In Her Own Words …
A Novice’s Reflection on the Adrian Dominican Congregation
Adrian Dominican Sisters: A Spiral of Wild Symmetry
- by Sister Elise D. García
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| Sister Elise |
“The beginning was casual.” So reads the first line of the 1967 history of the Adrian Dominican Sisters, Amid the Alien Corn, by Mary Philip Ryan, OP.
The six nuns who gathered at the door of the elm house in the cornfield were not aware that they were laying the foundation of what was to be the Motherhouse of the Adrian Dominican Sisters. The bleak little dwelling gave neither promise nor sign.
It was a warm spring day in late May 1884 when the nuns gathered to dedicate the house as a hospital for railroad accident cases — and, as it turned out, to give birth to a new way of living Dominican life six and a half centuries after it emerged in southern France. Over the course of the next century, the community grew out of that casual beginning, unfolding like a spiral — expanding out in wild symmetry from its new shoots in the Great Lakes basin of North America.
Like the brief period of “inflation” at the creation of the universe that resulted in its massive expansion within a matter of seconds, the community that would become the Congregation of the Most Holy Rosary experienced rapid growth in its early years. Within less than 40 years, the community in Adrian had grown from 14 to 440 members who staffed 52 schools in seven states, including Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, Arizona, New Mexico and Florida.
The expansion continued until the Congregation reached a peak in 1968 of 2,400 members, whose median age was 33 and who were engaged in 208 elementary schools, 56 high schools, three Congregation-owned colleges, one Latin American university, two hospitals, two Newman Centers, and centers of Christian information.
At this point, with the post-Vatican II Renewal Chapter of 1968, the Congregation’s expansion took a new twist — it was internal rather than external. In what by all outward appearances might have seemed a break from the past, the radical changes that ensued were actually a great swing of expansion issuing from and giving new expression to the Congregation’s essence. That expansive movement continues today, although at a more modulated pace.
The spiral image evokes in my mind a double movement of inner impulse (that which initially impelled and continues to impel the congregation and its individual members to existence) and the gravitational pull of the world’s needs (the signs of the times that demand a response from the Congregation and its individual members). The spiral also images a core essence, an inspirited “singularity,” from which its life emerges and to which it is ever-more tethered (i.e., must remain true) regardless of the distance the outer arms have journeyed from the core. The double movement of inner impulse and gravitational pull creates a “wild symmetry.” Again, no matter how wild the swing, the Congregation/spiral is held and ultimately shaped by the internal and external forces of the whole, which also will not permit it to be contained, as with a circle, triangle, square, or ellipse. The spiral is dynamic, ever-expanding, outward-reaching — as are the Adrian Dominicans.
Sisters say they never could have predicted in 1962 what their life would look like in 1972, so radical was that particular spiral swing. Yet there is near universal agreement that their life today is as true as it was prior to renewal.
When I ask, “If somehow you had a lens to look into the future and in 1962 could have seen what life would look like in 1972 (and beyond), would you have liked what you saw and thought it ‘true’?” The usual answer I get is, “No, probably not!”
So as I look to the future of the Adrian Dominican Sisters (and religious life, in general), I know that I am and will be part of that next great spiral movement where we will experience new ways of being true, impelled by the Spirit and drawn by the signs of the times. History tells me that if I could look into the future — even 10 years hence — I may not like what I see or think it “true” to the life. But history — and the sacred geometry of the spiral — speaks otherwise, promising a future (Adrian or not) Dominican life I can trust to be deeply true to itself.
