celibacy THE PATH I have followed in celibate love has allowed me to pursue my passion of doing charity and justice work– the first love of my life.
Follow your passion after we have come so far dare we tell each other what it has meant to be sister, how in the name of God we have loved when everyone told us it is not possible to break stones and serve them as bread
BY
SISTER DEBORAH L. HUMPHREYS, S.C.
W
HEN I WROTE these lines more than 10 years ago for an anniversary of my religious community, my passion was doing charity and justice in a broken world.
Sister Deborah L. Humphreys, S.C. currently serves as a bilingual social worker at Ironbound Community Corporation in Newark, New Jersey. She is the author of Conventional Wisdom (Wasteland Press, 2003). 116
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In fact, it was that passion—the first love of my life—that made me want to be a sister. Some people grow up, find the love of their lives, marry them, have families, and strengthen the larger community. The path that I have followed in celibate love has been different. Yet no less splendid. At the time I wrote this poem, I had been a social worker in Newark, New Jersey for many years, working with families whose stories could keep you up at night. Then in the 1980s, in addition to poverty and addiction, these same families confronted a new struggle: HIV and AIDS. What was difficult work in a tough neighborhood turned impossible. Families abandoned infected sons or daughters; their children became orphans. Some of the dying young adults had children the same age they had been when I first met them in the parish school during times that seemed gentler. The government relief programs had strict rules about stopping Mealson-Wheels to families the same day the VISION 2007
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