Retreat Season: A Gathering of Grace

Twenty four years ago, Sister Mary Luke sat in the chapel of Our Lady of Grace Monastery with a thick brown envelope in her lap. As she held the envelope that she would mail the next morning to the Eli Lilly Foundation, she offered all that was inside to God. She asked that if the grant she was requesting was of God, that God would bless it and open the doors to this possibility for women clergy. The offering was to be called Women Touched by Grace.

God and Lilly said yes.

I was part of the extraordinary gift of being in the first Women Touched by Grace group. I continued to participate in Women Touched by Grace through leading sessions with three other groups and being part of a leadership team that wrote grants to secure continued funding for this vital ministry. All were granted through Lilly initiatives to help clergy thrive in ministry.

Women Touched by Grace is in a new season. We have been invited to take what is best from our experience and share it with women clergy in our own context.

Twenty three years later, twenty two or so women clergy, representing the over 100 women clergy from five Women Touched by Grace groups, gathered in the chapel of Fatima Retreat Center and offered twenty or so plans to God. We prayed that God that would take the gift of community and formation, rooted in Benedictine values, back into our home contexts to create Gatherings of Grace. In this next expression, I imagine another 2000 or so women clergy will be served.

In the early days of Women Touched by Grace, Sister Mary Luke was interviewed by The Christian Century. She said that she had been surprised by how lonely and unsupported women clergy felt. The group we are beginning in Houston with my Gathering of Grace grant was born out of a conversation I had with two newly ordained priests last January who shared how lonely and isolated they felt. Our little Gathering of Grace will meet every six weeks or so in my home. We eight pastors range from newly ordained to established in ministry to near retirement to (me) retired—ages 20’s to 70’s.

I was struck that in this time of chaos and too much unkindness and hate that most of these Gatherings of Grace will be in deep red states, with about a third of them in Texas. Others will be in west coast cities inhabited by the National Guard. For me, it feels like a movement of the Holy Spirit.

My four days at Our Lady of Fatima were rich with worship and conversation with excellent women. My wake up song each morning was:

The kingdom of God is justice and peace And joy in the Holy Spirit

Come, Lord and open in us the gates of your kingdom.

Filled with the Spirit, I am ready to gather in Grace. Wherever the Spirit gathers.