Winter 2006

From the Prioress
Sister Anne Shepard, OSB

The wisest mind has something yet to learn.
George Santayana

Dear Friends of the Mount,

Recently I opened an unsigned email and laughed out loud. This is how it started:

Hello Anne, we are students from [I’ll delete the name of the private Catholic school in a northern state]. We are currently enrolled in a Church class learning a lot about St. Benedict and the monastic life. We were wondering if you would answer a few questions that go more in depth about your life.

(Question #1) What about life do you miss?

I responded that I would answer the questions if the students gave me their names. So far, I have not heard from them, but I hope to. What a teachable moment!

Clearly, the youth have neither been to Mount St. Scholastica nor have they been taught by us. If they had, they would know that I am madly in love with life; our community loves life and lives life fully, hardly missing a thing. Furthermore, one of the joys in life is that we are regularly involved in new learning.

The editorial board of Threshold chose the theme of “Love of Learning” for this issue. The pages will draw you to the experiences of two of our sisters, Rose Marie Stallbaumer and Patricia Seipel, who had the unique opportunity to teach in Africa last summer. Three sisters, Mary Rae Schrick, Dorothy Wolters and Sylvia Kenkel participated in a Benedictine renewal program in Rome. Sister Molly Brockwell studied Spanish in Mexico. Sister Irene Nowell, president of the Catholic Biblical Association of America, teaches students from all over the United States in her web classes. Sophia Center, headed by our national scholar on rural religious education, Sister Eleanor Suther, has retreat offerings that strengthen the mind and heart. The local Atchison adult education center, Happy Hearts, which prepares men and women for successful completion of their Kansas high school diploma, is housed in Feeney (you alumnae will remember the building as either the college library or the Academy) and is thriving. The students are under the tutelage of Sister Laura Haug, former head of the college education department.

This magazine cannot possibly capture all the learning that is happening now. I would be foolish to try to exhaust the list of ways that we keep expanding our minds. Thirty five years ago, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops wrote a pastoral letter To Teach As Jesus Did. In it they said, “Today, perhaps more than ever before, it is important to recognize that learning is a lifelong experience. Rapid, radical changes in contemporary society demand well planned, continuing efforts to assimilate new data, new insights, new modes of thinking and acting.”

Our community joins many of you in trying to find new ways of thinking and acting to ward off ignorance, to erase an attitude that would have us believe that Jesus really didn’t mean that killing is unacceptable, to open our homes and hearts to the alienated, to teach the young to think creatively and critically about serious and urgent world and church issues, to find medical breakthroughs on diseases, to form ethical frameworks within which we can address complex medical issues, to do our part to prevent the escalation of global warming, and more. But through it all, we stay faithful to our primary call as Benedictines, to seek God above all else in a loving and prayerful community.

On January 28th, we will co-sponsor Wangari Maathai, graduate of Mount St. Scholastica College and 2004 Nobel Peace Laureate. What a wonderful example of a woman committed to life-long learning. While the final schedule of the day is in process as this magazine goes to press, check our web site for details of the day and plan to join us at Benedictine College for a lecture given by Wangari and the presentation of the college’s highest award to her.

May you continue to learn.

What about life do I miss? Right now I am drawing a blank.

Happy New Year,
S. Anne Shepard, OSB