Reflection

By Joan Penzenstadler, SSND Vice President for Mission and Identity

There’s a new space on campus called Trinity Woods – a catchy name that, on the surface, seems obvious. The relations among Milwaukee Catholic Home, the School Sisters of Notre Dame and Mount Mary comprise this reality, which borders the wooded area on campus.

The significance and promise of this name, however, go far deeper, and hold the values and activity that make the gift of the sisters so very precious. The spirit of the School Sisters of Notre Dame flows from a spiritual heritage, which includes the gifts of St. Augustine, who formed a community to be of one heart and one soul, reflecting the very essence of God as Trinity.

Mindful of the mystery of God as love and desiring to explore their spiritual heritage more deeply, the sisters participated in a symposium on the Trinity this past summer. Fr. Stephen Bevans offered language that heightened awareness of the trinitarian life in which the sisters participate. God’s very being is a giving and a receiving of love, a community of radical equality and diversity in unity. God is what God does. In the dance of reciprocal love, the Trinity is not the dancers, but the dance itself. (If you are interested in learning more, I recommend the book by Richard Rohr, “The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation”). We make God visible by doing what God does. We live the life of the Trinity by a giving and a receiving of love and respect, a living together in trust. This is the dynamic at the heart of SSND community. This is the energy that the sisters bring to Trinity Woods.

The fact that the buildings of Trinity Woods adjoin the wooded area on campus also speaks of the living community. Suzanne Simard, a professor of forest ecology, notes the wisdom of a high-functioning forest. She calls the mature hub trees in a forest “mother trees” who “parent” or “elder” and pass on their wisdom in a mode of mutuality and reciprocity. So, in the woods, she says, “Every tree is linked to every other tree. All the little trees – the seedlings, the saplings are all linked into the networks that these old trees had established through their lifetime, and the biggest, oldest trees were the hubs of the network… The big old trees have big root systems. They’ve got many points of contact. And they have great big photosynthetic crowns that basically transmit energy into the ground that feeds the network.”

The School Sisters of Notre Dame are part of a vital network, continuing to be educators in all that they are and do, reflecting God’s life by their very being and living into the gift of Trinity Woods.

God’s very being is a giving and a receiving of love, a community of radical equality and diversity in unity.

THIS HOLIDAY SEASON, CONSIDER GIVING THE GIFT OF EDUCATION AND POSSIBILITY

You can help make an education at Mount Mary University accessible for all.

If you donate now to the Resilient Young Minds Endowed Scholarship Fund, your gift will be matched dollar for dollar by the fund’s creators, alumna Lena Lee (‘85) and her husband Robert J. Stets, Jr.

Your donation will also trigger an additional matching federal grant supporting the university.

You’ll essentially be TRIPLING YOUR IMPACT!

PLEASE GIVE TODAY BY GOING TO WWW.MTMARY.EDU/GIVE OR CALLING AMY LAMACCHIA AT (414) 930-3343

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Thank you to our alumnae, donors and community for your continued faith in Mount Mary.

We are grateful for your commitment to creating a diverse and inclusive learning community that educates students to transform the world!