"Why there?"

Forewarning: I'm posting this (having written it beforehand) even though what follows is a little "preachy."

I had an interesting experience at teatime this morning. A young Lutheran volunteer from Germany who arrived here at the language school last night with three others for what will be a two-week crash course said to me upon hearing that I am preparing to work in Dodoma, “Why there? I’ve heard there’s nothing there.” (It just occurred to me that Dodoma is in the minds of many the Oakland of Tanzania: “There’s no there, there.”) I answered that it isn’t a matter of what is there or not there but rather a matter of who is there. And there are in the Dodoma region 1.8 million people, most of them poor, most of them young, most of them without access to adequate formal education.

My move to Tanzania, as many readers of this blog know, is really very much a part of a renewal of my own life as a Jesuit, inspired by a number of things, among them our recent General Congregation, a simple moment with a brother Jesuit at Loyola Marymount (which I’ll return to later), the talks of our Superior General, and in particular a letter of his from the earlier part of this year in which he reminds Jesuits of two things that mark our Society: its universal nature and the availability of its members to go anywhere in the world.

It is with these two things as a backdrop that I was happy to read this morning a letter of Saint Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, to Gian Andrea Schenaldo, a citizen of northern Italy who wrote to Ignatius pleading that a favorite priest of the Society might stay there rather than be missioned elsewhere. Ignatius’s response, in part, follows:

Of course, our Society bends every effort to help and further the salvation of souls, impelled thereto both by charity and by our own Institute; moreover, the grave needs of souls throughout the world goad us constantly forward, adding the spurs to those already running of their own accord…The members of the Society need to be free and unencumbered, so that they can fly off to any place on earth where greater hope of God’s glory and the salvation of souls beckons us, not settling in any particular place (unless we have a college or house there), but working for different people over limited periods of time, gratis and without being bound.

It was 25 years ago that Fr. John O’Malley, a member of my Detroit Province of the Jesuits, helped us recapture this original charism of the Jesuits with his essay on Jerónomino Nadal, an early Jesuit who served as a sort of promoter of the thought of Ignatius and of our foundational texts. Nadal in his writings underscored this notion of availability and mobility. And I thank God for the grace at this time in my life to embrace this charism of ours and thank him as well for allowing me to cast my lot with such wonderful folks as the folks here in Tanzania.

Now about that moment with my brother Jesuit…. As we were leaving the community’s Tuesday evening celebration of the Eucharist, where we’d just sung all the verses of a hymn, he said to no one in particular – and to everyone in general – “Some of the younger of us have forgotten that we are not monks.” This is a reference to St. Ignatius’s insistence that we Jesuits not be bound to pray the liturgy of the hours in choir as monks do so that we could be freer to attend to apostolic duties.

My brother Jesuit’s comment brought a smile to my face. Why? Because the other constitutive characteristic of monastic life is the vow of stability, the vow that one will stay attached to his monastery forever (her, of course, for nuns) -- and this man hasn't ventured far from LMU in his many, many years there. What occurred to me about my Jesuit life – I cannot speak of anyone else’s, of course – is that I did not want university tenure to become my own personal vow of stability.

[Incidentally, after the incident narrated above, I found myself doing a substitution exercise with the text of our Constitutions (a thinking/reflecting exercise introduced to me by my friend and mentor Jason Raley – a shout out to him and my Santa Paula family – and one which I commended to my own students). First the text as it appears:

Because the occupations which are undertaken for the aid of souls are of great importance, proper to our Institute, and very frequent; and because on the other hand, our residence in one place or another is so highly uncertain, our members will not regularly hold choir for the canonical hours or sing Masses and offices. (586)

And here is my subsitution:

Because the occupations which are undertaken for the aid of souls are of great importance, proper to our Institute, and very frequent; and because on the other hand, our residence in one place or another is so highly uncertain, our members will not accept any sort of tenure (whether actual or virtual).

Yikes!]

Tenure can be an important apostolic tool, surely; and I was happy to work toward it in order, in fact, to make myself more apostolically available over time. Tenure has one principal purpose: to protect the academic freedom of faculty members. It also serves as the journeyman’s card in the academy. Relative to academic freedom, Jesuits have that by virtue of our vow of poverty (“So fire me; what do I have to lose? I seek neither, riches, glory, nor power” is about as free as you can get!). The other aspect, the journeyman’s card, I think, is the important aspect of tenure for a Jesuit. Okay, I’m blathering and have gotten a little preachy. Forgive me.

In any case – to return to what I set out to write about in this post: The young German man said, “Why go to Dodoma, there’s nothing there?” And my answer: Because there’s nothing less than a corner of the Kingdom of God there, that’s why.