Road Trip!!! Sisters of the Holy Family Motherhouse

Sundial on MH Grounds

I don't get out much and during the pandemic it has been even harder to do, but today (Friday, 15 July) Sister Marietta and I are going on a road trip to visit her Motherhouse in Fremont and spend the day together. We are celebrating several years of intense work and where that has brought us, so I am excited!! The Motherhouse and grounds in question have changed over the last few years (also intense years of work!) with three "cottages" replacing the original building including one for Sisters who need more care than others and a separate oratory. The grounds have been repurposed in several ways including some of the space being used for low-income housing, a park held in trust by a non-profit group, and access to healthcare for low-income seniors. Because Marietta's congregation (Sisters of the Holy Family) is moving toward the completion of their life, they wanted to be sure the values the Sisters have always held and embodied, those they have worked towards and in light of in so many ways, were built right into the continued use of the property and resources the Sisters would one day leave behind. Today I get to see the results of all of that hard work and letting go (kenosis) so that the SHF charism could continue to live in Fremont, CA and beyond as well.

I have been to the SHF Motherhouse before, but it was a long 
time ago (@1984) for a profession or other special celebration. The MH Chapel was beautiful, of course, and typical of chapels built at that time. I never really had a chance to walk the grounds or take in all that was part of the complex itself. And now a lot of that has changed. I have seen pictures of the new cottages and grounds and heard a few stories as well. Sister Marietta was in leadership (2+ terms) when much of this was planned and carried out, so she has an insider's view of things and today she is my tour guide. Pretty cool. I am hoping my imagination has taken in at least some of what Marietta has described to me because where my own mind tends to go instead is to all of the hard decisions, letting go, demolition, chaos, red-tape, and grief involved in this many-year project. I'll return to this post after our "road trip."

Returning from today's Road Trip:

KAZOWEE! What a great day and how incredibly impressed I am with what the Sisters of the Holy Family have created as they faced into the future with compassion, courage, and creativity! 2022, is the 150th anniversary of the congregation's founding and as Sister Gladys Guenther, Congregational President notes, [[No milestone anniversary escapes the desire to leave something for future generations.]] Well, the Sisters of the Holy Family remain a faithful presence in Fremont, the Bay area and beyond**, but the gift they have given to the larger community, even once the Sisters have gone, is hard to describe in its beauty, thoughtfulness, and love. They have indeed left something for future generations in ways which will make innumerable lives better and even serve as a paradigm for other religious congregations.

Sister Marietta Fahey, SHF

As noted, at the heart of this complex of projects are the 3 cottages where the Sisters reside (capacity @16 Sisters per cottage). Each one has a community room with flat screen TV, dining room, and also a prayer space with tabernacle. Each Sister has her own room with a kitchenette area and space for microwave, small refrigerator, hot pot, etc. The two cottages on either end have a large kitchen (probably the third cottage does also, I just can't remember that). Between two of the cottages is the oratory where Mass is celebrated, and larger meetings are held. There is a closed-circuit TV system linking everything so services can be "beamed" to the cottages for Sisters who cannot attend events in the oratory. Each cottage has its own patio area and behind the oratory was a large, canopied area with many circular tables for receptions, space for meals with guests, etc. This is where Marietta and I brought our lunch and ate. It is surrounded by flowers and greenery of all sorts, along with level walkways, and sits on a large area of artificial grass. Throughout all of this, think solar panels, environmentally sensitive plantings and materials, double-paned doors and windows, and anything else necessary for a project attuned to a smaller carbon footprint and the needs of creation.

What is most striking about all of this beauty and functionality (besides the presence of bees and more Monarch butterflies than I have seen in years) is the fact that the Sisters built this complex knowing and planning for the fact that, as noted above, one day they would be no more. When it came time to decide what to do with the Motherhouse property as part of plans for the Sisters' future there were a number of options. The Sisters wanted to remain where they were; they chose to age in place and what has been built here will allow that in complete faithfulness to the Sisters' identity as Sisters of the Holy Family. By itself that would be a tremendous achievement; this is, however, only the beginning of what the SHF have accomplished here. In time, also in complete faithfulness to the SHF charism, the cottages could be given over to low-income housing for seniors in need, those with disabilities, etc., which would allow for groups like On Lok to provide healthcare, physical therapy, and in-home care or assisted living. The oratory could be converted to a meeting or community room. No specific decisions have been made at this point. Discernment, of course, continues.

As Marietta showed me around, I thought a bit about the town where I had grown up in Southern California. In a couple of places in our town we had low-income or "public" housing. We called these complexes, "the projects," and a grimmer place was hard to imagine: large shoebox-shaped rectangles divided into tiny apartments with facades as bereft of imagination or beauty as the Pete Seeger song's, "little boxes made of ticky tacky" that "all look just the same"; there were a few bushes planted up against the buildings as I recall, but relatively few trees, no landscaping to speak of, and large lawns mostly given over to clothes lines, dirt (or mud, depending on the season), and dust over everything; in later years the windows were covered with bars and the grounds were given over to used condoms, syringes, needles, and other detritus of hopelessness. 

Except for energetic little children playing together, it felt like a soulless and soul-destroying place. To grow up in "the projects" was, it seemed to me, either a badge of courage or of shame (I could never be sure which --- though now I know it was both). The taunt that one lived in or was from "the projects" often led to fistfights as the poorest of the poor struck back. What strikes me now is how the "quality" of the housing there -- all designed and constructed devoid of real care or quality resources --- served to teach me (wrongly!!) about the value of the people living in the projects. But the Sisters of the Holy Family have always seen the value and potential of those they ministered to --- the poorest among us, and especially to families and children. In light of this SHF complex of projects, they will continue doing that even when the last Sister has died; every detail of what they have built and will leave behind them is beautiful and teaches a very different series of lessons than those I was taught by "the projects" of my childhood. And so, my own sense of the SHF's achievement deepened even further as Marietta showed me more of what they had realized here.

Original Private Residence on MH Grounds

Parts of the Motherhouse property (@5.5 acres) have already been given over to a quiet park, a place of genuine peace in the midst of the world's struggle, bustling, and (sometimes) busy emptiness. (Marietta described once meeting a man in the park while he was sitting on a bench eating his lunch. When she greeted him with a friendly question, he explained he was "on retreat"!) It will be kept as open green space in perpetuity. Think sacred space and a commitment to the United Nations Earth Charter here. Another 6.5 acres have been given over to what has become a village of low-income houses, apartments for seniors, and so forth. I was completely gobsmacked by the beauty and diversity of the houses. Nothing in this looked like "low-income" housing. Diverse architecture with character and variations in color from house to house, space for living, and a sense of quiet and safety marked the whole. 

Where the former Motherhouse itself once stood, there are now several large single-family houses opening onto the park area. (The Sister's cottages and oratory -- the new Motherhouse --- are safely gated and closed to the public who might use the park or walk the neighborhood including the private driveway alongside the cottages; fencing of the cottages is already covered by greenery creating a natural sense of enclosure and privacy --- but also of belonging.) All of this sang of care and grace -- in all of the senses held by either term. All of it witnessed to the value of every single life and the capacity each possesses --- a value the Sisters of the Holy Family were, again, founded to protect and nurture. Most amazingly then, in this project (or complex of projects) the young and old, the poor and the wealthy live side-by-side without distinction or clear delineation. Again, it is an incredible achievement -- an achievement that will outshine (and be worthy of) all of the prayer, struggle, grief, letting go, chaos, red tape, etc., I found so much easier to imagine before seeing the results.

Jean Francois Millet, The Gleaners

There is a single word characterizing the identity and ministry of the Sisters of the Holy Family. They are gleaners. With roots in the OT books of Leviticus and Ruth and the NT ministry of Jesus, here is a description of the meaning of the term written in the article, "150 Years of Gleaning" Family of Friends (Spring 2022): [[ . . .Jesus. . . told his followers: "Open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest."  Yet, there is wheat dropped from this reaping that lies hidden, full of potential but left behind. Will this grain never be gathered in? Close to sunset, other people enter the fields --- gleaners --- bending low in the quickening darkness to search among the stubble, finding not sheaves of grain, but kernels on the margins of the harvest. For 150 years the Sisters of the Holy Family have gleaned the fields for God. We as gleaners look for the underserved, the marginalized, those undiscovered by other laborers in the fields of the Lord. This is our mission, our purpose and our joy. . ..]]

A Final Word:

Event in new Oratory

The Sisters of the Holy Family I know give themselves daily in faithfulness to a God who sees each one of us as persons of infinite value, beauty, and potential. They see as God sees and they work hard to bring to birth and fullness of being all that God wills in and through their ministry. They look clearly at and live fully in the present with hearts rooted in the hope-filled future God is summoning into being through them and the rest of us in Christ. As a result, they have always been pioneers and prophets, and that is true here too. They have created a space of beauty and peace where human beings can live and die with integrity and a sense of having value and dignity, no matter their income, cultural or ethnic background, religion, age, etc., --- a place that will continue and even expand the Sisters' mission once they have all gone home to God. 

If I have been too repetitive in this piece, if it seems like three or four different pieces because I had to start and stop several times as I processed what I had seen and heard, or if words have failed me too often, my apologies. The fact is I cannot adequately express how impressed I am with what these women have done (for this was a women's project driven by women's sensibilities at every point) except to say that I am moved to tears of pride and joy every time I think of it.

** The Sisters of the Holy Family began in San Francisco (Foundress: Mother Dolores Armer, with Father John Prendergast) and then moved or spread out to Oakland, Fremont, San Diego, the Central Valley, Texas, Utah, Nevada, Kentucky, South Dakota, Alaska and Hawaii.