[FROM THE ARCHIVE: 5/29/2019]
Let us explore more fully the story of Sister Dot and her martyrdom on behalf of Mother Earth. At Sister Dot’s funeral one of the indigenous farmers she had served stood up and declared: “Sister Dot, we are not burying you; we are planting you.”
When she knew her life was in danger she was advised by many to leave the country but she refused to. She wrote: I don’t want to flee, nor do I want to abandon the battle of these farmers who live without any protection in the forest. They have the sacrosanct right to aspire to a better life on land where they can live and work with dignity while respecting the environment.” Among her astute teachings is that “the death of the forest is the end of our lives.
It was my privilege to know Sister Dot since she came to my master’s program to study creation spirituality. Family and friends reported that following her study of CS and returning to Brazil she began to talk about God as “Mother,” or as “Father/Mother,” and related more to the feminine side of God on her return to Brazil. They found her a more playful, passionate, creative Dorothy who had been hidden for a while under the weight of so many violent, sorrowful experiences from her years of struggle in Brazil. Dot told her brothers that Creation Spirituality helped her to support her courage to live her vocation.
She told her friend, Sister Barbara English, that being at ICCS was a tremendous moment for me, a highlight. It really helped me deepen in relation to ecology, which I had embraced very much in my heart for years, even when I was in Arizona in the desert. The ICCS program, she testified, “opened up another dimension of my faith.…It was a tremendous lift!”*
She is a martyr who united the Sacred Masculine with the Divine Feminine living out a creation spirituality commitment. She has so much to teach us about art as meditation, joy, feminism, courage. Deep lessons we all need to learn and relearn.
She was also a lover and student of Hildegard of Bingen. Indeed, next to her bed was a copy of the book Meditations with Hildegard of Bingen by Franciscan Sister Gabriel Uhlein. Sr. Dot’s brother David was so kind as to give me her book and it is marked up with pictures that demonstrate the fun she was having interacting with Hildegard in the book.
Sister Dot, like Saint Hildegard, is living proof of the power of art as meditation to feed and nurture prophets and spiritual warriors. Art as meditation is the “way of the prophets,” according to psychologist Claudio Naranjo.
* Cited in Roseanne Murphy, Martyr of the Amazon: The Life of Sister Dorothy Stang (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2007), 97.
See Gabriele Uhlein, Meditations with Hildegard of Bingen (preface by Matthew Fox).
Also see Fox, Confessions: The Making of a Post-Denominational Priest.
Banner Image: Sister Dorothy Stang, Memorial, photo by Roberto de Vasconcelos on Wikimedia Commons.
Queries for Contemplation
Lectio Divina, or “Divine Reading,”is the ancient practice of meditatively and prayerfully reading the words of Scripture or other sacred texts, asking Spirit what your proper response might be to the truths they lay bare.
In this spirit, take a phrase or word from this meditation and be still with it, letting it wash over you and through and through you. Repeat it as a mantra. Be with the silence that follows. Be with, be with….
Recommended Reading
Meditations With Hildegard of Bingen: A Centering Book
By Gabriele Uhlein, Preface by Matthew Fox, Foreword by Thomas Berry.
Hildegard would have us know God’s pleasure. She would have us “meet every creature with grace.”
Confessions: The Making of a Post-Denominational Priest (Revised/Updated Edition)
Matthew Fox’s stirring autobiography, Confessions, reveals his personal, intellectual, and spiritual journey from altar boy, to Dominican priest, to his eventual break with the Vatican. Five new chapters in this revised and updated edition bring added perspective in light of the author’s continued journey, and his reflections on the current changes taking place in church, society and the environment.
“The unfolding story of this irrepressible spiritual revolutionary enlivens the mind and emboldens the heart — must reading for anyone interested in courage, creativity, and the future of religion.”
—Joanna Macy, author of World as Lover, World as Self
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