At my new home in Chicago, I can visit the shore of Lake Michigan, and I like to go there to pray. From my spot on a concrete slab, all that is visible to me that is “natural” is water and sky. Everything else — the concrete, the fence, the shoreline — has been constructed by humans, not God. Humans inflict change on everything they encounter. Watching the water roll around the boulders at my feet, I realize my creaturedom carries a contradiction: No matter my will, my body is always impactful; with my smallness comes a might. I have effects on landscapes and other creatures just through my being and my breath.
Later, I go to Mass, tucked into a chapel around a table I equate with love, mercy and transformation. It’s a truly Catholic community. We’re sisters, priests, and married and single people with many shades of skin. Some are from nations I’ll never really know (South Korea, Ireland, Zambia). A woman’s voice proclaims the Psalm:
Let this be written for the generation to come, and let his future creatures praise the LORD: “The LORD looked down from his holy height, from heaven he beheld the earth, To hear the groaning of the prisoners, to release those doomed to die.”
Centuries ago, before my religion found form, ancient words acknowledged us. The future creatures were… [This is the beginning of my latest column for the online newspaper, Global Sisters Report. Continue reading here.]
It was early 2013 and I was fresh from three months of formation with Franciscan Mission Service. I had just arrived in Bolivia, South America, to live and serve for at least the next two years as a Franciscan lay missioner.
I had spent the autumn months of 2012 in daily classes learning about Franciscan spirituality and the life of St. Francis of Assisi. In those sessions, I learned about Francis’ example of living as “minority,” a spiritual posture in a “downward direction” always drawing closer to those on the margins.
I learned how Francis’ example of living as “minority” challenged his followers to live “without power over others.” They were taught to resist positions of power and instead encouraged to be “subject to all.”
He was directly challenging folks with the privileges of wealth and social status to reject their power over others and instead grow in humility and service.
As a white woman from an upper middle class family recently graduated from a large Catholic university, the challenge to live as “minority” seemed to deeply contradict the many privileges that were such integral parts of my identity: white, wealthy, over-educated and formed for years as a leader among my peers.
Yet my spiritual journey was already moving in that downward direction towards accompaniment of those most marginalized in our communities. And the example of humility in the life of St. Francis of Assisi deeply resonated with the spiritual growth I most desired.
In those first few months of transition, I had the opportunity to hear a North American friar speak about his 40-plus years of life as a Franciscan. And I will never forget the main message from his talk that day.
He said, “What is essential as a Franciscan is that every day you look at our reality from the perspective of the poor.”
I had to let that message sink in and each time I revisited it I was invited to let it go deeper, called again and again to ongoing conversion. It is a message that has since become central to my spiritual journey.
I had also recently finished reading Sue Monk Kidd’s “The Dance of the Dissident Daughter” and was immersed in reflections on my own spiritual journey as a woman as well as the experiences of the women in my life — particularly the diverse experiences of marginalization so common to women across the world.
And the Church was at the forefront of my mind. I was grieving the many ways that I have witnessed women marginalized in the Catholic Church. I thought of the women who were staying in abusive relationships for fear of judgment in the face of divorce, the women sexually assaulted and/or abused who were isolated by the silence of their faith communities, the women abandoned out of the shame of an unplanned pregnancy, and the countless stories of women that constantly go unheard and overshadowed by the privileged voices of their male peers.
Whenever I gathered with other women, I was touched by the experiences of marginalization that seemed to define each of our journeys. And I was particularly enraged by the disproportionate suffering that I was witnessing among the migrant campesina women I was just recently forming relationships with in that first year in Bolivia — so different from my experience as a white women from North America.
In the midst of these reflections I began to paint what I now call “You Stood With Me,” a watercolor piece that I did not know at the time would eventually turn into a series of paintings reflecting on marginalization, solidarity and love in action.
Five years since I was in formation with Franciscan Mission Service (for which I served as a blogger), I am still living in Bolivia and the marginalization of women I witness in the United States, South America and throughout the world still devastates. And I believe that the Church’s complicity in that marginalization is a crisis worth our attention.
In following the example of St. Francis of Assisi, I believe that we too are called everyday to look at our reality from the perspective of those most marginalized among us.
Today — the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi — we are reminded of his example of humility and solidarity and I believe that we are called to examine our own call to conversion, learning to look at our reality from the perspective of those most marginalized among us.
But what does that look like in action?
The composition of Annemarie’s watercolor series “You Stood With Me” was inspired by this original art from Meinrad Craighead.
In my experience, it has meant first and foremost learning to listen. When I choose to listen first instead of speaking I resist the temptation to express power over others, instead drawing closer to the lived experiences and expressed needs of those facing the suffering firsthand.
When we choose to humbly listen to those who are suffering we are invited towards empathy instead of judgment, accountability in place of denial, and community and connection over fear and marginalization.
When we choose to join with those on the margins, none of us are alone. And in the face of ongoing marginalization, we are empowered to stand together.
Annemarie (who also served as a blogger for Franciscan Mission Service) grew up in the Midwest and now lives in Bolivia, South America. Her spiritual journey has been greatly influenced by the Catholic Worker Movement and the Franciscan charism of humble availability and deep solidarity. She has also been influenced and transformed by the unique experience of spending most of her life in Western, capitalist culture and now living for years in Andean culture that is much more communal and rooted in the wisdom of indigenous communities. Today, she lives and farms with her partner and also creates and sells her original art under the name AEB Art.
In light of all that is making humanity hurt far and near—the evils of greed, economic inequalities, environmental destruction, endless war and gun-violence—on this ordinary and holy day, I find that my heart desires to emulate two particular aspects of St. Francis’ prophetic life from 800 years ago.
I am praying for all of us, for our broken and hurting hearts, that we can respond to the invitation Christ made to Francis to “rebuild my Church.” May we all contribute to the reconstruction of God’s reign of peace, justice and mercy. May we all be renewed and converted more closely to Christ, to the people Christ is calling us to be in today’s world.
First, we pray …
that we can counteract greed, materialism, pride and arrogance by totally embracing poverty, just as St. Francis did. The worst consequence of us taking more than we need is the infliction of suffering upon others; stripping them of food and shelter and other basics. Plus, our consumption and waste harm sacred Earth, causing climate change and consequential disasters; more suffering inflicted upon the little ones.
St. Francis’ experience also showed him that greed and materialism create division, cause wounds. A member of the emerging merchant class in the middle ages, his life could have been comfortable and privileged if only he’d joined the family business and become a cloth merchant. Instead, his conversion directed him to become a beggar, living with and ministering to the lepers, the outcasts, the little ones. St. Francis, like Christ, stripped himself of his wealth and made himself poor, gaining freedom in his dependence upon God. His complete embrace of “Lady Poverty,” as he came to so fondly call it, opened him to encountering Christ in the poorness found in others and in himself.
St. Francis and The Leper at Rivo Torto, Assisi by Julia Walsh, FSPA
Audrey Assad’s lovely rendition of Psalm 23 “I Shall Not Want” is a song worth praying with today. Let us pray that we can all be poor and humble like Christ, so as to come to know the poor Christ in the truth of our poverty:
Second, we pray …
that we can nonviolently respond to the endless shootings, name-calling, bomb-dropping, drone warfare, torture and terrorism that destroy lives every day. As technology advances, the ways we hurt one another only get worse. In the city of Aleppo alone, daily deadly attacks continue to increase, shocking relief workers with more dire conditions, seemingly mocking their false declarations “that things cannot possibly get any worse.”
St. Francis was also familiar with the evil of war and grew into a practitioner of nonviolence. Before his conversion, he served as a knight in the battle between the warring city-states of Assisi and Perugia. Captured from the battlefield he spent a year in prison, dealing with illness and suffering. During his development into an itinerant preacher, he greeted everyone with the Gospel messages of peace, forgiveness and love of enemies in Italian: Pace è bene, Peace and all good. In response to his countercultural message he was mocked and ridiculed. Yet he persevered with love and risk, even heading into the war zone of the Crusades, begging for the wars to end. One of my favorite stories about St. Francis is his encounter with Sultan Malek al-Kamil, a Muslim leader whom he befriended and dialogued with about peacemaking and faith.
Emma’s Revolution’s joyous song “Peace. Salaam, Shalom” expresses the hope, faith, and celebration that I believe should be part of all acts of peacemaking:
I pray that we can all embrace true poverty and be merciful and forgiving to our enemies, according to our own call, in response to the needs of world, just as St. Francis did so well. I pray we can love authentically, for it was Francis who said “I have done what was mine to do, may Christ show you what is yours to do.”
I invite you to pray with me too, so we can all respond to the needs of today with great humility and mercy, with bold love that is provocative and countercultural, transformative and compelling. Let us be poor peacemakers for our world today, in the spirit of Francis, in the image of Christ.
Thanks be to God, Pope Francis is really using his time in leadership to make big changes and redefine roles. Basically Pope Francis is doing a great job of honoring his namesake, St. Francis of Assisi. This is really good news for Franciscans like me who take seriously what Christ said to St. Francis: “rebuild my Church.”
Pope Francis keeps emphasizing that Gospel living is messy. (Some people have asked me if he reads this blog! Ha!)
Eight-hundred yeas ago, the life of St. Francis was a testament that Church re-building is messy activity. Truly, discipleship is about conversion. And, change tends to be chaotic, causing all sorts of commotion. Through Pope Francis’ leadership we are seeing how graced, Christ-guided changes can grab our hearts’ attention.
A quick study of the news exposes glaring information: democracy is failing. The government isn’t working and doesn’t have much power. It’s not a surprise those things are breaking, they’re things of human invention. Real people-power comes from God, not human-made institutions, systems or wealth and privilege.
Eight-hundred years ago St. Francis (and St. Clare) reformed religious life with insistence for freedom from having to own anything (called the privilege of poverty.) Their radical reforms made big waves during their day because back then monasteries were associated with wealth and might but they wanted to own nothing! The radical insistence of St. Francis and St. Clare on the right stuff of Gospel living– poverty, humility, mutuality, joy, and prayerful peacemaking— rocked the Church with tension and reforms.
Today, lessons about the privilege of poverty are being revealed in Pope Francis’ activities and what seems to be another insistence that the Church change and not be about power, privilege, wealth and might. We’re wowed and the world keeps buzzing, a bit blown with wonder. What would a Church be like that lives out the privilege of poverty?
St Francis got it– and now Pope Francis is showing us– true transformations come from inclusive and peacemaking communities who are united and prayerfully protecting the privilege of poverty. Good Gospel freedom comes from humility and not having.
Then and now, the plates of privilege and poverty are colliding. Paradigms of power structures are shifting. Coming up from the cracks, we see new creations.
We find ourselves in strange peaks and valleys and realize God is calling us forward. It’s time for us to let God show us how to remake our institutions and expectations, right with our habits and social systems.
A new type of people-power is happening. Something awesome and Christ-centered is coming! Let’s party and celebrate as we move into new ways of being.
Annemarie (who also served as a 
