Thirty-eight years ago, I was asked to join a neighborhood Bunco group. The group has been going for over 40 years. I knew all the ladies from the community Women’s Club. I had never played Bunco before, but it’s so easy. Our format has teams and there is switching of tables and partners, so you really get to talk to everybody, catch up, and get to know one another.
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There are snacks on the tables and a dessert to complete the night. In the old days, we didn’t get home until 1:00 a.m. One time my husband asked me what we do there—what exactly is Bunco? It’s such an easy game that you can snack and chat and still keep track of sixes on dice. So, what’s the dessert about afterward? I explained that we weren’t done talking yet! He just shook his head.

The group has changed over the years, as ladies moved away. But these women are my best friends. We do other things together and get together with our husbands, too. I’ve traveled with some of them and have kept up with some who moved away. And like a lot of women’s stories, we’ve been with each other through sickness, surgery, divorce, teenage kids, weddings, funerals, and more. 

Women are so good at community. Theresians is the same kind of community as my Bunco group, and I just treasure it!

"I am the LORD, your God,
    who grasp your right hand;
It is I who say to you, 'Fear not,
    I will help you.' "
~Isaiah 41:13

by Tammy Townsend Denny, Executive Director
Sadness may seem like a strange topic during a season when signs of hope, peace, love, and joy are everywhere -- actual signs on churches, on wrapping paper, even in my neighbor’s front yard. We’re supposed to be happy during Advent, right? We’re anticipating the arrival of Jesus. Our hearts should be dancing with joy. 

But, what happens when the joy isn’t there? What if sadness overwhelms the hope, peace, and love?

Through my spiritual practices, I have learned to lean into the uncomfortable feelings of sadness, to embrace them, and to be kind to them. I have learned that our lives need space for sadness as much as our lives need space for joy. 

A few days ago, I was feeling some of that sadness. Nothing was especially wrong. Kids are good. Husband is good. Life is good. When I glanced at the calendar, I realized it was December 7 – Pearl Harbor Day, the day we remember all those killed during the military strike in 1941. Admittedly, I’m a bit too young to have any first-hand, emotional memories about Pearl Harbor, yet the day holds significance in my life. December 7 is my parents’ wedding anniversary. This is my first Pearl Harbor Day without either of them.

When my father died in 2001, my parents had been married 40-some years. My mother passed away in March of this year. 

I have distinct memories from my childhood of the news stories about Pearl Harbor that would remind Dad it was time to buy Mom a box of chocolate-covered cherries for their anniversary. He didn’t get the fancy candy store chocolates. Nope, my dad always gave her the inexpensive, grocery store variety – those cheap chocolate-covered cherries in the red box. And my mom loved them, saying they were her favorite, though I never understood why. In my mind, Pearl Harbor and cheap, chocolate-covered cherries are forever linked. 

While the memories are joyful, the sadness is real. And that’s OK. Father Terrance Klein, in a 2020 Advent reflection for the Jesuit magazine America, says, “Advent begins as an admission. It is okay to be sad, to lament.” In my lamenting, I believe God has my right hand, even on those days when I forget to ask for help. 

For those who have lost children, spouses, siblings, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and friends this past year and for those who mourn loved ones who have died in years past (mourning has no expiration date), I pray that you find moments of peace during this Season of Joy. I also invite you to lean into the grief and sadness. Lament! Don’t push the sadness away. Embrace it. Be kind to it. And know that Theresians around the world hold you in prayer.  
I leave you with an excerpt from a poem from Jan Richardson’s book The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief:

Do not pass by
the opportunity 
to lament
what is forever gone
from here.
It is an honoring
of what has been…

Happy New Year!! Liturgically speaking, of course. We look forward to the new beginnings promised by the birth of Christ. We can look to the Holy Family a little more this year, as our Theresian Prayer of Solidarity asks us to pray for women who seek to restore relationships in their families, with spouses, children, and extended family.

Advent usually has wonderful religious ceremonies, taize gatherings, sacred carol choirs and the like. Advent also starts a season of holiday events and gatherings that we’ve looked forward to all year. This year it is possible that some of those will be curtailed. But at this darkest time of the year, we bring our own lights to the banquet of love:  Christmas lights everywhere, candles lit, fireworks for New Year’s-- the more lights, the better!
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We Theresians will keep our lights on, our lamps lit, and expect a banquet to happen anyway, at any time. And we’ll be ready!

Theresians are meeting again, hallelujah! Inviting all women to join us in living our Gospel values should be the order of the day. We were locked up too long, away from the spiritual banquet that nourishes us any time Theresians meet. Hearts of wisdom always fill each other up, and we need that more than ever. In all our “little ways” we serve up hospitality, warmth and nurturing. If you spend a little time thinking about your friends, you can probably think of someone who would love Theresians. Please invite her to a meeting. There’s nothing like the welcome of a group of Theresians. 

Start Spreadin’ the News………

​Theresians are looking for women who can support one another on their faith journey, make spiritual development their priority, deepen their relationship with Christ, live a life rich in Gospel values all the while having fun and creating new friendships. After a long and challenging year, we have lost many Theresian sisters and Communities so it’s a great time to bring in new members. The NLT Evangelization and Outreach Committee is excited to announce our
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The New Membership Campaign will run the month of February, 2022. We will be in contact with the District Leadership Teams and will have suggestions to make your Campaign a huge success! Being part of the Theresian Family is such a joy and fills the need for friendship and faith so let’s share it with others! 

Earlier this year, the National Leadership Team welcomed four wonderfully wise, intelligent, creative, and spiritual women on to this board. They are ready to light the pathway as all Theresians enter the banquet of Love.
 
Yvette Davis – Vessels of Light Community, Lafayette, Louisiana
I’ve been a member of Vessels of Light Community in the Roses of Acadiana District since its inception twenty years ago. I’ve served my community on all the positions on the local team except for Treasurer. I’ve served as a DLT Representative for my community twice and served on the DLT as a publicity leader and leader of the Lenten Day of Reflection 2012 in Lafayette. I am married and have two children in their early 20s who live out of state, and I work fulltime for a local hospital foundation that funds healthcare clinics for the needy. I serve as a Eucharistic Minister for the Homebound at St. Pius X Catholic Church and in marriage ministry there.  I enjoy live music, playing tennis, art of all kinds and meeting new people. 

I am new to serving on the National Leadership Team and will be working on the Education and Communication Team, as well as, the Evangelization and Outreach Team of Theresians USA. I hope that by serving on these committees with an open heart, I may determine where my gifts may best be used to serve immediate needs/objectives and contribute to this ministry’s future. I look forward to meeting new sisters in this new role and mentoring new groups when called to.  I hope you, my Theresian sisters, feel comfortable contacting me with any questions, and I pray I am able to help you and your communities with any of your needs. 
 
 
Janice LeMond – Companions of the Journey, Austin, Texas
I am not a native Texan. I have thrived as a wildflower in Houston and now Austin for 40 years. This transplant from Michigan has survived draught, raising three children, hurricanes, family illness and loss, heat and humidity, retirement, record freezing temperatures and the Covid Pandemic. This wildflower transplant was uncultivated by the mainstream thinking but flourished as an independent thinker. She has grown wild in the rich earth provided by Theresains since the early 1990’s.  

Retirement from healthcare in 2013 meant I would search for a new identity. Retirement brought relocation; a new city meant leaving my long time Theresian Ebbtide sisters. These Ebbtide women gave me the nourishment to be rooted in my love of God.   In Austin I found smaller communities, Theresians is different here, yet just as beautiful.  Companions on the Journey, a group of eight wonderful women let me be their sister.  I have served on the leadership teams of both Ebbtide and Companions of the Journey, as well as DLT roles.  In retirement I have taken multiple Just Faith Classes, I became a docent at the Texas Wildflower Center and I joined the Ladies of Charity. The Ladies of Charity and their Thrift Shop offer multiple opportunities to volunteer. I have served on their board now since 2018. Currently, I am Vice President of Benevolence.

God has given me a full life. I am blessed to have my husband of fifty-two years still with me. I am caregiver for both my husband and our dog of 14 years. We have two children and five grandchildren. My love of gardening has evolved; today I am more patient with the weeds. Now the garden is more about the environment to reflect, pray and be thankful. Service on the NLT offers new opportunities to grow seeds of friendships and perhaps discover other perennial souls. I have been asked to join the Spirituality, as well as the Education and Communication committees. Please pray for us.


Gretchen Penny - Seekers Community, Houston, Texas
I am in the Seekers group in Houston, Texas, and we are a relatively new group.  We were in formation for a couple of years under the extraordinary and inspiring mentorship of Claire Mueller, Stephanie Avioli and Janet Giannoni from the Espiritu group.  We selected our first leadership team in 2017 and we were officially chartered on September 17, 2018.  I was the first leader of the group and I have also served as the DLT representative for a couple of years. I am married and I have two sons—Leo, who is 25 and lives in Cambridge, MA, and Noah, who is 23 and will be living in New York City by the time this article is published.  I work full-time as a project manager for an environmental consulting company. 

In my local parish, St. Anne Catholic Community, I serve as a sacristan and eucharistic minister.  I also belong to the St. Anne Guild, a service and fellowship ministry for women in the parish, where I serve as a wedding coordinator, helping brides and grooms with their “big day.” 

I am excited to join the National Leadership Team for Theresians USA because I feel so fortunate to have found my own community of prayerful and supportive women, and I want to learn more about Theresian communities across the country.  I will be serving the NLT on the Spirituality committee and the Resource & Technology committee, and both of these committees promise many opportunities to share our love and support for each other and for the broader Theresians International community. 
 

Mary Schreiber – The Women at the Well, Dubuque, Iowa
Hello Theresian sisters! My name is Mary Schreiber. I’m a member of the Women at the Well community in Dubuque, Iowa. We’ve been together for over thirty years! I have served in all of our group leadership positions, and am currently the chair of our local DLT. Jim and I have been married for 44 years, and we have four children and three grandchildren. I taught in elementary schools for 33 years, and retired in 2008. My hobbies include reading (the book club I started over thirty years ago meets monthly), gardening (in retirement I became a Master Gardener), photography, traveling and teaching line dancing every week. We moved to a four-acre parcel five years ago, and we keep busy removing invasive species and planting native plants.
 
This is my first term on the National Leadership Team. I am a member of the Spirituality Committee, working to enhance and deepen the spiritual lives of my Theresian sisters. Another role I have is serving on the Resource and Technology Committee, making information about Theresians more accessible on our website and other social media sites, and publishing our Dimension Connections newsletter. My calling is to serve my Theresian sisters and the Theresian mission in my own unique way: while I consider myself a deeply spiritual person, I am not a member of any organized religion. I embrace the principles and espouse the wisdom of many spiritual and philosophical traditions.

It happened when my teen daughter came out of Walmart. She slumped in the passenger seat and turned to say those words to me with a scowl that could curdle milk. “What?” I asked.

“You know how you are always talking to people in line at the store?”

“Yes.”

“You know how I ask if you know them and you tell me you just met them. Well, I just smiled at someone at the checkout and they told me their life story! Mom! I have become you!”

Underline the word “you” for full emphasis. I smiled a mama’s smile and drove home. On the way I filled her in on the finer points of the Welcome to the Grown Women’s World-Wide Bonded Club.

We women intuitively do that a lot. Right? We meet people anywhere… Checkout lines. Elevators. Parks. PTOs. It doesn’t matter. We meet people and there is this freedom, this openness to take people where they are. We talk on playgrounds and eagerly serve up pointers on teething and handling toddler tantrums. We hold doors for strangers with a smile. We keep babies entertained in long lines and are patient with the new clerks at the desk knowing they are struggling.  We can swap recipes and stories of our kids with anyone. Yes. It is usually with women. Women we have never met before, but have an invisible instant rapport. Our husbands don’t. Our teens won’t.
With all that we have been through with the COVID crisis, we can breathe a collective sigh. We made it! A year and a half of isolation, insulation, (incarceration?) has pushed us ladies to the frontlines. So much has changed. Women maintained their jobs, lost their jobs, moved their jobs home along with schooling their kids. With everything beginning to open again the question we all have is what are we called to do now?   

What we have shown and what is so desperately needed now is a spirit of hospitality. Hospitality is usually associated with receiving guests, visitors, strangers into our home or a restaurant or hotel. But hospitality is more than that. It is the virtue of being magnanimous - of having a great soul. It is the way we treat others wherever we are. St. Paul says: “Rather we must be hospitable, one who loves good, who is self-controlled, upright, holy and disciplined.” (Gal. 6:10). 
Fr. Anthony Padovano wrote in Dawn Without Darkness that this all has to do with home. He states these words I love: “Home is not a place, it is an attitude….an attitude which depends upon how much we are able to feel at home with ourselves as well as with others…makes us comfortable with ourselves…takes from us the strangeness we feel at being who we are. We are loved when we are no longer frightened with ourselves.”

Isn’t that so true! God continues to touch lives though loving women. It is being centered in Christ and looking out to others that we see the good in them. It is making people feel special. It is open hands. Open hearts. Open doors. It is paying it forward by paying for the food order of the car behind you at the drive thru just because.  

For me my Theresian community has been a place where I gather to be with women who are so much themselves. We take off masks, kick off our shoes and gather round the campfire to stop and really listen to the whispering of God in our ears and our hearts. That is so desperately needed now for so many women so they can be hospitable themselves. Is your community like that? Are you helping others to be at home?  Don’t we need women on fire with the Spirit to really change hearts for the better now more than ever? Can we reach out and invite others to gather with us?

Ladies, in this issue of Dimension Connections we reflect on Wisdom being the light on the pathway to the ultimate banquet of love. I believe so many of us, as wise women, young or old, have these Open-for-Business hearts every day as we are called on now to reach out to a hurting world. By golly we have to stick together and support one another. Be bold! Believe!
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I could go on more but I’m busy. I said hello to this person in the checkout line and she is telling me her whole life story!  

Have you ever reflected on how important it is to be invited?  Some invitations can have a life changing effect on those who receive them.  An invitation made sincerely, with love, can reach far beyond the intended initial recipient.  That single invitation can expand and possibly extend to others, allowing many more to receive the gift of love and community.  
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The best invitations are extended out of generosity and sincerity to share something beautiful, something life affirming, something spiritual.  A great invitation is like a gift you would love to receive yourself, but made even better when you give it away. 

Some invitations are not always received or accepted immediately.  Patience and persistence are sometimes necessary. The invitee may not be ready to receive the invitation, maybe they are afraid, unsure about the commitment the invitation brings.  The invitation should not have an expiration date.  Ask again.  When the time is right, the opportunity will present itself and the invitation will be accepted.

The invitation I am referring to is an invitation to join a Theresian meeting and learn about what it means to be a Theresian.  As I reflect back on my first invitation to attend a Theresian meeting, the person extending this beautiful invitation to me was someone I love and respect.  I know now that the invitation was extended to me because she cared about me, and knew I probably needed it in my life. 

About 13 years ago, my morning routine involved going to Curves to exercise before work.  There was a group of about 7 or 8 ladies that would meet at Curves every morning at 6:30 a.m.  This is when I first met Mary Clare Albrecht.  Mary Clare has been a Theresian for 56 years and is an original member of Day One Community, the first community in Houston.
Often times while working out at Curves, I would take my place right next to Mary Clare as we would travel around the circuit together, exercising all of our muscle groups, and enjoying great conversation while we did so.  Group conversations ranged from what had happened on Grays Anatomy with McSteamy or McDreamy the night before, to how our kids were doing in school, to community or neighborhood news and events.  Mary Clare and I often talked about our families and Strake Jesuit High School.  All three of my sons had attended this school, so did Mary Clare’s four sons. And at that time my youngest son, Tim, was a classmate of Mary Clare’s grandson, Will.  I grew to love Mary Clare’s honesty, sense of humor and motherly wisdom.  On one occasion the group conversation was about a new New York Times best-selling book, 50 Shades of Gray.  Several women in the group were reading this book and discussing it.  I had never heard about this book.  During the group conversation about this book, Mary Clare leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Bridget, you don’t want to read that.”  Enough said.  In that 7-word sentence, Mary Clare demonstrated the motherly love and wisdom that my own mother would have imparted to me if she had been there.

Occasionally, Mary Clare would mention something to me about a women’s support group she belonged to.  She would mention how the ladies within her community had seen each other through the many ups and downs and joys and losses experienced throughout life.  This community experience sounded interesting to me, but I still wasn’t sure about it when her first invitation came to join her at a monthly meeting of her community, Living Waters.  After all I was so busy with work, helping care for my mother-in-law who was suffering from dementia, and dealing with other family issues, and volunteer commitments.  Or was I just throwing up road blocks?  I did have a few legitimate time conflicts. Mary Clare persisted. So, by the time the second or third invitation came, I went.  I was so glad I did!

After that first initial invitation, I was invited to join Living Waters or be a part of a newly forming community.  I was so excited.  I immediately shared my experience of community with several of my close friends and we all attended a Theresian Information Night a few weeks later at Maribeth Anderson’s home.  From that meeting two communities were formed, Spiritual Springs and Fountains of Grace.
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Today I marvel at the gift of that loving invitation extended to me by Mary Clare and the profound impact it has had on all aspects of my life.  What a blessing it has been and continues to be!  Sharing the gift of Theresian spirituality and community is something we should all want to share.  Who will you invite to the banquet of love and community?

A few years ago, as I first began my work as the communications director for the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth, I had an opportunity to spend some time in conversation with one of the sisters who was serving in leadership. Having previously been a vocation director, Sister Michele was helping me better understand how each of us is called to serve in different ways. She summarized the call of the Holy Spirit in one question: How are we called to love?

That question has stayed with me through the years and is a touchstone for my moments of discernment, like when I was offered the opportunity to become the TI executive director. When I find myself at crossroads in life, I try to pause and ask how God is calling me to love. Occasionally, the question reveals a clear direction. More often, I simply take a step forward in loving faith, not knowing where the path leads.

Through the challenges of the pandemic, the ups and downs of the world’s turmoils, and the many changes we have been forced to make in our daily lives over the past couple of years, I continue to wonder how God is calling each of us to love. What path are we being directed to take? What are we being asked to leave behind? What new tasks are we being invited to do? And, perhaps, most importantly, are we ready and willing to take those steps forward, even when we are unsure?
The scriptural inspiration for this issue of Dimension Connections is the parable of the bridesmaids from Matthew 25:1-13. We read in this parable that the wise bridesmaids brought extra oil as they waited for the bridegroom, while the foolish bridesmaids brought none (Mt 25:3-4). As I reflect on this parable at the beginning of my journey as your executive director, I question if I am one of the foolish bridesmaids who is ill-equipped for the task or if I am one of the wise ones with my oil lamp well-fueled and ready to go. Honestly, I think I am a little of both.

Yet, beyond the contrasts of wisdom and foolishness in this parable, there is another message that really speaks to me in these times of transition. It is a message of rest. As the bridesmaids waited, they fell asleep (Mt 25:5). They didn’t chase. They didn’t run about frantically trying to figure out what to do. They paused and slept. As a fan of afternoon naps, I really love this part of the parable.

The uncertainty of transition – whether it is caused by a pandemic, by political crises, or by the change of leadership in an organization -  is often accompanied by a frenzy of activity. Endless to-do lists. Never-ending questions. Calendars full of meetings and events, even if they are all on Zoom. Phone calls. Emails. Texts. Oh, and did I remember to update Facebook and Twitter so that my friends know I’m in a whirlwind of activity? With all that chatter, how can I hear the quiet whisper of God’s call to love?
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This first year as your executive director will inevitably be a busy one. There is a lot to do and to learn. However, I hope to follow the bridesmaids’ example and remember to rest. It is my restful moments in prayer, on walks through nature, or even during Saturday afternoon naps that I am most able to experience the embrace and call of Divine Love.