NOT BORED WITH THE BOARD

Since I'm over a week behind in my blogging, I might as well go on back and tell you about the UNANIMA Board Meeting on Thursday and Friday of last week. It was great to see Suzanne (on right) and to meet the rest of the board--they are an energetic and interesting group from all over the world. Twice a year they fly in from their countries of origin to participate in the UNANIMA board meeting, and to network with each other. Catherine said this year on their evaluations they voted the most interesting part of the meeting was hearing from us interns. Well, Jan and I gave the program an A+ also, as we reported on our experience to date (you already have a pretty good idea of what I said, if you've been following along in the blog!)

I summarized it by saying it was not a "once in a lifetime" experience--more like a "once in 300 lifetimes" experience. The combination of being "inside" the United Nations, of being in NYC not as a tourist but as a "local," and of living and working with such a diversity of cultures has been awesome, as the kids would say. My global awareness has been raised so much; every day I read something in the paper about some action of the U.N.--news items that might not have registered with me before now. The UN used to be some nebulous entity that had nothing to do with me (the first time I heard of it as a child was when I saw big billboards in northern New Mexico saying "GET U.S. OUT OF THE U.N.!" compliments of the John Birch Society).

I look forward to sharing more with my community and with local groups I work with in Kentucky...there ARE ways that ordinary people can have a voice in the U.N., through the "Civil Societies," but more on that later. I'll try to blog a more substantive blog this weekend!

OLDER IS BETTER

Sure it is! after all, the older you get, the more opportunity you have had in your life to make friends. Thanks so much for all the support I have received from you, my friends, community, family, and "fan club" for my United Nations Adventure blog. I did appreciate all the birthday cards and greetings and phone calls and e-mails and e-cards. We certainly don't have an excuse not to "reach out and touch someone" these days, do we? But let me tell you about the once-in-a-lifetime gift I got: someone made a donation in my name to the Bronx Zoo, and for that I get an animal named after me--a Madagascar Hissing Cockroach! For sure I will have to go to the zoo to see my cockroach. Do you think I will be able to tell it from all the rest? Maybe they have branded it "MM!"

My birthday celebration started last Thursday with jellyfish--a new dish for me--at a restaurant in Chinatown, where the UNANIMA staff celebrated two office birthdays. There were also "100 year old eggs" to try, and the green leafy tops of snow pea plants to furnish our vitamin A for the day. Earlier the same week we had celebrated Lunar New Year (because we have two Chinese sisters and a Korean student in our house, we can't call it just "Chinese" New Year). The dining room was hung with dragons, "lucky money," firecrackers, and other red ornaments. We each got a gift, and a red envelope of "lucky money" to put under our pillows, so it felt like Christmas. Christmas and a birthday the same week, oh my!

Friday night we saw another opera at Lincoln Center, thanks to more free tickets. This was a comedy, Don Pasquale -- I hate to admit that I always claimed not to like opera, but that was when I just heard it on the radio, before I saw it on the stage with the sets and the acting. Saturday we attended part of a film festival on women's issues at Barnard College, a women's liberal arts college affiliated with Columbia University (Thomas Merton attended Columbia, as a young man). Whew, I was ready to get back to work on Monday...

And what is it like to eat jellyfish? Very much like chowing down on rubber bands. But you--go eat some chocolate and have a Happy Valentine's Day!

GO, GO, NGOs

If you're like most people in the USA you probably don't know what an NGO is...I didn't until our Ursuline community joined one a few years ago. In fact, we were among the "charter members" of our particular NGO, called UNANIMA (more on that, later). NGOs are Non-Governmental Organizations. As the name indicates, they act independently of any national government. Early international NGOs were important in anti-slavery and women's suffrage movements. NGOs have been active at the UN since it began in 1945; in fact, they are actually written into its Charter.

NGOs can interact with the United Nations Secretariat, programs, agencies, and member states--researching issues, lobbying, providing information and expertise. They can influence UN debate by proposing ideas for the draft agenda, submitting written statements, and making oral presentations.

One UN commission (the Commission on the Status of Women) says on its website that the "active participation of NGOs is a central element in the work of the CSW. NGOs have been influential in shaping the current global policy framework on women's empowerment and gender equality...they play an important role in holding international and national leaders accountable for their commitments." And NGOs are the way that people like us can influence UN policies!

A former president of the United Nations called NGOs the UN's "windows to reality," and Pope John Paul II called them "the conscience of the UN." Later I'll tell you what ELSE they call us sometimes, when we "bug" them too much ..!

STOP THE WORLD (for a day)

T.G.I.F.! I've only been here for a week, but have learned a year's worth of stuff--some related to the U.N. and its NGOs (Non Governmental Organizations) and a lot related to survival in New York City. Sister Jan and I agreed today that we feel like we've been run over by a truck, one bearing tons of information.

I'm just so impressed with the United Nations and what it does to promote peace and justice all over the world. When you think of it, it's the only place in the world where all nations--rich or poor, large or small--can sit down and talk to each other on an equal footing. And I'm so proud of how women and men religious are using this venue to influence world policies. To give you an idea of what kinds of things we are working on through UNANIMA, here's my schedule for this last Wednesday (each meeting was about an hour and a half long):

• Working Group on Poverty and Climate Change (the environment is one of the top priorities of the current General Secretary)


• NGO Committee on Poverty Eradication (the issue of poverty cuts across all UN agencies and activities)


• Workshop in Advocacy Training (this taught us how to approach official groups we are trying to influence)


• NGO Committee for Social Development (many religious community focus issues are involved in this--it deals with themes around family, aging, youth, disabled persons)

Needless to say, we missed lunch that day. Luckily, I had put two granola bars in my pocket to give to homeless people on the subway, so Jan and I co-opted them. In this one day, in a small way, we experienced solidarity with the hungry and the disabled (as I am still hobbling around on a sprained ankle), and suffered vicariously with the poor and those dealing with the effects of climate change! What an education...

U.N.believable!

I learned today that one of the interns here is "just now beginning" to understand how things work at the United Nations--and she has been here for four months. After our first day I can understand why it takes so long! During our orientation session my head began filling with inititals and acronyms: UNDP, UNEP, UNHCR, ILO,FAO, IFAD, UNIFEM...well, you get the idea. And our schedule for the next two weeks includes meetings with subcommittees and committees and working groups and briefings and forums...well, you get the idea!

Yesterday we braved bitter cold to go to the U.N. Building to register for our U.N. passes that will get us in the building without the airport-type security screening that visitors undergo each time. And we actually had a bit of real work to do: to write a prayer service for a series of Lenten reflections on global food insecurity, which will be published as an online calendar by the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance in Geneva, Switzerland. Today we navigated icy and slush-filled streets to get to work at the UNANIMA office, where we sat in on a meeting of the Working Group on Trafficking and Migration. Nine different religious communities (orders of sisters, brothers, and priests) were represented at that meeting, not counting the other UNANIMA communities represented by Catherine Ferguson. The main topic on the agenda was to plan a "site event" scheduled for February 14...it will include testimony from individuals who have been trafficked or who have some special expertise in the relationship between trafficking and migration.

NGOs primarily seek to educate U.N. members on issues of concern to them, and to influence the wording of policy statements--even the wording of the Secretary General's annual report! I am so impressed with the quality and power of the networking that religious communities bring to this good work...

'NEATH THE SIDEWALKS OF NEW YORK

After a pretty good night's sleep (remarkable considering the city sirens, a yowling alley cat, and a radiator that sounds like small yapping dogs at certain phases of its activity--not to mention the effort of digesting a huge and very festive birthday dinner we had for one of the resident sisters), Jan and I were out and about before 8:00 (that's 7:00 according to my Central Standard body time) to give ourselves time to get lost on the subway and/or to wait a long time for a train. Well, the subway maps are good, so neither happened, and we arrived at the UNANIMA offices half an hour early!




The orientation session with Catherine was interesting, and we met the three sisters "interning" with the International Presentation Sisters' Association, one of the three NGO entities who share the office. (the other group represented there are the Sisters of Notre Dame). All share a space on the 12th floor of an office building near the United Nations...the whole office space is no larger than your average one-car garage. But they explained that all religious community NGO's get along very well, since they know that in numbers there is strength, and all share information and resources.


Our orientation session soon gave us to know that we had better arrive on Monday morning ready to work! In fact, we have lots of homework to do before then--websites to visit, introductory materials to read, and even virtual tours to take. On the way home, Jan and I stopped for lunch in the food court beneath the restored Grand Central Station...what fun to see it again for the first time since I came through there on a train at age 10! The sign that said "Track #117" hints at the huge size of the complex, and the artistic carvings and lovely architectural frills on this grand old dame give us a glimpse of a time when people took time to make things beautiful. The subway still leaves from Grand Central so we took the shuttle train over to Times Square and from there went home (yes, 97th Street is beginning to feel like "home"). At the evening Mass in a nearby church an usher took out what he suspected was a bomb--typical of the calm paranoia of this city of surprises!

GLAD TO BE HERE (I THINK)

On January 14, after enjoying a clear flight over Lake Michigan (covered with ice floes) and the snow-covered mountains of Pennsylvania, my heart sank as we flew in over Queens (the New York City borough where LaGuardia Airport is located). As I saw the miles and miles of houses, houses, and more houses--and miles and miles of concrete, brick, and cement, I imagined all those people squashed down there in that little space. And as we rode through the congested streets of the city, noisy with honking horns and piled high with uncollected garbage--I reflected that this is what humans know how to do really well: generate waste and ugliness. Can I survive in a city for four months? This is a real "missionary" experience for me!

But then I allowed myself to be swept up into the cultural diversity of this most diverse of cities, and to feel underneath the ugliness and grime the throbbing heart of this place that is beloved home for so many. In the first two hours I was here I was driven home by a cab driver from Africa, saw a group of women crossing a street clad head to foot in burkas, met the sisters' Guatemalan cook and the sisters themselves: one from Lebanon, two from China, one from Spain, one from Ireland, and two from Brooklyn (and understand that I just missed one from the Philippines, one from Canada, plus three Japanese guests)!

As I met Sister Jan, my fellow intern from Australia, and Sister Catherine Ferguson, the director of the UNANIMA program, and all these warm, funny and hospitable Fransciscans I will be living with, I reflected that no matter the SIZE of the city or the number of people who live there, we still really meet each other one soul at a time, and it is on that level where you come to love each other. In Spanish there are two verbs for "know:" saber is the verb used about knowing things and facts, but conocer is the form used to describe how you know people or cities. "Conocer" has more of a feeling of "become acquainted with," the idea being that you can never fully know a person--or a city. I am looking forward to becoming acquainted with New York and its people...

LAUNCHING OUT INTO THE DEEP

Long story short: I sent in my application the next day, was accepted into the first class of UNANIMA interns, and received permission from my community leaders to "go for it." Before accepting, I took the decision to prayer once more, but there was never any real doubt in my mind that this was the will of God for me at this time. It felt so RIGHT...a gift from God. In fact, I think there has never been a decision that was so clear for me...it exactly matched by "ideal job" specifications, and I felt a great sense of peace about it.

There was only one cloud on the horizon--I will have to live in New York City for four months. Now, I love the vitality and cultural diversity of New York. I've been there several times and loved visiting museums, sightseeing, and doing the "touristy" things, but I was always glad to leave. Let's face it, I'm a small town girl of the open spaces. Moving to Kentucky to join the convent was bad enough--all those trees blocked my view, and the colorful "bones of the Earth" that you can see so well in New Mexico were covered by grass back here. But there's always Central Park, and the place I will be living (a convent on the upper West Side) is not far from there.

There will be two of us pioneering these internship positions, a Brigidine sister from Australia and I, and our first day will be an orientation on January 15. My fellow intern and I will commute by subway or bus to the UNANIMA office on 43rd Street, near the United Nations building. When friends ask, "but what will you DO?" I have to admit I don't know, except that I will be working in support of the UNANIMA mission, which is to "work at the United Nations on behalf of women and children in conditions of poverty; immigrants and refugees; and the welfare of the planet." Watch this blog for further details! Next time you hear from me will be from New York, "the Good Lord willin' and the creek don't rise."

I WAS LOST BUT I GOT FOUND

So I decided that I probably would not find my dream job, and became resigned to finding something--anything--that would contribute to the mission of our community, and would bring in a salary to help support our retired sisters. Bring it on! I searched the internet, looked at job postings online, scanned the want ads in the paper, and even went to a local job fair...where my spirits sank lower and lower as I cruised the tables (noticing all the much younger faces and stronger backs that were cruising with me). And I didn't see anything that really appealed to me, though I did ask at the Sheriff's table if he needed a member of a posse who could ride a horse.

A day or two later, Sister Sharon, our community leader, forwarded an announcement sent to her by another of our sisters, who had enclosed a note saying "this sounds like Michele." It was an announcement about the availability of paid internships with UNANIMA, an NGO (non-governmental organization) that works in New York City with the United Nations on global justice issues, especially those involving women and children. UNANIMA is composed of 19 communities of women religious, including our community, the Ursuline Sisters of Mount Saint Joseph. In the past they have focused on issues such as human trafficking, but recently have added an en emphasis on Earth issues, including (get this--chill down the spine!) global water issues and climate change.

I perked up at the keywords: women and children, Earth, water, climate change. As I sat there with the information in my hand, my heart literally started beating faster...my body was trying to tell me something! Now, as a woman religious, I made a vow of obedience, which people outside religiious life usually interpret to mean that I do everything my religious superior tells me to do. But our community recognizes that practices of good discernment include listening to the God Within: paying attention to likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses, passions, and yes--rapidly beating hearts! In fact, our community founder, Saint Angela Merici, urged us to "above all, obey the counsels and inspirations which the Holy Spirit unceasingly sends into our hearts." At that moment I felt really connected to that 16th Century wise woman...