Gazing out the window

But talking about myself to others is not the same thing. My self-image, my privacy, my fears and weaknesses, my secrets, my talents and even my awareness that God is truly at work in me all pose obstacles to this. To put it simply, I don’t like to talk about myself to others, but since that is what I have been asked to do, I will try….

I had a happy childhood, even though, like most people, my mother and father were not “perfect” parents. They were children of their time and their first concern was to teach me to behave properly, to be a good example to others and to study hard in view of the future. They were less concerned with helping me develop my identity. At any rate, I am infinitely grateful to them because they loved me and saw to it that I had a happy youth.

I reached a turning point in my life when I began to feel the need to “be myself” and make my own personal choices. To be sincere, it was stubbornness that helped me get to know the Daughters of St. Paul and when this happened things began to change for me. After a major interior battle, I abruptly came to a decision. I didn’t receive any special inner illumination. Instead, I made a personal and deliberate choice to enter the Congregation of the Daughters of St. Paul–a path I set out on with great resolve, almost aware of what I was doing…. A person ventures onto a highway knowing that exit signs will not be too frequent and so I set out on my “adventure” serenely, without fear or regrets. Along the way, I discovered a new way of living, side routes that filled me with enthusiasm and marvelous panoramas at every turn of the road. On second thought, I do recall experiencing one regret: the fact that I would never be able to have a family and children of my own. But every time I felt the pang of this, I offered it to God and thus I was always happy. And I still am.

The first stage of my journey took me to Alba. The atmosphere was that of a convent, of course, but it was an atmosphere permeated with genuine joy. Relocating to Rome for my novitiate, I halfexpected that the rules there would be more severe, that there would be more acts of self-denial to make, that I would be spending more time on my knees…. Instead, I was surprised by how normal and simple things were. Maestra Nazarenza, my formation mistress, taught me a lot about life. I don’t remember her theoretical lessons concerning the religious state but I do remember her simple and sincere acceptance of us, her focus on essentials and the humor with which she taught us even serious things–a very astute way of helping us remember them. During the novitiate, her stratagem for helping us get to know ourselves was to have us point out our defects to one another. I remember two in particular that were called to my attention, namely: You like to gaze out the window, and: You never eat bread unless it’s fresh. I don’t know why I can’t remember any of the other observations made to me–and there were at least a dozen! But with the passing of time I have come to believe that these two comments that stuck in my mind were not really defects but rather outward signs of positive values. The first attitude led me to look beyond my own small world, to be receptive to others, to yearn to discover different situations and values, to want to get to know myself and others better. Without knowing it, Maestra Thecla helped me satisfy these desires by sending me as a missionary to Colombia. The second attitude is still typical of me in the sense that I am always yearning for “fresh bread,” that is, for things that are new and dynamic.

My transfer to Bogota, Colombia offered me my first contact with a different culture. I arrived there laden with the “baggage” of my own culture, which I felt was superior to all others, and also the “baggage” of some theological training. I wanted to help the poor people to whom I had been sent–people whom I thought were less “civilized” than me and who were martyred by the effects of an unrelenting guerrilla warfare that had begun back in 1955. I had a lot of answers ready for my new “flock,” unaware of the fact that perhaps the questions had changed. Asked to carry out the service of formator, I tried to establish good communications with the young women in my care. With great tact, I sought to teach them, offer them suggestions, insist on certain things…. Some of the things I tried to impart seemed to stick, but in most cases it was like banging heads against a wall. Having learned some basic Spanish, I began to learn in other areas too. The first lesson I learned was that I had to get to know our candidates and their personal life stories. Then I had to become familiar with their culture and their way of looking at people, situations and events because my personal “baggage” (no matter how attached I was to it) was not able to satisfy their needs. An even more important lesson I learned was that I could nothing without GOD.

This learning experience, which lasted not just days or months but years, freed me interiorly and I found myself won over by our candidates as I became personally involved with them. It was not easy for me to change my ways of thinking and acting. Nor was it easy for me to give up the things that made me feel secure. Like Jesus, who became one of us, I wanted to become one of them, but something within me resisted this. Nevertheless, I gave the Spirit room to work within me and he helped me discover values that I was able to make my own because I was not forced to give up anything that made me me. In exchange, these values enriched me with qualities I hadn’t possessed previously.

When I reached the point of feeling that I had learned something, that I had adopted a less ruleoriented mentality while still preserving essential values; when I had finally begun to feel comfortable in my new context, I was once again called to gaze out the window by accepting a transfer to Bolivia. Situated on a plateau over two miles high, La Paz was a fairytale city, especially at night against the backdrop of the Nevado Illimani–an impressive snow-capped mountain range.

Although I was no longer in Colombia, I was still in South America and I believed I was by now an expert on all its peoples and cultures. Unfortunately, an attitude adjustment was necessary here. I found myself inserted in a community that was apostolically more deeply involved with the indigenous people but which, at heart, was still very Italian.

It was here that I felt the first effects of Vatican Council II, which reached the Local Church through the Medellin meeting. It was a beautiful time of renewal, shared by many religious Institutes, as we all sought to express our faith and mission in an ever-more genuine way. Enriched by this experience and yearning to put into practice the lessons I had learned, I found myself once again gazing out the window in the form of another transfer, this time to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Once again I would still be in South America, but by now I knew that the context would be very different from the ones already familiar to me…..

During my first days in Buenos Aires, I participated in a community meeting in which the sisters invited me to tell them how I felt. I promptly said that for the third time in my life I felt uprooted and lost. I told them I realized I would have to get to know them all and observe things attentively, and that only after I felt at home in my new context would I be able to voice my thoughts freely, collaborate with them and accomplish something.

The sister sitting next to me reached over, squeezed my arm and exclaimed, “Thank you! That’s exactly what we wanted to hear. We don’t want you to impose anything on us. We want you to first of all get to know us so that we can then dialogue with one another and work together.” Once again I felt that I was being invited to look within myself, to change my parameters, to die to some things so as to make room for the new ones that would be offered me.

My opportunities to gaze out the window didn’t stop here. After a time in Argentina, I returned to Colombia to travel paths I was already familiar with. Besides making new friends, I was reunited with sisters whom I had to get to know all over again because they had changed over the years. This was not surprising because I

too had changed. We shared our stories with one another and discovered that we were more mature, more competent at managing our lives, more united to one another and more willing to journey together.

A final invitation to gaze out the window: my return to Italy–a painful event comprehensible only to those who have undergone a similar experience. Not that I disliked my homeland or its people. It was the interior uprooting and detachment that made me suffer because the human heart is so fragile. But I was not opposed to taking this step. Once again I found people who helped me to grow, who prepared me for my return–not the geographical relocation but the interior attitudes necessary to enable me to adapt to a culture I had left many years before and that was by now greatly changed.

And now I am here in Italy. Perhaps I could say that as the result of so many changes I am no longer myself…but that would be absolutely wrong. I am the same person I always was and I am happy my life unfolded as it did. Ideally speaking, if I could re-live my life, I would take today as my starting point and continue to grow. I would strive to live more authentically, freely and maturely; to be more aware of the journey being made by people today, to marvel at the creative power of God, and to continue to search for “newness of life.”

As always, I seem to be yearning for “fresh bread.” That is to say, I want to look beyond my current horizons. To paraphrase Alexander Solzhenitsyn, I could say: “Looking over my shoulder, I am amazed at the road I have traveled from the beginning up to now. I thank God for the joy of continually discovering myself afresh, of growing, and of being able to reflect his light.”

It has made me happy to share these thoughts with all of you even though not every reader might find them interesting. Some might consider my reflections too superficial and they would be right. My more profound story–the one concerning my relationship with God and his work in me–remains “top secret.”

Right now, I feel like a chick hatching out of its shell. I’m still in the process of being born….

Teresita Conti, fsp