Thea Bowman: Champion of Black Catholic Identity
The publisher and author Robert Ellsberg introduces Sister Thea Bowman (1937–1990):
Thea Bowman was one of the great treasures of the American Catholic church. As a Franciscan Sister, she managed to integrate the resources of her Catholic faith with her identity as an African American woman. Ablaze with the spirit of love, the memory of struggle, and a faith in God’s promises, she impressed her many audiences not just with her message but with her nobility of spirit. No one she encountered … could fail to catch a measure of her joy and gratitude for the gift of life. She was a particular inspiration to the black Catholic community, helping them to assert their pride of place among the People of God, while also encouraging them to enrich the wider church with the gifts of their distinctive culture and spirituality. [1]
In 1987, Bowman addressed leaders in the American Catholic Church on the theme of “Cosmic Spirituality,” grounding her message in the diversity of our lived reality:
Your conference theme is cosmic spirituality … and it’s the cosmos, the universe, the world in all its diverse spirituality for which we are preparing ourselves and our congregations. Cosmic spirituality means we’re going to have to learn new languages. We’re going to have to learn new rhythm. We’re going to have to learn new ways of glorifying the Lord…. We learn cultures and customs and languages of faith, we learn cosmic spirituality by sharing, by sharing prayer and song and ritual and story, by involving ourselves and participating, by giving and receiving.…
We are the children of the cosmos, the children of the universe … called and sent to transform the cosmos….
Cosmic spirituality means we come together, bring our gifts, bringing our histories, bringing our experience, bringing our positives and negatives, our arts, our skills, our teaching … all that we have and all that we hold….
When you come into my community, my town, my world, will you see God’s glory revealed? When you go to my brothers and sisters, in beautiful Hawaii, will you see his glory? When you experience, when you share the hungers of Ethiopia, the blood flow of Guatemala and Nicaragua, will you see his glory revealed?…
If you believe that you, like Jesus, are called by the spirit to share the spirit in the world to call forth the giftedness of God’s people, say Amen. If you believe that God is able to work in all the brothers and the sisters, in the ones you customarily write off because they don’t read right, they don’t write right, they drink too much, they smoke the wrong thing, they don’t walk right, they don’t talk right, their sexual preferences are not in agreement with the ones you claim. If you believe that God is able to transform the water of my reality into purest wine, if you believe there’s nothing God can’t do, let me hear you say Amen. [2]
References:
[1] Modern Spiritual Masters: Writings on Contemplation and Compassion, ed. Robert Ellsberg (Orbis Books, 2008), 131.
[2] Thea Bowman, “Cosmic Spirituality: No Neutral Ground,” in Twentieth-Century Apostles: Contemporary Spirituality in Action, ed. Phyllis Zagano (Liturgical Press, 1999), 151, 152, 155, 156.
Image credit and inspiration: John Mccann, untitled (detail), 2017, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. The path of contemplation is lined with the great exemplar trees—those who have gone before—practicing contemplation and action in unique and interconnected ways.
Story from Our Community:
I’ve come to realize that one of my jobs is to be happy. It’s not to get more things or rearrange people or circumstances to make me happy. It’s not about being who someone else wants me to be. It’s just to be present: to give space and room to each moment because now is really all I have. To breathe and to realize that the only essential thing in the room with me is oxygen, the one thing I cannot see, touch or hear. To realize that whatever I want changed about the world begins with me.
—Cindy G.
