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Two Continents, Several Countries and Many New Friends

It never occurred to me that my connections to sisters in Europe and different states in this country would be considered "collaborating." However, from the beginning of my acceptance into a volunteer program after the fall of Communism, I suppose that is exactly what I have been doing.

It all started in the mid-1990s when I read an article in a congregational communication: "Volunteers Needed." Among the types of volunteers listed were those who could teach English-aha, something I had expertise in; I'd been speaking and writing the language for some years-so I immediately contacted Lucianne Siers, O.P., a Grand Rapids Dominican. She had launched an ambitious program to help central and eastern European sisters learn about Vatican II
and the current Church after all the years of the sisters' persecution in the underground.

Jean Reimer, another Grand Rapids sister and remarkable missionary who had suffered greatly in Guatemala, interviewed me for the program. When I was accepted, the congregation arranged to fund my participation.

As I love to travel, it did not bother me at all that training and debriefing aspects of the program took place in Washington, D.C. In those early days the other American sisters were from the east or mid-west, strangers to each other but soon to become bonded by common interests. Some hoped to help with nursing, pastoral care, library assistance, artwork, catechetical updating, and some, like me, teaching English to sisters in Central and Eastern Europe. Not all stayed after
the first training session. I remember one sister, a Jewish convert to Christianity, who realized that she was not ready to face Poland with its memories of the holocaust.

My first experience in Poland was in 1995. Nine American sisters, representing seven religious communities, gathered at 137 Czerniakowska Street in Warsaw, a huge, bullet-scarred building that had survived World War II and today serves again as convent and school run by the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth. We were locked in; that was one of the differences I first noticed about being in a foreign convent. To get out and in we had to connect with the portress, and she wasn't always on duty. Young sisters from all over Poland came together that summer, and it was the first experience of collaboration for them. The feelings engendered among us all were profound- joy of our getting to know and work with each other, the older teachers loving to be with the young sister students, the young students discovering that Americans could be lovable, and friendships developing that continue today.

I was blessed by two summers in Warsaw and subsequently three summers in Lviv, Ukraine. Each time there were new sisters from the United States to work with and new sisters to learn from in Europe There was lay collaboration too. My college friend, Katie O'Leary and I spent two summers with the Basilian sisters in Lviv. There we experienced the beautiful Byzantine liturgy and grew to appreciate the iconography that is so basic to Eastern European culture.

When Lucianne's program was no longer to be under the auspices of the American bishops, many of us realized that we could not call it a day. Knowing each other as well as we did, we joined to form the Central/Eastern European Forum. Together we planned the 2002 summer retreat program, bringing sisters from Slovakia, Romania,Ukraine and Hungary to the United States for an experience none of us will forget. We collaborated on a book, Were Not Our Hearts Burning, exemplifying the richness of sharing our stories with each other. Our next proposed endeavor is an event in the summer of 2005. Planning is currently underway as a result of a meeting of Eastern European and American sisters in Kosice, Slovakia.

Probably the other sisters who accepted Lucianne's invitation to do something for the sisters in central and Eastern Europe had no more realization than I that one of the unfolding blessings would be breaking through the boundaries among the sisters, not only in Europe but also in the United States. Little did I know that eleven years after my first experience in Poland I would number among my friends and fellow collaborators Dominican Sisters from several congregations, St Joseph Sisters, Sisters of Charity. Franciscan Sisters, Benedictine, Sisters of Social Service, Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ and Basilian Sisters There are sisters to whom we pray as well, those we worked with who have since died. Foremost for me, of course, is our own Sister Jeanne Marie Bendik, who taught English in Kosice, Slovakia.

When I entered the convent, religious in the Bay Area seldom had the opportunity to work with sisters of other congregations. Today, only fifty years later, I can write this article about work and personal friendships, "collaborations," spanning two continents and several countries. It has been a most unexpected and enriching part of the hundredfold we were promised back in those early days.

By Sister Karen Marie Franks, OP