News 14 -- June, 1993

“So knowing or experiencing Poverty as one born poor will never be my lot, but having the prison experiences, the experiences of life on the streets of Recife, Brazil, the year in a poor barrio in Chihuahua, Mexico and the time from 1986 to 1992 in El Salvador have allowed me to appreciate to some degree the agony and crucifixion of marginalized persons in today's world.”

[In some of his letters Larry used the word womyn as his way of expressing the equality of women and men.
campo = farm field or farm region. Campesino(a) = peasant farmer]

Newsletter #14

June 1993
USA

Dear Friends,

My last letter to you was a reflection of my bike trip back from El Salvador. That trip still remains fresh within me -- but especially in respect to the stepping out and trying something that was totally new, not knowing where it would take me. And in fact, it took me to my destination without a scratch.

I followed my inclinations when returning in August (1992) to enter a place of retreat and silence. There was something very strong within me, a need to withdraw--not to the classroom, to more schedules and meetings and book learning, but to a place where the education of the past years could pass in review before me in a calm and tranquil manner.

Lebh Shomea, a hermitage sunk snugly in the back country of the Rio Grande valley was to be my hideaway for the next few months.

The Oblates, my congregation, had inherited a grand portion of the Kennedy Ranch owned by a womyn named Serita Kennedy. Approximately twenty years ago, an Oblate Novitiate initially begun on the Kennedy land was converted into a House of Prayer. In a rather short period of time, a Fr. Kelly Nemeck, OMI and two Sisters, Maria Miesters and Marie Therese Coombs fashioned there a small community based on the eremitic way of life--a life of contemplation in an atmosphere of silence and prayer. It sounds perhaps rigid and even harsh at a distance but in reality it is a call that is deep within each of us.

Located midway between Corpus Christi and Harlingen, Texas, off highway 77, it sits on cattle grazing land, flat and vegetated enough for cattle, deer, wild pigs, rattlesnakes and other animals and birds of all kind to survive.

All who come to Lebh Shomea, which translated means "a listening heart," are asked to take on or enter into the eremitical way of life.

People of all faiths are welcomed; the morning Eucharist is the only required community exercise and talking is limited to the noon-day meal on Sundays. Those coming to Lebh Shomea may choose one of the three core members as a spiritual adviser or counselor and talk through anything one considers important.

So I came needing just this atmosphere. Wild life everywhere, the ocean a short distance away, a small living quarters and all the time I needed to be creative.

It was that need for silence and knowing there would be no meetings, no planning for future events and that the time was my own to make the most of.

I came there with reading material that I had wished to get through, but never had the time. Once I got moved in and settled, I began to slowly breathe deeply again. The walks at night beneath the stars, with the noise of coyotes in the distance allowed for my past life to unravel before me.

It is amazing what silence can do for the soul. I began to write out my life as I had remembered it. A little each day. This has helped a great deal to appreciate what has happened to me over these some 58 years. It allows me to realize how blessed I have been and especially how the Spirit has worked in amazing ways over the years.

What I found happening through all this recalling was a sense of thanksgiving rising up from within. Thanks for the faith-filledness of my mom and dad. The patient, joyful nature of my bother Phil despite dealing with a severe asthma condition affecting a good part of his life. My own traumatic high school years that later viewed can be seen as playing a vital role in my call to religious life at the age of twenty.

I found that one cannot force ideas, a certain vision or insights. They must come at their own good time. But I discovered that grace works within me/us when I set time aside to be quiet, when I respond to the strong need to be quiet that is within me.

I can now appreciate better the many people who have influenced my life over the years -- the circumstances too that brought forth so many memorable and important events. My own immediate family, relatives and friends. Phil and Dan Berrigan, the writings and acquaintance of Dorothy Day, Karl Meyer and the Catholic Worker experience. Destroying selective service files with 13 others in 1968 and the experience of courtrooms and prisons that followed.

I had taken my first religious vows in the mid 50's and have come to realize their significance gradually over the next 30 years. I had vowed to Poverty, Chastity, Obedience and Perseverance... Yet their true value and nature are only today beginning to sink in.

Poverty: What will I ever know of being poor? And living in Poverty implies oppression. I will never know what being born into Poverty is all about--being Black, Mexican, Salvadoran and tasting alienation from day one.

But I do consider it a gift and grace to have been called by circumstances to the religious Congregation of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate. And this in so far as it is a call to identify as best one can with the marginalized of society. I do not consider this call an accident, but a divine privilege, if you will.

And the meeting of Phil Berrigan, Karl, Dorothy, and the many friends along the way--the Bromley's, Mac McCracken, Mary Lou Pedersen--the list is endless--have greatly influenced me in the way and life of the Spirit, despite myself and my failings.

So knowing or experiencing Poverty as one born poor will never be my lot, but having the prison experiences, the experiences of life on the streets of Recife, Brazil, the year in a poor barrio in Chihuahua, Mexico and the time from 1986 to 1992 in El Salvador have allowed me to appreciate to some degree the agony and crucifixion of marginalized persons in today's world.

Each calling is a unique and beautiful work of the Spirit. We follow our call the best we can. Our friends, true to the Spirit in their lives, are energy and light to us too.

Coming home here to the states, I have had the opportunity to meet old friends and listen to their stories. Some have been to Iraq to witness the atrocities there; others are totally involved in the lives of their communities - be it Chicago, Milwaukee, San Antonio, or Washington, DC.

It is the Spirit alive and working in us that allows each of us to do what is deep within us--that which we must do. Poverty in the (strict) sense of the vow leaves us naked, i.e. devoid of self so that the gift and beauty of others is what spurs us on through the thick and thin of life.

Chastity: the grace to respect fully another... a gift integrated slowly but surely into all that we do. It's not a negative attitude of not doing this or that. It seems to me that when lived out fully, it is liberating, is joyful, unites to others, free of fear, full of love.

A friend explained to me recently that many men and womyn are called to the priesthood but not all of us are called to the vow of chastity as we have known it. A factor, if recognized and submitted to, might have helped alleviate many of the problems arising among clergy today.

Having spent the relatively short 3 - 4 months in Sarita, Texas helped me to see that the bottom line to a healthy existence depends on the silence that, if cultivated within our daily routine, will enable us to contact our God, our neighbor and friends, our problems and difficulties in a way they are appreciated for what they are and dealt with accordingly.

This idea has been my conviction over the years... it matures during a period of time set aside to be alone and reflective.

Obedience: comes out of silence; it springs forth as a flower at its own time when like a seed has been nourished by the rich soil (nutrients) surrounding it. For most of the years since my ordination, 30 years ago, I have pursued my way of life as reflected from the people and circumstances flowing into my daily life.

My religious superiors, over the years, have generally accepted the course I've chosen and given support to it. Obedience is the inner ear to conscience. We pray, we sweat, we listen, we dialogue and we act. I personally must do the searching, the reflecting, the decision making as an Oblate who vowed those many years ago... persevering as an Oblate using all in my being to be faithful.

I write all this out as a way of sharing with you at this time in my life because it seems that the times demand that we allow friends to glimpse the challenge and the complications that each and every vocation has attached to it. We try to listen and to penetrate the call of each of our friends (sisters and brothers) so that we may be the better for taking up the burdens of life in a common endeavor.

Since returning from El Salvador in July of '92, I've had to deal with the question, where do I go from here? My Oblate superior suggested that after spending six years in El Salvador as a volunteer, that I seek work in which an Oblate Community is involved. The Oblates had no specific work established in El Salvador, and I was the only Oblate working there to my knowledge.

Today, most Orders have committed themselves to many noble tasks, yet often lack persons to continue to carry them out. So it was suggested that I plug into one of the many existing Oblate Communities as I see fit.

So, as I went about my reading and reflecting and walking through the woods in Sarita, Texas, I had time to weigh what seemed to be the direction of my future. When all was said and done, Guatemala seemed to be the place that is calling. In June I'll pack my bags and head South again.

To get a sense of a people, their culture and the oppression and persecution they have lived through, there is nothing better than living with the people. Six years in El Salvador is helpful. The stories and history of a people unfold slowly as trust is established.

I know perhaps that if I would have remained for years and years in one place as many missionaries do, I might well have grown deeper in wisdom and love for the people, for example, of Estanzuelas or Nuevo Gualcho in El Salvador.

But I move as circumstances and conscience seems to lead me. El Salvador and its people are in the post-war era--the difficult period when the psychological trauma must be gone through. Grassroot organizations are busy training leaders to work with the womyn, for example, to deal with the hidden fears and emotions that have been held within these many years. How to work with and slowly trust brothers and sisters who fought against each other and killed family and relatives and friends over the past years.

The Truth Commision report names those responsible for the death of Monsignor Romero, the four American womyn, the six Jesuits and housekeeper and her daughter, condemns the legislative branch of government for inadequate and deceitful procedure and asks that all members resign.

And President Cristiani's response is to grant all those cited amnesty.

I am leaving El Salvador at a time when the struggle to rebuild a country on the principle of Democracy and Justice are at hand.

I do go in Faith and in Hope. Guatemala is a beautiful, scenic, mountainous country, but seized with a civil war, thousands of refugees hoping to return from Mexico and a government unwilling to acknowledge and to honor Rigoberta Menchu Tum, the indigenous Guatemalan womyn and the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize winner.

One thing I feel bad about is that this newsletter is the sole means of communicating with many of you. I always think that when coming back to the U.S. especially with the many months free that I've had since last August, that I would be able to travel East, West, North and South and visit all of you. Well it just hasn't worked out, and I feel bad about this. If any of you care to drop a line and let me know how you are doing, (as many of you in fact do), I will try to respond more personally to you.

I pray that we can continue to walk together, wherever our calls may lead us. Let us keep each other in thought and prayers. Hasta luego,

Lorenzo Rosebaugh