The Christophers: Sister “Sews” and “Sows” Joy, Hope, and Healing
- Editor
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
By Tony Rossi,
Director of Communications
Life isn’t fair. It was only after acknowledging that fact that Sister Ave Clark was able to move through the struggles and traumas she had endured to find God’s light again. And as she used her wounds to bring that light to others, she found an even greater level of healing herself.
Sister Ave deeply appreciates the role that Dr. Frederic Gannon played in her life, beginning in 1988. Though he is now “in the cloud of witnesses in heaven,” she said during a “Christopher Closeup” interview, he was the “spiritual psychiatrist” who guided her through the trauma and PTSD that came from having been abused and assaulted. It was at this time that Dr. Gannon told her, “Life isn’t fair.”
This viewpoint came as a shock to Sister Ave, who could not accept it at first, despite what had happened to her. But Dr. Gannon responded, “You’re wearing yourself out. When you learn that life isn’t fair…you will learn to weave compassion around it.”
That revelation changed Sister Ave. She realized that when bad things happened to her or her loved ones, feelings of anger could arise and become all-consuming. But accepting life’s unfairness allowed Sister Ave to ask, “How can I help someone, or myself, to get up in a better way? Because sometimes people get up, and they’re saying, ‘Let’s be angry.’ That is not going to help the situation or our world community…You can implode in yourself about your sorrow or hurts…But if you can look out and [ask]…‘How could I be [a help] for someone else,’ so that you see your struggle not in a negative way, but maybe it also has a grace in it? . . . I’m not naive. Some things are a great struggle…[But] we have to get up and look at life in more positive, life-giving ways.”
This perspective led Sister Ave to contemplate the words “sew” and “sow” and write a book titled “Sewing ~~ Sowing Good Deeds with Joy and Hope.” We can sew threads that bring people together, and sow seeds that produce good fruit. “What do we put into our soil of life,” she reflected, “so, not only does it bloom for us, but it also blooms for other people, like with charity, hope, forgiveness, and understanding?”
As an example, Sister Ave recalled speaking at a Compassionate Friends meeting, which brings together people who have endured the tragedy of losing a child: “As I looked out at them, I realized that these people, they’re helping each other, they’re carrying each other. And there’s joy there, too—the joy of befriending someone in their sorrow. [It’s] not saying, ‘Don’t worry, it’ll go away in time.’ No. There are many sorrows we’ll carry with us for the rest of our lives. But how do we learn to carry them? Maybe that’s where we start to weave. Like a sewer, we become a mender.”
Another incident occurred when Sister Ave was taking part in a program that supports domestic violence victims. She arrived at the meeting site, where a mother and her young son sat together on a bench, “huddled and crying.” The boy joyfully welcomed Sister Ave and invited her to sit between them and hold their hands. She did so for an hour until their ride arrived to take them to a new life. Sister Ave recalled, “[I] feel that they were the God of love for me that day, and I was the God of love for them. [It] goes both ways.”
For free copies of the Christopher News Note BEAR ONE ANOTHER’S BURDENS, write: The Christophers, 264 West 40th Street, Room 603, New York, NY 10018; or e-mail: mail@christophers.org
