school year, the number of matches will increase to 75 to 90 when high school students match with younger children.

“There are only 10 on the waiting list right now,” Warkentin said, “but that’s because a lot of them drop off. They may be on it for up to three years, and they just get tired of waiting for a Big.”

She urged anyone interested to contact her office in Concordia — at 243-1620 — to find out more.  Noting that 80 percent of the children in her program are from single-parent homes and 70 percent live below the poverty level, Warkentin said, “This teaches kids what else is out there, just by doing what you already do — fixing a meal, playing games, raking leaves. It may not seem like a big deal to you, but it’s a huge deal for these kids.”

• Rose Koerber from Cloud County Medical Center, who explained the hospital’s Charity Care program. “No one is refused care,” Koerber told the group as she outlined the structure for helping people without adequate insurance cover their medical bills. In 2009, she noted that the hospital provided nearly $146,000 in free care under the program.

• Susan LeDuc of the Helping Hands program at Manna House of Prayer, who said that in the past year her she has seen “more new people, people who didn’t need help before.” Helping Hands provides a wide range of emergency help, including arranging a place to stay overnight, money for gas and emergency food. She estimated that about 30 families a month receive some assistance through Helping Hands.

• Karen Hauser of Catholic Charities of the Salina Diocese, which includes Concordia, said her office is working to “fill the gap” left when social worker Husch Hathorne moved away early this year. She is also hoping to place an AmeriCorps worker in the Concordia office, and to train that person to assist those needing help here.

The next “working lunch” is scheduled for Aug. 4, from 11:45 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the Motherhouse. Anyone interested in working on Concordia’s challenges is urged to attend; you do not have to have been involved in the process before to join now.

For information on that session or details about the community needs forum, contact Sister Jean Rosemarynoski at 243-2149 or sisterjean@csjkansas.org.

Reflection on Mount Joseph Jubilee Day

By Sister Marcia Allen, president of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Concordia

June 20, 2010

Reflection on Luke 12: 22 – 31

Consider the lilies: they neither spin nor weave, but I tell you, Solomon in all his splendor was not arrayed like any one of them. If God clothes in such splendor the grass of the field, which grows today and is thrown on the fire tomorrow, how much more will God provide for you, O weak in faith! It is not for you to be in search of what you are to eat or drink. Stop worrying! The unbelievers of this world are always running after these things. Your Father knows that you need such things. Seek out instead God’s (desire for) kingship over you and the rest will follow in turn.

Today we celebrate abundance and gratitude…the abundance of God’s providence and our gratitude for the privilege of witnessing to it. We celebrate God’s Providence and finding God in the least likely places.

The humblest, most lowly, most fragile and vulnerable – this is where God’s profligacy and abundance may be best found. This is where the power of God is made manifest – in God’s humility. For, in humility is found the strength of goodness and kindness, beneficence and generous courage in which God can truly show God’s loving and faithful tenderness.

But before we go any further into that, let me share my father’s experience of the scripture for today – an encounter with wild flowers – the lilies of the field. His story is one of meeting the absolute heart-breaking beauty of such fragile, tender flowers – the profligacy of God, the absolute abandonment of the Creator to creation – to its beauty and its heartbreak. Here’s an excerpt of a letter he wrote to me after this experience.

Last night I drove out to the old Twin Mound cemetery; on an impulse I decided to run in and check Uncle Billy’s stone. I was completely dumfounded, astonished, and amazed – and even surprised to find some wild  daisies in full bloom – five blue ones and three white ones. I just knelt in the buffalo grass and brushed my fingers across the beautiful blossoms, the bluest I have ever seen and the whitest with no peer. In all the running around I have done the past 50 years, I never once saw a wild daisy and never talked to anyone who had. All seemed to think as I thought – the daisy was extinct.

Today we re-member and we celebrate the lives of Sisters Leo Frances and Viatora. These women have lived lives of sixty and seventy years as Sisters of St. Joseph. They have given themselves over and over to the works of God – pure service for the good of the people who were entrusted to them. (Leo Frances in Plainville and Chicgo; Viatora in Chicago and Junction City)  They did this through bountiful times, times of consolation and success. They did this through the lean times when they were accompanied by confusion and desolation. They have lived through health and through the suffering of loss of health. They have seen life in all its beauty and its heartbreak. Now, here at Mt. Joseph they experience the giving over completely of what God has always desired – their whole selves – into God’s bountiful Providence.

This is a hidden mercy. Here, in what looks like a harsh conclusion to beautiful lives to us, we behold the heart-breaking beauty of God’s utter humility and the mystery of God’s power. Here we behold the mystery of God’s mercy raising up these sisters into their full beauty and potential.

Consider the lilies…helplessly exposed to the elements and to whatever external stimulus or force could exercise on them. Added to that, they neither add to nor subtract from the daily work of making a living. They simply are. We see them as helpless, something to be gazed upon by the more perceptive; something to ignore by the busy, more important business around them.

And yet, here, in each of them, God is residing in splendor – God is abiding in tender and faithful love. God is manifesting the beauty of the God-self for anyone who has eyes to see, an open heart to accept, a giving receptive spirit, an imagination close to God’s heart – that is, a person who is ready to receive the mystery of God’s beauty hidden in the mystery of vulnerability.

God’s splendor and power in hiddenness – the presence of God who is mystery, who chooses to reveal the Godself in such unpretentious and impossible-to-comprehend ways! This is the Mystery which we commemorate today. God living out the lives of Leo Frances and Viatora – begging us and waiting for us to be drawn into the mystery with awe and reverence, openness and total givenness. . . even as these two wonderful women are experiencing It – the Godself in abundance and mercy. What better response can we make but to kneel in the grass of God’s bounty and brush the fingers of our hearts over these beautiful blossoms! We respond with our abundant gratitude – for this Mystery and the mystery of their lives! We are grateful, not just for their lives, but for the Mystery of which their lives continue to speak. Thank you, Sister Viatora! Thank you, Sister Leo Frances!

55-year-old doll brings teacher, pupil together

Sister Rose Marie Dwyer remembers Jean Marie DeForest as a “little, tall blond girl” in first grade at Salina’s Sacred Heart School in 1955.

Jean Marie DeForest, now Smith, remembers Sister Rose Marie as “so good and kind, so loving toward all of us.”

But what neither remembers is why Sister Rose Marie — who today most often just goes by Rosie — handmade an exquisitely detailed Sisters of St. Joseph habit to adorn a 15-inch tall doll Jean Marie’s mother provided.

The three of them — Sister Rosie, now 60-year-old Jean Marie and the doll, who the little girl named Sister Eva Marie — were together this week for the first time in 55 years. When Jean Marie learned that Sister Rosie was visiting the Motherhouse from her home in Plainville, Kan., she decided to bring the doll to see if the now-elderly sister remembered her.

“As soon as I heard her name (on the phone), I could see her face,” Rosie said as she waited for Jean Marie to arrive from her home in Salina Monday. “That was just my second year teaching and there were about 60 children, but I knew her.”

Rosie also knew the doll as soon as she saw it, and she pointed out all the details that made the black habit worn by Sisters of St. Joseph of Concordia unique: Black serge, 10 pleats on the bodice, turned-back cuffs, a guimpe made from an old one of her own, hidden inside pockets and a white band across the forehead that formed a triangle to symbolize the Trinity. There is also a tiny cross and a rosary, as well as a braided black belt. The complete outfit includes a black slip and black stockings.

Lifting up the veil, Jean Marie points out that the doll’s long, blonde hair was cut short just like that of a sister of that era.

Jean Marie says Sister Rose Marie told her mother to go buy a high-quality doll, and her mother found a completely dressed Madame Alexander “little girl” doll. She turned it over to the young teacher, who sometime later returned it to Jean Marie dressed in the pristine black serge of a Sister of St Joseph.

Today, remarkably, the doll is still in pristine condition. “That’s the box it’s been in all these years,” Jean Marie says, gesturing to the pinkish pressboard carton on the floor at her feet. “It’s always been very, very special to me.”

She was too young when she received it to remember if there was any specific reason for the unusual gift from a favorite teacher. And the then-young teacher — who taught for 10 years at Sacred Heart and then at St. Marys, Kan., before serving in Teresina, Brazil for 40 years — can only guess at the reason.

“Evidently, you were a special little girl,” Sister Rosie tells Jean Marie. “I would only have done something like this for someone who was very special.”

Congregation honors two sisters at Mt. Joseph

As the 2010 jubilee celebration wraps up, the Sisters of St. Joseph honored two of their members Sunday, in recognition of their anniversaries in the religious community.

Sister Leo Frances Winbinger, originally of Cuba, Kan., celebrated her 60th anniversary as a Sister of St. Joseph of Concordia. Sister Viatora Solbach, originally of Clifton, Kan., celebrated her 70th jubilee.

Another 15 sisters celebrating jubilees this year were honored in a special Mass and program at the Nazareth Motherhouse two weeks ago. The 18th jubilarian for 2010 is a sister serving in Teresina, Brazil, and is celebrating with her mission sisters there.

For more on the celebration at the Motherhouse June 5, CLICK HERE.

For Sunday’s celebration at Mount Joseph Senior Village in Concordia, sisters, family and friends proved a standing-room-only crowd in the small chapel. A short and simple ceremony with prayer and song paid tribute to the service Sister Leo Frances and Viatora have given God and the dear neighbor over the years.

After the ceremony, participants gathered for cake and coffee, as well as catching up and taking pictures.

To read the reflection given at the ceremony by Sister Marcia Allen, CLICK HERE.

Discover Camp, Day 2 — June 18, 2010

June 18, 2010: Being mad, holding grudges wastes precious time, by Chelsea Martin

Everyone in this world makes mistakes, some times big and sometimes small. But if someone makes the mistake that affects you, you may find yourself asking,  ”Do I forgive them?” This question can be hard to answer.

Life is a precious gift, and it doesn’t last forever. But being mad at someone, or “holding a grudge,” wastes some of that precious time and it doesn’t help solve the problem.
When you hold a grudge against someone, that person is always on your mind.  You find yourself stressing out about being mad at that person, and when you finally go and make amends, it’s often too late.

Never go to bed angry at someone for making a mistake. When you wake up, that person may not be there.  Then you find yourself living in guilt and hurt for simply not saying “I forgive you.”
Accountability is taking responsibility for your actions.  If you make a mistake, take the blame.  You wouldn’t want someone else blaming you for their mistakes so don’t do it to them.

If you have blamed your own mistake on someone else, forgive yourself, move on and learn from it.  Most of the time, the wisest person in the room is the one who has made most of the mistakes.  Without people making mistakes in this world, we all would have no idea what we were doing.  We hope that we can learn from mistakes.
I’m sure most people have heard of Rachel Scott, who was one of the students killed in the Columbine school shooting in 1999. In her memory, her family created a presentation titled “Rachel’s Challenge.”  It includes five challenges that were taken from her writings. One of them is: “Use kind words and start a chain reaction with family and friends.”  That means giving someone a compliment or forgiving someone.  If you do this, the idea may catch on with others.
Accountability is probably one of the best traits anyone can have, mostly because it’s connected to all the other good traits a person can have. If you can have the honesty to step up and say “I did it!” anyone who hears you say that will know that you have the responsibility to take blame for your own mistakes.  Anyone who hears you say that will also know that you aren’t a liar; the will know they can trust you.  Life is too short to lie all the time.
Rachel Scott lost her life at age 17.  That goes to show that you never know when you’ll say your last goodbye to someone, or your last hello.  Don’t make the last thing you say to someone hurtful.  Forgive and forget. You’ll be happier in the long run.

— Chelsea Martin will be a freshman at Concordia High School. She is the daughter of Jason and Denise Martin.

Discover Camp 2010 ‘agents’ now at work

The 2010 version of Discover Camp has brought 35 girls to the Nazareth Motherhouse, for three days of being “Contemplatives In Action.” Using that “CIA” as their motto, the girls are “agents” in giving God’s love to the world.

The girls are all entering the sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grades and are mostly from the Salina Diocese. Sisters staff the camp, and young women of  college and high school-age serve as counselors. The camp continues through Saturday evening, when there is a Mass and ice cream social for the girls and their families.

For photos from the second day of Discover Camp, CLICK HERE.

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