Transition… what that may mean for us as Xaverians

Transition… what that may mean for us as Xaverians.

The 17^th General Chapter, in its concern for the formation of Xaverians, at both initial as well as throughout on going levels, spoke of the need for confreres to be familiar with the dynamics of transition, meaning, those internal as well as external realities that we experience in our many moves here and there throughout our lives. And as mentioned in the Chapter document, “Transition is our way of life. We are always in transition.”

So what is transition and what are the dynamics we need to be aware of to move from Point A to Point B healthily and serenely. Transition is the move from one place to another, a move to another level of formation, or a transfer from one community to another or from one part of our Xaverian world to another.   And as individuals move from one place to another, there is another level of transition that effects the community. Relationships within the community change, roles and expectations change as well. There are many “moving parts” when a transition by any one of us happens. But the most fundamental reality of transition is that it is not a simple straight move from where you had been (Point A) to where you are now as well as where the community is now (Point B). The move may actually look like a series of curlicues, where we can track days of great joy, energy and excitement at the new beginning, as well as days of fear, second guessing and doubt about the wisdom of the move, or worst, actual regression in one’s personal and professional well-being!   It may easily look like this diagram.

So, there are some dynamics that could help each of us and our communities move through our transitions.

1. Be sure to “say goodbye” to where you were before you leave that ministry, those confreres and the people you served.   If we do not say goodbye, we cannot say hello to the new place, ministry, community where you are called to be.
2. Know that it will take time to make the adjustment to this new place, ministry, community, even if it is a place where you once had been. We give ourselves permission to take the time to learn a new language or become accustomed to the ways of a new land when we first go to a new assignment. But we need to do the same no matter where we are moving to, even if it is a place we once called home. It has changed. We have changed. And it will take time to become accustomed to that change.  
3. Beware of judging. As we face the “new,” in even once familiar situations, we can easily verbalize our discomfort by judging what is “wrong” with this situation. There is nothing wrong with the situation except that it is not the situation we remembered it to be. What we remember, and what we once did there is all history. New people are involved in the ministry of the day, new methods, new socio-economic realities, etc., that form who we are and what we do today in different and grace-filled ways. Often by judging, we are negating the present before us and blocking any opportunity to create new and healthy relationships with those we are to live and work with in the here and now.
4. Learn to see the moments of regression, doubt and fear as moments of growth and grace. (Circle in diagram) We may feel very vulnerable and even shamed. We hear people say, “I thought I took care of this weakness years ago. Why is this bothering me now? It feels like I am going backwards!” If we try to face these dynamics alone, we could easily be stuck, frozen, trapped. If we find a way to share the burden with others in appropriate ways, we would discover not only our humanness, but the grace to move beyond those memories, doubts or vulnerabilities to a new place of strength and empathy for all those experiencing life’s challenges. There are many moving parts to our lives, especially for those of us living in community. God has not abandoned us nor is God punishing us, even though we feel abandoned and lost. In faith, we will rediscover the call and the One who offers this call and we will learn once more that it is His grace that sustains us in His mission. The Mission is God’s, given to the Community of which we are the stewards of that Mission. There are many scripture stories both in the Old as well as the New Testaments that remind us of this movement to new services, new horizons, new places to mission. Often we go kicking and screaming. It is in these moments of doubt, fear and vulnerability that we have the graced opportunity of discovering the depth of our mission spirituality. It makes the dying and rising of the Lord all too real.  
5. Know that you are not alone in the awkward feelings as you experience transition. If you look around, you will discover that many in community are also “adjusting” their space to welcome you and others into this community, ministry, mission that we share. By sharing that vulnerability either at community meetings, retreats, or personal conversations with members of the community, new bonds of trust and fraternity will be made that will help everyone through that transition.
6. Celebrate the “leaving from where you are moving from” as we celebrate the “moving to” the mission assignment. When we are “sent” to our mission assignments we have an elaborate and intentional Mission Sending ceremony. We may invite a bishop to come and give us the Mission Cross, signifying the one church sending us to another. There is a “ritual” to our being sent. That does not happen when we “return” because we think of it as a return and not a “Mission To” another part of our world. We could “ritualize” that at a regional assembly, or some other way that could signify that the local church there is “sending” us in mission elsewhere. Mission is mutual! A sending and receiving. It would aid in the transition and give our “going” another meaning if we were “sent” by the church and community that we have been for some years.
7. And lastly, transitions are not terminal.   They are tough, but not terminal. They only feel terminal when the person keeps the challenge and pain of being in transition to himself. It can be a terrible place of fear and darkness, total feelings of incompetence as one sees his world falling apart. That is tough. But again, it is not terminal. It is a process of growth to new horizons and new possibilities, like pruning the tree in order to have even better fruit. We need to trust the process.

So, how did I get to understand how to survive and, yes thrive through transitions? I first became familiar with the dynamics of transition while I was a theology student on a particular hospital chaplaincy training during one of the summers.   It was a 12 week program and by the 7^th week, our supervisors told us to begin saying goodbye to one another. That surprised us.   We were just getting to be a wonderful community of chaplains, friends and co ministers. Why should we be beginning to say good bye now? What we learned was that significant relationships that we make with colleagues or those we serve do take time to bring to an end. It served us well to begin telling one another how much our friendship meant or what we learned from one another. It also went beyond only the positive aspects of our relationships with one another. Maybe things did not go well and we may have been less than what we could have been because of fear or neglect. “I just want to tell you that I did not appreciate your coldness towards me. Where was that coming from? Was I a threat to you?”   Taking time to say good bye frees us to say hello to the next chapter in our lives. We cannot say hello unless we say goodbye. What we experienced with those we had been with for one year, many years, or even 12 weeks, will never be repeated. We can carry into our present and future many wonderful memories, but the actual experience ended and our emotional and physical presence needs to move on.

I used this learning well over many years of coming and going as a Xaverian. I have been in Sierra Leone on three different assignments… as a young graduate student for a year, six years as a newly ordained priest, and five years during the 1990s when Sierra Leone was experiencing a terrible war. Each experience was different. Each posed challenges of letting go and moving on. When I was there as a student I had deeply desired to remain a second year. I waited for a positive answer until the last days, hoping that my superiors in the States and those in Sierra Leone would see the wisdom of a second year. Permission never came, and I had to return to continue my studies. That first year back to the USA was very tough. I could not easily study. I was aching for direct ministry, where I found life and purpose, but my formator insisted that I “reflect on the overseas experience before getting engaged in ministry here.” I was dying of thirst for service. I was blocked. I found it hard to move on. It took me more than a year to settle into my studies and ministry in Chicago. It was a rough year in retrospect. If I had said goodbye to Africa, I could have better said hello to Chicago.

On my second series of years in Sierra Leone from 1978 to 1984, I did make the effort to close that experience well by taking at least two months of intentionally taking leave of friends and colleagues before I returned to the US, giving time for the goodbyes and the words of appreciation mutually shared. And even at that, it took me one full year in my new assignment in Milwaukee to feel at home, engaged and competent. Transitions take time, even when we do them well.

When I left Sierra Leone the third time in 1999, driven out by the violence of the war that moved our community to temporarily suspend our activities there, a victim of that violence myself, carrying memories of death, destruction, flight and loss, all this caused me to experience Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Again, it was tough, but not terminal. Professional help and spiritual direction that took one full year were the means to the restoration of my health and happiness.

As rector of the student communities in Milwaukee and Chicago, I always gave a series of formation evening input on transition six weeks into the new school year. By then, the “newness” of the year had worn off, and the reality that “this is how it is going to be” sets in. I found that not only are individuals in transition, but the whole community as a whole is in transition. Even if only one confrere leaves or joins, the whole unit reworks the relationships one to the other. And some of those relationships could be related to tasks in the community. We assume that a new confreres “just know” how things work in a community. We assume too much at times.   Or worst, when a new rector joins the community, it is just assumed he knows what he has to do from the start, even if he had never been to that particular community, diocese, country, etc. We need time, patience and honesty to “fit one another in.”  

And by the sixth week, especially for those who are having a challenging time with transition, we all find our “escape routes” or “hiding places” where our personal sanity is cared for and protected. I had a very amusing experience while Rector in Chicago on this point. I had just given the input on the dynamics of transition that we should be aware of. I spoke of those hiding places that each of us had. The image of the lobster was what I used in explaining the need for such places. A lobster is a shell fish that had no internal support structure, only is outer shell. To grow, the lobster must find a cave or safe place on the bottom of the sea bed in order to hide while is cracks and discards its outer shell, waits in fear in that cave due to its extreme vulnerability to being eaten by any fish that happens to find it. Only when the shell is hard enough to protect it, would it venture into the waters of life secure in its now bigger shell. And I warned the confreres that if by chance you invade that “hiding place” of the confrere in a tough transition, you may get attacked!  

That was the first more formal part of our meeting. The second half of the meeting was the day to day announcements as well as a practical suggestion from the 15^th General Chapter. At that chapter a strong suggestion was make that each community, no matter where and no matter how engaged in whatever ministry, must have a physical space in its building for the welcoming of those nearby to receive mission education/animation. We in Chicago were in the very neighborhood where thousands of students of the University of Chicago lived. My humble proposal was that the then TV/recreation room which was near the front entrance to the house would be the most promising place for this public welcoming space to be. I was not asking for a decision that evening, but the starting of a conversation that would lead to a decision. One of our students, an American, became very angry, publically denounced this suggestion as wrongheaded and said, “This has ALWAYS been the TV room, it should never change”. I took it in stride, informing him once he calmed down that my proposal was just that; a proposal. I simply asked everyone to think about it and we would come back to it in a future community meeting. It was not a question of when, but where. I did think that the front room would be the more respectful of other options for the privacy of the rest of our community space. After the meeting I was in my office when two Indonesian confreres who had recently come asked if they could have a chat. In their very best but limited English, they attempted to apologize on behalf of all the students for the rude manner that the American confrere exhibited during the formation meeting. I accepted their apology, and asked if they remembered the input that I had given during the first part of the meeting, how I spoke of hiding places, the lobster AND how if we willingly or unwillingly enter the hiding place of another there was the possibility of injury!! I asked if they knew where this confrere’s hiding place could possibly be. They realized that this confrere escaped to the TV room every night at 1:00am to view reruns of shows that he enjoyed in his past. This was his hiding place and he attacked me because I proposed to move the TV elsewhere. I took no offense by the outburst. It proved what I had given as input just a few moments before. My only regret was that I did not use his outburst there and then as a teaching moment that I now was able to offer to the two Indonesian students. And I also knew and appreciated that for our Indonesian students, as for a many who have come from the East or have worked in the East, harmony needs to be restored and maintained when there is apparent conflict.   So a lot of dynamics were being engaged in this example. There are many moving parts. But once we became aware of what is pushing us around, we are able to move through it to a greater appreciation of each other, our histories, our needs and our new relationships.

Transition can be very challenging for many of us who have witnessed violence in our past. During the 1980s I was on a number of teams as a facilitator for returned missionaries who experienced a 10 day workshop aiding them as they return to the States. It was called FROM; the Federation of Returned Overseas Missionaries. It was begun in 1983 due to the clear need for some kind of intentional process that can allow missionaries to come “home.” At many of these workshops, I heard sad stories of assignments cut short, no time or willingness to say goodbye, or the numbing feeling of powerlessness as they remembered situations of extreme danger and violence that they experienced or witnessed. And now, witnessing violence has become globalized, especially for those of us who chose to live with the poor and marginalized. Often people just block out the memory and pain to survive. But to thrive, we need to deal with the memory and honestly seek help to understand what is going on due to that memory. It needs to be intentional, guided and real.   Transitions may be tough, but they are not terminal, even though they feel it at their worst. One needs to move THROUGH it.

Transitions have been with us from before we were even born. There we were, thriving in a sea of Mother-love, being fed, kept warm, and encouraged to grow in the womb.   We were comforted by hearing the beat of our mother’s heart. We grew to listen to those from outside the womb who whispered sweet words of love to us, patted our mothers’ belly and wished us the best. Then came our first major transition. We were pushed out of that first comfort zone, forced to breathe on our own, learned to eat on our own, walk on our own and more. Yes there are advantages to this new way of being, but hey, life was so much easier in the womb. And thus began the many transitions that have brought us to where we are today. Some are transitions we look forward to, others that just happen with or without our permission. Many are challenging, many are tough, but none are terminal. If it were terminal, you would not be reading this article!

Some concluding thoughts:

If we live transition well, we will thrive. We know of confreres, family members or friends who even in their senior years, exhibit a joy and a purpose that keeps them young, curious and alive. We have others who live in their past, live with their regrets, live with their pain. They are stuck, blocked, old before their years.

Knowing and engaging the dynamics of transition will keep not only the individual confrere, but the whole community agile, joy filled and at home with the many changes that are asked of us. If we cannot learn to say goodbye, we will never learn to say hello. And if we do not say hello while engaging in a new venture or responsibility, we become mere lifeless, cold functionaries of the charism to witness the Good News to those who have yet to know Christ, or worst, counter witnesses of the power of that Joy.

How many confreres have left our communities due to the inability to deal with the dynamics of transition? How many ran away to find support, love and affirmation elsewhere, only to find that they were running away from themselves, failing to address the real issue?   We also have confreres who have remained for years in the same country or ministry. I believe some are unable or afraid to risk the change and transition to go to other places and ministries, to trust new beginnings that can keep us young, curious, agile and free. My feeling is that the longer anyone of us stays in any one country or assignment, the more of a problem we become for ourselves and the community because WE become the mission, indispensable, rather than engaging in the Mission of the Community, as valued and important as each of us are….

We are all in this together.

Fr. Rocco Puopolo, s.x.