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Okay, great, pick it up again.
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So, with then, Latin going out, it was mandatory,
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the vernacular language, which we had lobbied for for years,
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it happened, but again, I was rendered irrelevant,
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and feeling deeply irrelevant, and I said to myself,
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and I think I attended some simple conference somewhere,
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where someone was singing a very simple song, in English,
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to be used in ritual, I think it was only about four lines.
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And everybody was cheering, and looked at myself,
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I said, "I can do better than that".
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And I didn't mean it in any demeaning way,
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but since the age of six, six and a half, seven,
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I was writing poetry, I had books of poems.
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It was my instinctive way to go, like, and I said,
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"I've got a degree in music, and all these four manual
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"189 stop organ pipes, and I can't do anything."
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So I picked up a guitar, it was the Hootenanny Movement,
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and the singalongs, we were singin' along on the side,
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I said, "I can learn three chords", which is about
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what what I did, and I started to sing.
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And at one point, I was so, kind of down,
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they sent me to our vacation spot in New Jersey
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to cheer up, and I remember, it was a terrible rainy day,
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and I was with my guitar, other sisters were there,
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but they were out of the room, and I was singing,
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♪ I saw raindrops on my window, joy is like the rain ♪
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♪ Laughter runs across my pane ♪
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♪ Slips away and comes again ♪
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♪ Joy is like the rain ♪
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And the third verse, Christ asleep within my boat,
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whipped by wind, yet still afloat, joy is tried by storm.
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And I ended up, and I'm sobbing, and I'm screaming
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in sight of God, "You got me into this mess,
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"You got me into this mess, I tried to follow
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"the Holy Spirit, and Your Spirit, and I have no life,
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"I have no nothing, I'm useless, I feel terrible!
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"And you know what, I made my final vows,
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"and I ain't gonna break them, so You better do something,
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"You better get me out of this, You better do something!"
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Over time, there hasn't been a place on Planet Earth,
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that I have physically gone to, that that song
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hasn't gotten there before me.
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And the numbers of people, even during the Viet Nam War,
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I've had airline pilots, medic evac people, a person sent,
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you know, I came back, and I turned on Voice of America,
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and there were these nuns singing.
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I got the guts to go out again,
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God is gonna be with me.
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The stories were, you know, "My little child is a,
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"was a dwarfed child, and he loved the song Zacheus,
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"and he died, can we use it at the funeral?"
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Ah, I cannot come to the banquet, I would give
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these concerts, and I had this, give out these song sheets
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to sing along, and there was one woman, with her six kids,
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and one had his little legs stickin' out, he was only
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about four or five, at the most, and he wanted
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a sheet of paper, okay, and I'm singin' and watchin',
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he had every syllable, he was, and he was lookin'
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at the paper, and later I went over,
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but he had the paper upside down, he couldn't read,
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he just wanted the paper, like the adults.
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He sang the whole song verbatim.
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So, I mean, stories about meaning that a big seed
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was sown early on, that I take steps in directions,
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I don't know why.
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Yes.
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There's no reason for it, I don't even know
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if I want to do it, I don't not want to,
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but I don't want to, it's not a choice.
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That has been the pattern, consistently,
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to this very moment, okay, ending up in this place,
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and finding, all of a sudden, as I look back,
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which is so important, to have people like yourself,
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asking people like ourselves, "What did you do,
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"and why'd you do it?", you know.
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Yes.
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Because, in looking back, and that's my teaching
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modality now, with the new degree that we have,
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to have people do that, to look, and discern, what is
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the finger of the divine leading, what is the wisp
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of spirit grace, that somehow is there, and it leads you
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to hear that somehow makes sense of all
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that is here and now, even though
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you'll never comprehend it, even though it's beyond,
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because the finite can never, never comprehend the infinite.
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So all we can do is grasp a little piece, and say, "Yes,
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"this feels right for the moment".
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If it's not right, then you need to do something about it.
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You know, so, the music that started then, the path
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I was on, and so why I tell this circuitous story,
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it's so important to know, that the context in which
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I have been, this international community,
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whose membership, and its leaders are diverse
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from around the world, those women that we were helping
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are now leaders of their own, in our community
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and elsewhere.
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And, in fact, one of our Indian sisters,
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I just spoke with her a few minutes ago,
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she's our NGO representative at the U.N., very involved
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with the women, and we have, it's the context
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I needed to be in.
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And then, what I eventually did, I followed, like,
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the song lines, I followed the paths,
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I went around the world to our places, so I have been,
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I have dipped my toes in the oceans that lap
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the shores of Africa, and India, and you name the places,
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you know.
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And, deeply grateful for the privilege of being able to
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be a vessel of some of some spirit energy,
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not only passing through me out there, and helping others,
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but then to turn around and be able to be a receptor
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of someone's story, spirit, and encouragement, to say,
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and they'll always say, "I don't know why I'm here".
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Sometimes they talk to me, "I don't know why I'm here,
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"I don't know why I want to talk to you".
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And I say, "I don't either, but you know (chuckles),
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"the Spirit is saying something".
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And that's what happens, you know, you give a safe place
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to not know what you're doin'.
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To now know who you are, to make sense of nothing,
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but to know there's something, there's something,
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where to feel safe, and then, when you get connected
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with other women, who are similar, all of a sudden,
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you've seen it.
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Yes.
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The bonds that form, that literally last forever.
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And the difference that we're making
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out in the world quietly, in our own little spaces,
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homeplace, workplace, and that's what I've
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been doing consistently.
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Then I came here, why?
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I turned it down three times, I didn't want to teach
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Did you really?
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I didn't want to teach.
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You didn't want to teach, that's right.
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I wasn't, I didn't even want the degree,
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why would I do this?
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You know, why am I here?
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When I got the music done, I went on, and kinda
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did concerts and programs around, and then I thought
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I gotta learn more about, because, you know,
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I was big, I was not big among Catholics,
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except underground, you know, and never made it
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into the institutional hymnals, it was always, like banned,
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in, ah, like the school rooms and all.
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But it was the Protestants, and the Mennonites, and the,
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I mean, you name it, the Baptists, and the Presbyterians,
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and the Canadians, all over the ...
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And so I needed, I said I've gotta learn more about
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the Protestant biggies, and so McMaster offered,
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and they paid my whole way, to a degree, you know,
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in Masters of Religious Ed, I got done with that,
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and I thought I still don't know enough,
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and I might as well learn some more about the Bible,
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so I applied to Princeton Theological Seminary,
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and they asked me, "Well, what are your others?"
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I mean, it was weird, they only take 15 people
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out of hundreds.
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Yes?
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And, why are you coming here, and I said,
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"Well, it's close to my Mother House".
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(Laughing)
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Okay, "And you have good Bible people".
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I wanted to learn Bible, so that was a saving grace.
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But I also wanted to invent my own degree, which,
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of course, you don't say that to Princeton.
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But I did, because that's what I wanted to do.
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And, what other schools have you applied to?
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I said, "None".
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"Are you gonna apply to anything else?"
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And I guess they though I was gonna be arrogant,
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I said no.
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He said, "What if you don't get in?"
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And I said, "Well then, I won't go to school,
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"that will be a sign".
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That was it, well, I got in.
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Oh!
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Full ride.
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That is amazing.
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It's amazing!
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And then, I did, for my dissertation, toward,
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to look into, is there a theology of Catholic Church music,
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'cause I didn't know any.
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And the conclusion, with all these incredibly
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wonderful scholars, you know, I mean, we had the,
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Bruce Medzger, the big scholar, I mean, and Anderson,
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I mean is, all these people, you know.
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And so, my final thing was, the heads
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of all those departments, 'cause I created my own design,
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my degree, I took these, I studied liturgy,
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and all through the Old Testament, all the Protestant
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denominations, everything else, and then I did this
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Catholic Church music, you know.
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But in the end, I got validated, and I did say
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Catholic Church has no theology of music.
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What it has is an aesthetic of music.
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You can't say that, if is sounds like the Heavenly Spheres,
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this is sacred music music.
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Because who's ever heard the Heavenly Spheres?
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You know, In other words, you can say that
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in a Catholic University an get away with it,
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because, you know, they feel the same way.
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But go to another Protestant, or sectarian place,
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and they're gonna say, "What's your proof,
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what's your basis, what's your evidence?"
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So I learned a lot, I needed Princeton, they were wonderful,
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because, you know, I had to get out of my totally
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naive Catholic, you know, just spinning the same old story
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comfort zone.
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And so, I also had this wonderful Eucharist background,
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you know, really understanding the sources, getting to know
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Jesus in a different way, and the whole Eucharist tradition,
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how it evolved, and how, so that lead to
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all kings of things, like my book,
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Eucharist With a small "e", and eventually, my latest,
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recent, not this recent, but a couple of, some years ago,
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2009, Paradoxology: Spirituality in a Quantum Universe,
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so, I added to that, like, science, and the quantum sphere,
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but I got the rudiments of that experience
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from Princeton, you know,
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And then while I finished, before I finished
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my dissertation, I said, "I'm gonna be a, I have to delay
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"this a little bit, 'cause I'm going, I'm going
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"to the refugee camps".
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There was a call, you know, the fall of Pol Pot,
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and there was a call for the refugee camps,
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and our community, Medical Mission Sisters,
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they're sending a team, and I said, "I wanna go".
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And they said, "Anybody free".
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And I said, "Oh my God, I just finished
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"my comprehensives, I'm free, I'm free!"
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And then I said, "But what good am I, who needs a
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Eucharist person, who needs a liturgist, what good am I?"
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And they said, "Oh, we need a non-medical,
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you cannot imagine".
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So myself, and this other non-medical who wouldn't
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have had a prayer of a chance to go,
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she said, "I wanna go too!"
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I said, "We'll come together".
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And so, a team of 12, and that changed me radically.
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That sense of, I have all these academic understandings,
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and wonderful background on Eucharist, but the most
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powerful sense of what it really meant, to break
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the bread of life, was those biscuits we gave of,
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several times a day, to those who were emaciated,
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these children, and the bringing the dead back to life.
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And as we said, on this first, Easter will never be
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any more profoundly experienced, than when I came
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to the camp, and those who were comatose,
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after we had established this little relationship
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through music.
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I came this one day, and they came running,
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these little kids, up this dirt road, screaming,
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and threw their arms around our knees, and hugging us,
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that's resurrection, that is resurrection.
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And, and so, it's using the skills of music,
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and prayer, and poetry, and play, and we had marches,
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and dances through the ward, you know, it was the
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infectious disease ward, but what the heck, you know.
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(laughing)
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Had to be after we gave the injections, and then we had
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play time, and sing time.
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But it tells you more about getting back then,
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to the spirit of Jesus who walked the countryside,
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and didn't get into all of these theatrics later on,
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or these, kind of, systems of talk down.
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So then I get this call, from this place, to, you know,
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I turned it down three times, I said, "I'm not gonna teach".
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And I came ...
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Why did you come?
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I don't, because they wouldn't take no, and I ...
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You don't do "no" well.
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I don't do "no" well, you got it.
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So I'm gonna go tell them that I'm not coming.
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And so, I'm saying, and then also, the third time,
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I said, oh, I say, "Why is this?"
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So I go.
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Talk about intimidating, I stand there, in this room,
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the hall full of students, faculty, guess what they
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were looking for, this is the irony of ironies.
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They were looking for a person, to establish a department
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in worship, liturgy, and spirituality.
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They wanted a female, because they had none
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as their core faculty.
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And they needed a Catholic, because, get this,
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wait for it.
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Yeah?
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They were starting a track for the Doctor of Ministry
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program, with the Roman Catholic priests.
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Oh, my goodness!
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And I would be teaching Roman Catholic priests.
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I, who could not get two feet within the sanctuary,
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placed there.
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The irony of, it was unbelievable, so when I came,
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I didn't know quite that, they didn't tell me,
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but when I stood there, and they said, I said,
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"I need to say something first, please",
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and why I do these things, I have no idea,
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I said, "You need to know, I don't wanna waste your time,
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"but I don't want this job".
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And I mean, they're lookin' at me like, I said,
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"Seriously, I tried to say no, I said it a number
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"of times, so I'm coming here, but you need to know,
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"I have to be honest, I am not looking for this job, so ...
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"And why would you want me anyway?"
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I'm looking at, there's so many priests in the room,
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what's goin' on?
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Thing gets over, I get the call, the next day,
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"You're our unanimous choice".
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Over someone from London, and someone who was the head
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of the Liturgical Commission, I mean, the Academy
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of Liturgy thing, hold the mail.
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I said, "You've gotta be kidding".
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First of all, when I was turning it down the third time,
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I said, "I can't go, I haven't done my Christmas cards yet,
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I don't have time".
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I mean, what a, you know ...
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I love it.
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So, they tell me this, and I said, "But I haven't even
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"told my Major Superior that I'm even investigating,
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"I can't do this".
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So then I start discerning with a friend, and I say,
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"What's going on here, what?"
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So I said, "Should I explore it further?"
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And I did, and ah, I said, "Okay, I need someplace
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to write my dissertation".
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Now this is another thing, I'm in the second year
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of a two year residency, I hadn't finished my residency.
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Oh, my goodness!
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I wasn't, hadn't finished any, you don't do this.
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No!
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You don't do this at Princeton.
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So I came back, I said, "Well, I've been hired by ..."
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They said, "What!"
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Oh my, there are no words, there are no words.
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I said, but I told 'em I couldn't come for a year,
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they're gonna hold it for a year, until I finish
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the courses, and my, you know,
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tests and exams, and, you know, orals,
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and God knows what all.
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This is remarkable.
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It's insane!
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It makes no, the whole, my whole life makes no sense.
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But it made sense to me to do it that way, but you can see,
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I'm not in the world, or of the world, where normal people
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act normally.
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It was, and it was so flabbergasted.
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(laughing)
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Oh, my God, so, long story short, that's how I got
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into here, and then I, it was back in, what was it,
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'80, 1980 I showed up, I signed up, and then I
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went to the camps, and I came in 1980.
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The computer thing was just, they had this old
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Mac, not Mac, what was it, not, something was ...
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IBM, or ...
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No, it was this green, with a green screen,
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and you did things, it was a dot between each letter.
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It was really quite good, anyway, they were,
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and I said, "Could I use that at night, you know,
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to do this thing?"
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So, I ended up getting on, using a computer, and,
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I finished this thing, and so ...
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Then you did your dissertation.
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That's right, did my dissertation.
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And I did a Catholic dissertation at that thoroughly
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Princeton institution, and I don't think there were
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any Catholics on the committee at the end.
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But I did my, you know, and I was pleased with the ...
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Can I stop, just for one second?