CULTURAL DIVERSITY AND CONFLICT MANAGEMENT CHARISM AND SPIRITUALITY

Griselda Martínez Morales, CSJ

Translated by: Teresa Lorenz-Do

“Keep always in mind the aim of your vocation which is sublime; and never do anything which contradicts the commitment to a life full of modesty, gentleness, and holiness.”
Jean-Pierre Médaille

When the group of leaders from the Congregations of Saint Joseph dreamed together about the possibility of the “Cultural Diversity and Conflict Management” project, it was certainly from the different realities known and experienced by the sisters in the countries where we were living (52).

Each day our small global village is more wounded and hurt by the day to day violence in which we live. It is violence generated by the difficulty of accepting and experiencing all kinds of differences as enriching challenges rather than threats. Our religious communities are more and more multicultural, multiethnic, multigenerational, multi everything, and relationships and humankind are broken because of intolerance and poor conflict management.

Searching for solutions to socio-cultural problem areas that break human relationships and contradict our vocation of BEING, is in the DNA of the Sisters of Saint Joseph.

The promotion and experience of relationships at every level that humanize, dignify, integrate, respect, welcome, etc. is the key to our charisma and spirituality. Such energy permeated not only the dream of this possibility but the realization of each program (5) that we lived in Le Puy, France. (Maxim 8: “Root the strength of your resolutions and the hope of the success of your undertakings in the knowledge of your great weakness and the total mistrust of self, as well as in the firm and assured confidence you ought to have in God, for whom nothing is impossible and who will always assist you in everything you undertake for His glory through the movement of His grade and according to the orders of obedience.”)

Forming the Design Team* by integrating diversities (culture, age, academic training, nationality, religious training), was the first challenge that we experienced, inspired by our charisma and spirituality expressed in Maxim 55: “When you work for the neighbor do it with a very unselfish love which expects no reward for its services, and aim at nothing other than helping her and being at the same time pleasing to God.”

The integration, collaboration, sisterhood, understanding, and the appreciation of each person towards the rest was really gratifying. We felt and lived in community despite all kinds of differences, not only the geographical ones.

Each one of the five programs we experienced (each one being very different) were experiences of closeness and very deep approaches, made possible with very simple and everyday gestures like looking, touching, listening, feeling, expressing, dancing, walking, painting, etc. The conflicts generated by not welcoming and accepting differences in human relationships smooth themselves out and are experienced with less violence if we allow ourselves to be close and to “feel” what is different without considering it to be threatening. This was a common learning point in each program we experienced.

It was really impressive to note, experientially, the attitude changes and transformations in the participants of the five programs, their postures and bodily expressions, their expressions during group sharing, their willingness to modify their views and interpretations of the presented theme, and their openness and responsiveness (Maxim 97 “Strengthen yourself against human fears, continuing to hope when everything seems to throw you into hopelessness regarding the success of your undertakings”).

The moments and spaces of prayer-reflection shared during the 10 days of each program were also a thematic tool. At the same time that they were an expression of difference and diversity (colors, sounds, movements, cultures, religious expression, words, tastes, geographies, etc.), they managed to integrate such diversities in “sacred dances”, “Trinitarian dances”, the heart of our spirituality. Physical and existential movements of dispossession and welcoming, of giving and receiving, and going and coming, of light and shadows, etc. An entire permanent process of humanization.

The details of welcoming and integration of the Trinitarian spirituality, the heart of the being of the Sisters of Saint Joseph, are countless. This project’s biggest asset has = been the relationality that was experienced, the closeness, the beginning of living together with the others and the environment.

* A group of 8 sisters from different countries and congregations, and two professors from Avila University, who made and carried out the five Cultural Diversity and Conflict Management programs.