Franciscan Spirituality Center
920 Market Street
La Crosse, WI 54601

https://www.fscenter.org/

My guest today is Sister Jolynn Brehm. She is a sister with the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration. I've been blessed to know Jolynn for many years. I know that nature and connection to the earth, to the universe, is an important part of your spirituality. Talk about your experience with Native spirituality as a result of that experience. Were you able to pick up any of that? Not at that time specifically, but I’ve had the privilege of ministering in the Woodruff-Minocqua area, which is eight miles from Lac du Flambeau, Wisconsin, and one of the things that I did was any time one of the women especially from Lac du Flambeau would offer programs through the technical institute branch in Minocqua, I would always attend. And there was one very specific time when, Rochelle was her name, she offered the way in which the rituals of the native people were so significant, and we participated in some of those rituals. Well, that really grounded me in the fact that, you know, in my religious tradition, in my spirituality, we have a lot of rituals. Is it fair to say that those experiences learning the Native perspective on spirituality help you to have a better understanding of your own Catholic tradition? I would say yes, because what it allowed me to do is to say, OK, what is the underlying way that all peoples are invited to be aware of the greater dynamic in their lives? How are all peoples invited to sense that spirit world? So, when I sensed how the Native people were so in touch with the Creator and everything that was created and how all of earth was gift, I began to realize that in our Catholic tradition, yes, we, too, all from way, way back when, use earth items as ways of entering into a ritual that seemed to connect us with the divine. It was the use of the wheat and the bread and the wine of the grapes. So, in our Catholic tradition that particular piece of bread and wine from the earth is now very central, very central to our way of ritualizing today. Also, the use of water, water was very significant in the lives of many, many people. It was their sustenance and their way of honoring; they treasured it. We use water to bless, to sprinkle, to call forth that blessing; the baptismal water is part of our rituals. We are also very much in tune with the sense of the spirit, that there's something beyond ourselves that is guiding us. And so we use the image of fire for that, and I think that many of the people in our Christian tradition, including our Catholic use of fire, very often, it kind of draws you into a sense of something much more overriding in our lives and very powerful. You used the word presence. I'm interested in looking back over your life when you first became aware of that presence, even maybe not at the time, but looking back, like OK, maybe already I was in touch with the present. So, after milking the cows, we would go around the barn to what we called the barn approach. It was the leading way to get into the upper part of the barn. Like an earth ramp that would go up to the higher level. Yes, like an earth ramp. Yes, definitely, and that was wide enough to accommodate all of the comings and goings of the horses, pulling the bales and all of that kind of thing. So, my mom and dad and I, at that time I was very, very young, probably 3 or something like that, we would sit up there and face the west, and we were finished milking most of the time at sunset, so we would sit there and admire not only looking over the fields and seeing how they were growing, the crops, but also just to be totally immersed in that beautiful, sunset sky. And, of course, in the country you have sky unending that you can see, and so it was very overwhelming, and I remember somehow the sense that that was God's presence, and my mom and dad – I don't recall the words exactly – but I have a sense that they named their gratitudes, that they were thankful for the farm. They were thankful for the crops. They were thankful for rain, thankful for family, so I sensed I also picked up that that was their way of honoring the presence of God in their lives. So many people today live in cities and the chaos of daily life, and they’ll go out into the country to retreat centers that sound very similar to what you experienced virtually every day of your upbringing. Yes, yes, isn’t that true? Yes, and even more so now, I think, people have become aware that it's the places that are going to be calming and in bringing a sense of well-being. Probably a sense of awe. A lot of people, I don't think, have really looked at a tree, gone up to a tree, noticed the things that are growing. I think there's, yes definitely, that people want to find that.