Sister Helen Response

Katie D.

October 25, 2010 - 9:42 PM

During her visit to Oregon, Sister Helen Prejean attended four University of Oregon classes, held four major speaking events, was interviewed by four different film groups, and met with various local groups of activists and campus groups. I arranged these events, recruited for them, escorted Sister Helen to them, and was present as she delivered her message again and again. It was an amazing week, and one that involved an incredible range of emotions. I am exhausted and inspired by what I have seen.

As with her last visit to Eugene, a full appreciation for Sister Helen's visit will take several weeks to sink in. There was so much in the last week: the power of her stories, the depth of her knowledge, and the constant surprise of her humor. In the two-hour drive to Portland I heard more "nun puns" than you would believe. She shared Cajun jokes and an endless gentle teasing to all of us who worked with her. It was a joy to be with her, and a constant challenge to balance this joy with the strong sense of second-hand pain as she described her experiences with death row prisoners. This woman has witnessed the deaths of six men on death row, and carries the stories of many others. These are not statistics for her, but the vibrant faces of human beings. I can't tell you how many times I felt close to tears during this week, or how powerfully I feel now that I need to continue on this path toward a life of social justice activism.

I'm going to include here a homework assignment I've just drafted. It's for my "Perspectives in Conflict Resolution" class with Professor Jane Gordon. Sister Helen visited our class, and so of course I decided to the assignment of a "reflective response" to work through my reactions to Sister Helen's visit. Let me know what you think.

Response 1

In addition to hearing Sister Helen speak in our class, I had the great good fortune of spending the week arranging her schedule and escorting her to events. I therefore was able to hear her speak about her life and work close to ten times during her six-day stay. I am fascinated by this woman who has dedicated her life to ending the system of state-sanctioned killing. I have rarely met someone who approaches her life and work with such joy as she does, despite of recognizing the trauma and horror of the things she has witnessed. I think that her approach to conflict resolution is something we should all aspire to. She has a deep and persevering passion for her work, and a belief that she is changing the world through her work. This passion arises both through a spiritual pursuit and from a sense of moral outrage, which informs her energy and maintains her efforts. She does not do her work in isolation, but as an essentially community-based individual, in her work and in her spiritual life, she viewing her work within a larger cause of social justice and morality. Most importantly, however, she views her life and her work as a narrative, and a story that must be told in a way that invites new understanding and reflection, rather than imposing a viewpoint. Her series of perspectives on conflict resolution, in her individual life, her work, and her approach to ending capital punishment in the United States, seems to be a vital and sustaining one: a way of approaching the field of ADR and the living of life in general.

Sister Helen responded to a query about her grief in a profoundly telling way. She talked about the horror of witnessing the deaths of the six death row prisoners she has served as spiritual adviser. She quoted Dorothy Day to the class, saying "Don't morn for the dead. Organize!" She said that she feels a deep and abiding sense of outrage, and a demand to witness and take action in response to what she has learned. She takes the time she needs to mourn, and then acts, because "if we don't act, we become complicit with the system we hate." There is no neutral position on moral issues in a democracy. She speaks to the deep need to be at action in the world, working to end the systems of injustice which kills in the name of retribution. This response and the power of her work is deeply informed by her own religious faith, and by the moral compass she holds. At the Interfaith Gathering this week, Sister Helen evoked the image of the burning bush, of the call to lead people into justice and away from oppression. She believes herself to be called: first to witness, and then to act. This idea of a calling, and the accompanying demand that we put action into passion is a profoundly troubling and empowering concept, and one which she has embodied to the fullest.

Sister Helen is a member of a community of social justice activists, living in community and working within a history of those who work to end oppression. The community nature of her faith is one essential factor in how she is able to accomplish so much. But she couches every argument against the death penalty in a larger complex of injustice and oppression, from racism to militarism. She sees capital punishment as both symptom and cause of so many other social ills, from the poverty that causes crime and results in poor representation to the racism that demands outrage when white victims are killed, but looks the other way when black Americans are the victims of crime and structural violence. She sees her work in the context of others who were called to do social justice work, from Martin Luther King, Jr. and Dorothy Day to the local leaders in social justice and peace movements. She spent a good deal of her visit to the University of Oregon working to support local social justice movements, from those directly working on death penalty issues to those focused on peacemaking and youth empowerment. This broad view of conflict resolution is essential in my mind: that we see our work within the larger contexts in which we live and participate. Our efforts are linked and our passions can serve to feed and reinforce each other's. Sister Helen is a living example of a woman so connected to her own cause that she can use it as a lens for understanding the structures of violence all around us. Because of this broad view, I believe that she has a better chance of succeeding in her cause, as well as changing the world in the broadest and most essential sense.

Sister Helen was not called to this work at a young age. This is part of her story, and a corner stone of the journey which she invites her audiences and readers to join. She admits to her own ignorance, and the "waking up" that occurred when she was forty years old. She says "it doesn't matter when you wake up, but that when you do that you act immediately." She quotes the Latin American idea that we make the road by walking, beginning before we are prepared and continuing through mistakes and ignorance. Sister Helen stumbled into social justice, and was called into wakefulness. She invites her readers to receive the same awakening. Then she shares the accident of her involvement with a death row prisoner, and again invites us into the fear, the prejudice, the enlightenment and the pain of this experience. Through her, we become witnesses in turn, called to action by our understanding. She admits her errors, and portrays them vividly in each new form of narrative she utilizes. We believe her story because it is so human, so very recognizable as the result of a powerful passion and the imperfect understanding of her new path. In discussing the various forms her story has taken over the years, she reveals the power of narrative and the centrality of story telling in inviting change in the world.

After this week with Sister Helen, I feel called. Profoundly, inescapably called. I have had a passion for social justice work for years, and a deep desire to create change in the world. But now, again, I see this one individual perspective in this work, and one that arises both from a certain knowledge that neutrality is impossible and from an abiding joy and hope. Outrage is an essential motivating force, both in responding to crime and in living as a witness of injustice. But Sister Helen tells jokes. She wants to swap funny stories and tease her friends. She takes the time for joy, always, and for the smallest of celebrations. Twice we were nearly late to engagements because we stopped to look at the world: at flowers or at paintings. Sister Helen is not a woman consumed by anger, but rather by purpose. She is a member of her world in the deepest way: in a way that inspires joy as well as a lifetime of labor. I feel so privileged that I was able to spend the week working with this amazing woman. I also feel that ambivalence she mentioned, the stealthy call for comfort and for a personal narrative that does not pull me so close to the suffering of the world. But she mentioned, again and again, the humanity she sees in the individuals sitting on death row, and the intimacy of one human being looking into the face of another. This is a certain call, and one that demands response from people of conscience. Her face, so full of joy after twenty-five years of doing this most heartbreaking of work is a testimony to what can be done in the world. Sister Helen said that when we are called, we must act. Somehow, stumbling along the trail I will make by walking, I will follow that call.