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Keynote speakers included Elizabeth Conde-Frazier, PhD, from Claremont School of Theology; Ana Maria Piñeda, Ph.D., from Santa Clara University; Daisy Machado, Ph.D., from Texas Christian University; Renata Furst, Ph.D., from the University of Montreal; and Maria Antonietta Berriozabal, San Antonio community activist.
Organized by Sister Anita de Luna, MCDP, Ph.D., director of OLLU’s Center for Women in Church and Society, the event offered an opportunity to raise the scholarship and ministry of Latina leaders to new levels nation-wide by promoting the voices of women and creating forums for exploring women’s issues.
The conference opened with remarks by Gloria Urrabazo, LMSW, executive director of the La Llamada program at OLLU; Dr. Tessa Martinez-Pollack, president of OLLU; Dr. Mary Francine Danis, dean of OLLU’s College of Arts & Sciences; and Sister de Luna. Entertainment included a one-woman play, Escenas, by actress Ruby Nelda Perez, and an original song commissioned for the conference, Mother Love (Madre Amor), written by local musician Laura Marie.
Highlighting the Saturday luncheon was a performance by the OLLU Mariachi Ensemble, while members of the OLLU drama department, costumed as three Latina archetypes — Doña Marina (La Malinche), Sor Juana and Frida Kahlo — interacted with attendees.
Saturday afternoon’s keynote, “Creating Space for Spirituality,” was co-presented by Dr. Renata Lamburt Furst and Dr. Daisy Machado.
Dr. Furst grew up in Honduras and is now actively involved with the Hispanic/Latino community in Montreal, Canada. She works at the Ignatian Spirituality Centre, directing retreats for young adults, and has also done significant translations from French, German and Spanish, primarily in Scripture. Currently, she is editor of Perspectivas, a journal of the Hispanic Theological Initiative at Princeton University. She completed her doctorate in Old Testament Scripture at the Université de Montreal.
Dr. Machado, an associate professor of History of Christianity and Hispanic Church Studies at Brite Divinity School, Texas Christian University, will assume the position of dean of faculty and vice president for academic affairs at Lexington Theological Seminary in Lexington, Ky., in August.
She holds a master of divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York and a doctoral degree from the University of Chicago. She is ordained in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).
DR. RENATA LAMBURT FURST
Dr. Furst noted that for several centuries Quebec was one of the strongest Catholic/Christian places in North America. However, in the ’60s, what is referred to as “the quiet revolution” took place and people began abandoning both Catholic and Protestant churches en masse.
This was countered by an influx of Latinos moving in (around 100,000 strong), filling the empty pews and building communities in the formerly declining churches. “Latinos were opening up a space within a space,” said Furst. “Where spirituality was dying, we’re bringing it back. It was a really beautiful thing.”
She noted that spirituality is a relationship between an individual and God, which can be expressed in a variety of ways. “Spirituality is both a public, corporate and communal dimension of our existence,” she said, “and it also can be described as a personal one. So there are two spaces involved here.”
These spaces are interrelated and are both shaped by one’s culture, Furst said, noting that God gives us freedom of choice, but how we choose to allow God to interact in our lives and our communities is up to us. “We can actually limit God’s work amongst us by our social and institutional choices,” she said.
She stressed the importance of creating a space for spirituality. “Spirituality stagnates if we decide, ‘OK, this is my spiritual strength and I’m comfortable with it,’” she said. “It stagnates if we’re not opening up constantly new personal and new communal spaces.”
This can be a painful experience, however. “That is because as soon as the boundaries of the spirituality that I am comfortable with become familiar to me,” said Furst, “the Lord is calling to transcend that.”
She pointed out that as Latinas create these new spaces, they challenge the dominant culture. “That changes the way we relate to God,” she said. “It changes the way we relate to ourselves and to the rest of the world.” The resultant clash between the Latina Hispanic culture and the dominant culture creates a “mestiza consciousness,” which creates bridges between the two realities and forms a new space or new spirituality. “It’s a becoming and evolving and transforming type of spirituality,” said Furst.
Attempting to translate the concept of God from one culture to another is always difficult, Furst noted, referring to what is created by this new consciousness as “a third language,” incorporating the best of both cultures.
Furst then broke open two Scriptural texts describing spirituality and women’s in particular. The first, from Luke 10, portrays Martha and Mary meeting Jesus in the privacy of their home. Here Martha, distracted by household tasks, asks our Lord to tell Mary (who has been listening raptly at Jesus’ feet) to come and help her. Jesus tells Martha that “Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.” He does this without putting down Martha’s actions, however.
“I’ve often thought,” remarked Furst, “how that must affect a woman with five children who works in a factory and has to come home and do all the housecleaning!” She also noted that certain feminist interpretations of this Scripture see it as Jesus defending Mary’s right to a theological education because she is seated at the Lord’s feet, interpretive of being a disciple. “There’s some controversy over that,” she said, “but it may be true.”
Furst sees as a key phrase, “Mary has chosen the better part,” which shows her as exercising choice. “This is exercising the gift of wisdom or discernment,” she said. She noted this often entails standing up and facing the dominant culture and refusing to ignore aspects of it that diminish us as a human being.
“Spirituality is all about authenticity,” said Furst, “knowing where and when our culture — or the dominant culture — is betraying us as individuals. But it’s also the capacity to accept and nurture the aspects of both of those cultures and allow them to grow.”
The second text involved Martha and Mary again, this time involving the death of their brother, Lazarus. Jesus did not come immediately when word was sent that Lazarus was dying and when he finally arrived, he was confronted by Martha about this.
“Now there’s something very interesting about what’s happening here,” said Furst. “The woman who is clashing pots and pans in private is now in public having a theological discussion with the Lord.” Despite being confrontational, Jesus takes Martha’s words in his stride, listens to her and raises the level of her faith. “I think what Martha is teaching here,” said Furst, “is that there’s no fear … when we take our faith into the public realm. And it is there we also encounter the Lord.”
Regarding the weeping Mary in this Scripture, Furst noted that she is in a different, more personal space. “Mourning is a very sacred space in Latino culture,” she said. “It is the space in transition between personal grief and public sharing of despair.” Here mourning is seen as a space where we express our disillusionment as well as our faith and it opens up to us new areas of spiritual growth.
Furst concluded by describing Latina spirituality and the creation of new spaces in spirituality as being about authenticity in the personal, private aspects of our lives and moving from this into the spirit or attitude of “being who I really am.”
DR. DAISY MACHADO
Dr. Machado introduced her portion of the lecture on creating spaces for spirituality by stating, “I believe that women have never been freely given space. We have never been freely given space for this purpose,” she said. “ … but instead, women have always had to intentionally carve out a space in which they could be more fully woman.”
She noted women have historically had to deal with the reality of the patriarchal society, which literally means “rule of the fathers.” Despite claims that women have achieved equality in the church and in society, they still find themselves a sociological minority and “discriminated against everywhere — in politics and in employment, even in the family and by the institutional family,” related Machado.
Making an effort to comprehend the pervasive marginalization by society of women in general and women of color in particular, was described by Machado as leading to a better understanding of women’s relationships with their families, churches, communities and other institutions. It is this elusive wisdom that women have gained over the years and that is passed down from generation to generation that she sees as enabling Latinas to “create space.”
It also becomes a tool used by these women for survival and existence — one that is not acquired in the abstract, but “rooted in life.” Machado added, “It is because of this concreteness of experience that Latinas become urban guerillas, doing battle every day.”
Machado elaborated on three particular issues or realities that face Latinas living in this country. First was the issue of race and white privilege. “White as privilege is a reality,” she said. “White institutionally connects with power, and that power is well-protected in the mainstream of structural privilege.”
As a historian of U.S. religious history, Machado noted she has a keen sense of “the role and power of whiteness in the history of the United States, especially in the southwest borderlands.” In the early 1800s, white settlers of this area were surprised and repulsed by the mixed society of the Tejano Mexicanos. “White” skin came to be seen as normative, with “non-whites” viewed as outsiders. “And they were also objectified,” observed Machado, “so that they became the depositories of the fear and hatred as felt by the whites.”
This objectification of Latinos was encountered by late 19th century Protestant missionaries, who accepted them only as inferiors. “The result,” said Machado, “has been a Latino Protestant church that, to this day, continues to exist on the margins …”
She explained that what Latinas have learned from this very hard lesson of race in the United States, is “We need to voice our needs,” agreeing with the quote that “Silence is not an option for Latinas.”
The second issue explored was identity and imagination. “Sometimes,” said Machado, “we’re not even aware that as we sit and we walk and talk as members of the community, we are being ‘imagined.’” She noted Carlos Fuentes’ famous quote, “The United States has no history. It only has the movies.”
What this really means, Machado said, is that “the heart of U.S. identity” is not so much about facts, as it is about “the imaginary, or this historical imagination.” Although Latinos comprised the largest minority in the United States by the late ’90s, they have continued to be dismissed by the general population as a whole, acknowledged only as stereotypical servants or laborers and often relegated to separate and less equal schools.
“How can we create this space….” queried Machado, “where history itself has been written against us?”
The third issue she addressed was that of economics and education. Machado noted that Latina women live in the structural position of women of color in the United States and are predominantly working class, earning less than their white female counterparts who are already earning less than men.
An estimated 500,000 elementary and high school age children work the fields across the United States, following the crops with their parents, so what little schooling they receive is fragmented. And of the Latinas and Latinos in the U.S. who pursue higher education at the top 100 schools for Latinos, only a fraction of the degrees eventually awarded go to these students.
Especially telling was the geographical location of the top two universities with Latina/Latino populations. First was Florida International University and se-cond was the University of Texas at El Paso — both borderland schools. “It would seem,” said Machado, “as if educational opportunities are also ‘bordered on.’”
She pointed out that the bottom line is that poverty counters the ability of all working class people to participate in higher education and that, without financial assistance, few in the working class will rise to become the researchers, scholars and professors of tomorrow.
“Because we have this education,” she said addressing the audience, “we are called to be active in creating spaces for other Latinas. … We are called to look over our shoulders, to look back and take notice. Who has been left behind? And to use our education to reach out to Latinas to make space in our own communities for one another.”
Machado then went on to share stories of Latinas who created space for spirituality through their faith and the Gospel message. These included Élida Garcia de Falcón, one of the early Mexican-American Methodist ministers in the Rio Grande valley; Jovita Idar, Laredo-born journalist who fought educational segregation, poverty and discrimination; and Leonicia Rosado Rousseau, a Pentecostal minister who ministered to Puerto Rican drug addicts and gang members in New York in the ’40s and ’50s.
“These are just a few of the many, many women whose stories are just being discovered,” said Machado, who noted, “We are called to imagine the past, and in so doing we are called to liberate the future. … In celebrating these women today by speaking their names, by sharing their names, by telling their stories, we are creating spaces.
“And when we do, each of you who is sitting here, we understand that all of us today, we stand on holy ground. We stand before this cloud of witnesses, and we lift up our hearts in gratitude for what we have learned, for what we have received and for what we are still receiving.”
Presentations by Furst, Machado and the conference’s other keynote speakers are to be published as a scholarly volume by Notre Dame Press and used throughout the United States in programs that serve Latinas.
Editor’s Note: The conference’s workshop on “Today’s Generation: Emerging Culture and Belief,” presented by Sister Anita de Luna, MCDP, Ph.D., and Elizabeth Conde-Frazier, Ph.D., will be covered in the May 27 issue of Today’s Catholic. |