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About Our Franciscan Ministries FST Board of Regents San Diego CA February 25, 2021 “From Assisi to San Diego: What Makes An Organization Franciscan?” Br. Bill Short, OFM “Always be ready to give an account of the hope that is within you with gentleness and respect” (1Pt 3:15). To give an account … this is what brings us here today. We have an experience – in the 1st letter of St. Peter it is hope, we may have a different name for it – and we want to be able to give an account of it, we might say, to explain it to others. In our case the experience we have is that of serving on the Board of Regents of the Franciscan School. We call this school “Franciscan.” But that is more than just a name to identify it: it is also a shorthand description of some aspects of the experience itself. We know that FST, like other Franciscan organizations and ministries, functions differently: it doesn’t always operate by the rules that are most familiar to other people, even people working in the same field of graduate education, providing similar programs and classes, or located in the same area of Southern California. We are here today to try to “account” for these differences, to look for some of the characteristics that mark an organization as Franciscan. My hope is that this explanation will help Board members, old and new, to understand better the "institutional culture" of FST and, more broadly, the Franciscan ministries of St. Barbara Province. New York City Let me begin with a contrast. I was once invited to attend a meeting in a suite of professional offices across from the UN building in New York, at 1 Dag Hammarskjold Plaza. Before going there I was informed how to get there, how I should identify myself, and where to go when I entered the building. Once I arrived in the lobby of the building, my name was checked against a master list of people expected that day, then I was issued an identification card, and was escorted to a rank of elevators. Security personnel, while polite, were clearly observing me. On reaching the floor indicated to me, I approached a very large counter: rosewood up to my chest, and through a glass partition gave my name and my ID card to a receptionist, who then buzzed me through a set of locked glass doors. Once inside, I was taken by another person to a conference room where the meeting was to be held; and was politely offered coffee, served on a beautiful conference table. The people I was meeting came in, and were very friendly, and we conducted our business in a brisk and efficient way. At the end, they thanked me for coming, and then asked one of the assistants to show me back out through the front to the elevators, and they disappeared through another door. The whole operation was very well organized. Everything worked on a very precise schedule. Everyone who needed to know was aware of who I was, when I was coming, and where I should go for my meeting. The whole thing worked like clockwork, and not a minute of my time or that of my hosts was wasted. People behind the scenes had clearly prepared the schedules, sent me directions, written my name correctly on the ID card, fixed the coffee, polished the conference table, and made photocopies of all the paperwork used in the meeting. I was treated courteously and respectfully by each person along the way as soon as they realized that I was an expected visitor, with my ID badge identifying me as someone who was “expected.” It exemplified professional behavior and "efficiency of operation." These are values with a high value generally in our U.S. society today. The Cemetery San Miguel CA Now a different story, from a day in the not-too-distant past at my former home at Old Mission San Miguel in Central California. I was sitting in the office working on the translation of an Italian article about St. Clare of Assisi. The intercom buzzed, and I received a message from one of the staff in our Gift Shop. A woman (I’ll call her Cindy) had just called from hundreds of miles away, rather distraught, looking for her husband whom she had not seen for more than a day. Was he sitting on a tombstone in the Old Mission’s Cemetery? That seemed to be what he said in a message on her cell phone. Would I please go and look, and if he was there, would I please keep him there until she could come and get him? (To put it mildly, I got the distinct impression that something unusual was going on.) I went out the Cemetery and, in fact, found a man fitting the description of the husband, sitting on one of the tombs. I approached him (let’s call him Mike); I introduced myself and asked if he was Mike. He said Yes, and that God had told him to come to the cemetery at the Old Mission in San Miguel. Would I please tell his wife to come join him, with their children and family dog? I convinced him to come and sit in one of our guest rooms, maybe rest for a while, and I would inform his wife that she should come, with or without children and dog. Cindy was relieved when I called, and said she would fly to the nearest airport, a snall one in San Luis Obispo, about an hour’s drive away, as soon as she was off work, but could she find a way to get to the Mission from the airport? I promised we would find a way. Our local Franciscan community there was the novitiate, where young men spend their first year trying out Franciscan life. Two of the young novices agreed to drive an hour or so to pick up Cindy at the San Luis airport, while I did my best to keep Mike occupied. He was upset and worried, he told me, because he was being pursued by enemies inspired by the devil, and they were conspiring to kill him, his wife and children and the dog -- but he knew that as long as he stayed inside the Mission compound with the friars he was safe. I encouraged him to look at things that way for the next 6 or 7 hours, so he wouldn’t disappear before his wife Cindy arrived. She, with the novices, arrived after 10PM that night, and we spent the next few hours trying to piece together what had happened. Luckily, she had brought some medication that Mike needed to take, and by 1 AM I was able to leave them to get some sleep. They left early the next morning, and since then we have kept in touch: Mike is feeling much better, Cindy is relieved that he is well again, and they sent us a lovely bottle of wine, and a gift-box of cheese for Easter, along with a donation for the Mission, as a sign of their gratitude. Mike and Cindy were not expected. They had no ID. There was no time to prepare for this meeting; many of our schedules for the day were turned upside-down. I had no opportunity to make notes beforehand, nor to consult with experts on Mike’s condition, or suggest what Cindy should do. They simply fell out of the sky (almost literally) into the middle of a Franciscan place, and everyone seemed to know, more or less, what to do, what to say, how to react. The staff in the Gift Shop, the friars in the community, the novices heading out at night to pick up a complete stranger at a faraway airport – all did their part without asking many questions. No one refused this unexpected plea for help, and afterward, no one complained about the multiple inconveniences, and seemed genuinely happy when they found out that Mike and Cindy were back home and doing well. We might say that they were able to "focus on the person" more than on the "efficiency of the operation." I believe this is one of the characteristic traits of a Franciscan institution, whether FST or any of the ministries of St. Barbara Province. The person has an intrinsic value, quite apart from any usefulness or effectiveness they might offer, any function they may perform for us. How do we “give an account” of that? That is, how can we describe the differences between these two very different kinds of meetings? I hope that through our shared reflection today we can give some response to that question. All of us who have served on the staff or Boards of Franciscan institutions have been (or will be) tutored on how these things work. We receive copies of Bylaws, Handbooks, and explanations of governance and sponsorship models. A good administrator knows the value of these tools, but a good Franciscan administrator also knows that these by themselves are just the skeleton, not the flesh and blood of our Franciscan ministries. Their animating spirit, their “soul,” is something that can never be captured in Board Minutes, resolutions, or strategic plans. Yet this spirit is what makes our Franciscan ministries “Franciscan.” I would like to offer my own explanation, my own account of what animates us. My hope is that these remarks will help you to reflect on your own experience, to see if this rings true. Together, then, we can embark on this process of “giving an account” of the Franciscan hope that is in us, and that we can sense or see or almost touch in the ordinary and extraordinary events in our diverse Franciscan ministries.
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