by Jenny Beatrice
Our collective journey of “imagining transformation” continued at the second session of Province Chapter 2022, held July 21-25. What began as an in-person experience in St. Louis pivoted when COVID safety concerns led us to regroup in a virtual space. Despite the shift, the chapter flowed with challenging presentations, deep conversations and rich sharing designed to spark transformation.
We dove deeper into our province focus of dismantling racism with keynote presentations by Dr. M. Shawn Copeland, an African American Catholic theologian and professor emerita at Boston College. Through the fantasy short story, The Space Traders by Derrick Bell, Dr. Copeland took us through our country’s 400-year history of white supremacy that pervades every aspect of our national consciousness and everyday life. “It’s not something out there that we
must solve,” she says. “Racism is cemented in us.”
We are at a time of impasse in our world, in our church and in our community. Impasse refers to a situation where there is no way out of what imprisons us. “If you always do what you’ve always done,” Dr. Copeland says, “you’ll always get what you’ve always got.” But there is hope.
Dr. Copeland calls us to conversion, to turn or change in a new or different direction. She challenges us to be radically authentic, live with integrity and step into what we believe through concrete action. It’s time to transform. She reminds us that transformation does not happen all at once.
“Incarnate authenticity is an ongoing task," she says. "It is the task of being human, and to be fully human is what it means to be divine.”
How can we answer this call to authenticity, conversion and transformation? After a round of table conversations and large group sharing, some common themes emerged: the desire to make our commitments visible, the need to broaden the voices we are listening to and partnering with, and the importance of being inclusive and intentional in the ways we serve the dear neighbor and build right relationships within and among community.
As the honest (and sometimes difficult) conversations continued via Zoom, we looked at our “shadow,” and the things that are blocking us as a community from living our communal call. We were reminded that transformation is a messy process, and imagined what that transformation would look like in terms of behavior, language and commitments.
Our days concluded in prayer, asking that God continue to reveal to us the direction we need to go and the changes we need to make to transform.