One Body Many Parts. Paula's Blog

 One Body, Many Parts.  

1 Corinthians 12:18 "But as it is, God placed the parts, each one of them, in the body as God intended."  God has a sense of humor.

Five women of different ages, nationalities, and histories living in an unfamiliar house in an unfamiliar city for the intentional purpose of learning about a countercultural, alternative way of living: a way of living together that is meant to be an example for the life of the world.

The Philosophy in our Collaborative Dominican Novitiate handbook talks about things like, openness and inclusion, respect, personal flexibility, mutually respectful dialogue, willingness to collaborate with others, and joy.

The women of the Collaborative Dominican Novitiate had a chance to reflect, review and articulate what it means to be a Dominican Sister when we traveled to Columbus Ohio from February 17-21, to present to the Board of Directors of the Collaborative Dominican Novitiate just what the first half year of our novitiate meant to us.

In our presentation we decided to just sit down and have conversations with each other using the framework of the four pillars.  The board of directors were just kind of observers to what we discussed about our experiences over the past few months.  That was the serious part of our presentation.  To warm up the listeners, we chanted a psalm parody that we wrote, complete with an antiphon, set to one of the complex psalm tones from the Dominican Praise book. We sang about some of our experiences at the Collaborative Novitiate.  We chanted about “pork chops, intuitive feelers cooking for dinner guests, CDN directors who maybe should come with subtitles, among other things.  This was so well received that the directors asked us for a repeat performance.  We also chanted the Psalm at lunch for the Dominican Sisters of Peace who hosted us in Columbus.  

Now lest you think that writing psalms and traveling to board of director’s meetings were all we have done in the last month…

We attended a Superbowl Party with the Augustinians.

Invited Don Goergen, O.P.  and Brian Bricker, O.P. over for dinner.  The food was delicious.

We attended mass at the Vietnamese Parish “Holy Child of Jesus", to celebrate TET or Lunar New Year.   

Angela looking stunning in her Vietnamese Dress “ao dai”.

Of course, we could not celebrate the opening of the Year of The Dragon…without Dragons. (I was so excited to have Dragons in church on TET.)

A way of living together that is meant to be an example for the life of the world…. and joy.  

So many amazing things are happening here in Chicago at the Collaborative Dominican Novitiate.

Donald Goergen…and Dragons, in the same month.  Who wouldn’t be joyful?  

Many Parts, One Body.  

Thank you for reading and please have a blessed and fruitful Lent.