FINDING GOD ON PARK STREET
Dive into the heart of the Catholic experience at Yale University with host Grace Klise, Director of Alumni Engagement at Saint Thomas More. In each episode, Grace and her student co-hosts engage in conversations with students, alumni, faculty, staff, and community members. Together, they discuss the nuances of living out the Catholic faith in today's world, culminating in the question, "Where have you found God?" This podcast offers a space to explore the intersection of spirituality, community, and education, providing listeners with personal insights and meaningful perspectives. Subscribe now to join the journey of discovery and connection.
FINDING GOD ON PARK STREET
Sister Mary Ellen Burns '89 J.D.: Welcoming the Stranger
In this episode, Sr. Mary Ellen Burns, ASCJ, takes host, Grace Klise, and student co-host, Mary Margaret Schroeder '24, on her journey through the sacred and legal. An alumna of Yale Law School (YLS) and a sister of the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Sr. Mary Ellen begins with her early days noticing the lives of religious sisters around her and the ways in which her vocational call continues to reverberate in her heart. In her own life in a religious community and in the lives of the many people she works with at Apostle Immigrant Services (AIS), Sr. Mary Ellen stands as a living witness of a life of justice, mercy, and love grounded in the Gospel message.
With her trademark wit and insightful candor, Sr. Mary Ellen reflects on her experiences as a YLS student, navigating the world of Yale in full habit. Despite the occasional challenges, those years were intellectually invigorating, providing her with a wealth of life lessons that she now draws upon as a lawyer and advocate. Today, as the Executive Director of Apostles Immigrant Services, she remains dedicated to championing the most vulnerable in New Haven. From pivoting to food support during the pandemic (and still going strong!) to the inspiring and resilient recent immigrants to Connecticut, Sr. Mary Ellen provides us with a glimpse into the mission-oriented work that keeps her days full.
Tune in to be reminded of the truth that when we're grounded in prayer and focused on seeing Christ in those around us, our lives will never be devoid of purpose.
Show Notes:
Mentioned in the episode: Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Apostle Immigrant Services, Haven’s Harvest
What Sr. Mary Ellen is reading: The Last Monk of Tibhirine: A True Story of Martyrdom, Faith, and Survival (Paraclete Press, 2013)by Freddy Derwahl, A Theology of Migration: The Bodies of Refugees and the Body of Christ (Orbis Books, 2022) by Daniel G. Groody, and New York: The Novel (Doubleday, 2009) by Edward Rutherfurd.
This is a podcast from Saint Thomas More, Yale's Catholic Chapel and Center. I'm your host, Grace Klise, with my student co-host, Mary Margaret Schroeder. Thanks for joining us for Season 2 of Finding God on Park Street. In our second season of the podcast, we're privileged to engage in conversations with Yale alumni reflecting on their time at Yale and the ways in which their faith has illuminated their professional and personal lives in the years since.
Grace Klise:With her characteristic joy and keen sense of humor, Sister Mary Ellen Burns, a member of the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus or ASCJs, recounts her discernment to religious life and later her path to Yale Law School. She graduated from YLS in 1989, making history as the first woman religious to do so, and she hasn't slowed down since. With a legal career spanning over three decades. Sister Mary Ellen has been a steadfast advocate for the most needy and vulnerable in our society, especially through her work with immigrants in our New Haven community as founder and executive director of Apostle Immigrant Services. We're grateful for her work, her witness and her wisdom in this conversation. Let's dive in. So, Sister Mary Ellen, this isn't a typical day coming to the podcast studio. What does a typical day look like for you?
Sr. Mary Ellen Burns:A typical day looks like getting up much earlier than I would like and then we have time of meditation. Then, usually on a weekday, I go to Mass at 6:30 in the morning at our provincial house, which is close to where I live, return home and we pray Lauds, morning prayer, together. Then I have breakfast, go to work. Then my work involves meeting with clients, going over questions that others on the staff might have. I'm on their clients' cases, then that's pretty much what I do. A little bit of administrative stuff I try to avoid but it's necessary. Then I'm usually heading home between 5:30 and 6:00 and have some time of prayer with the sisters. I have dinner and a lot of lively conversation. Then the evening can include more conversation, some relaxing, some time of prayer and then getting ready to get up at 5:15 in the morning again. Do it all over again. Yeah, very seldom podcasts, but this is all good.
Grace Klise:We're grateful that this is a change from your normal routine, that you can come in and chat with us a little bit about your journey, especially in faith, as you grew up and then discerned life with the apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and how Yale Law School factored into that, and then what you've been doing since. Could you tell us a little bit about where you're from and what childhood, young adulthood looked like? Do you anticipate that you would be wearing a habit one day and practicing law?
Sr. Mary Ellen Burns:I am a dreaded baby boomer. I grew up in Hamden, Connecticut, the town just north of New Haven. I went to a bunch of schools as a little kid because we had moved within Connecticut. They were public schools. I went to a Catholic high school run by my religious community, a Catholic all-girls school, Sacred Heart Academy in Hamden. My parents are both very devout, faith-filled people and their faith impacted how they chose to live. That, I think, was my first and probably most profound influence, because it gets you when you're a little kid and stays with you.
Sr. Mary Ellen Burns:My encounter with the sisters was as a high school student and there were quite a few sisters who were on the faculty. I had very few teachers who were not sisters. Actually, the witness that they gave was the first thing that consciously attracted me to the idea of religious life. They were very joyful, they were very generous with us, with their time, with their intention, with their encouragement. That was the first thing that attracted me. But I remember one of the other things in my high school years. First, there was the sister who used to go into the cafeteria where we had our free periods, if it happened to be when the sisters were having Adoration upstairs. The novices and postulants, the people who weren't involved in teaching would try to encourage us to go. I went and that time, I'll have to admit, I spent some of the time just watching the novices they would come in from, I guess I think they were doing dishes and they would kind of sail in. At that point we were doing double genuflections and it seemed to me like it was one movement. It just fascinated me. But the time in silence in front of the Blessed Sacrament, I think, allowed Jesus to truly touch me.
Sr. Mary Ellen Burns:I also had a course on prayer when I was a senior and one of the things we were supposed to do was attend a charismatic prayer group which was held at Thomas More.
Sr. Mary Ellen Burns:I had no connection with Thomas More at the time, but it was there.
Sr. Mary Ellen Burns:What really struck me about that was seeing a group of lay people predominantly who were so deeply engrossed in their faith and it wasn't really life-sharing because it was largely prayer but that really impacted me as well in many ways.
Sr. Mary Ellen Burns:During my high school years, and particularly my junior and senior year, my interest in religious life shifted from wow, these sisters are really great, I want to be like them to wow, Jesus is really great. I want to spend more time with him, and the Lord really spoke to me and gave me the conviction that religious life was the way. That, for me, was the path that would allow me to be growing in my relationship with him, perhaps more intentionally, but certainly providing me with that path. So, yes, as a young person, I did foresee myself wearing the exact habit that I am wearing now, and I would say my reason for desiring that matured somewhat when I was in high school. I went to college for a year after high school and then entered my community, and my desire for following Christ more closely in religious life, I hope, has continued to mature in its motivation.
Mary Margaret Schroeder:That's an amazing journey. Thank you for sharing that with us. Can you tell us a bit about the charism of the Apostles of the Sacred Heart?
Sr. Mary Ellen Burns:Absolutely. Thank you for the question. Our charism is to share the love of the heart of Jesus with others, to help people come to know God's love and care for them, manifested, I think, most powerfully in the Incarnation in life, death, Resurrection of Jesus and His continued presence with us through His spirit, the sacraments and particularly the Eucharist. But we also feel the love of Jesus through the love of other people, and so it's our charism to immerse ourselves in that reality, as Jesus wants us to. He wants us to know that, how much He loves us, and then hopefully to reflect that in some small way through the ways we relate with others and, particularly outward- facing, the service that we give, and, hopefully, how we give it. As I'm saying this, I'm having flashbacks of times that I don't think people really feel in the love of Jesus in the way I was acting. But that is our charism and that we strive to live out with God's grace daily, as best we can.
Grace Klise:And the sacrament of reconciliation, I'm sure.
Sr. Mary Ellen Burns:That is prominent.
Grace Klise:Yes, yes, for all of us, yeah, what a beautiful mission to have, and almost can be, I'm sure, a great examination of conscience, just asking that question and reminding oneself of the charism of your order. I was thinking too, as you were talking about community life all of us whether it's me living with my spouse or Mary Margaret living with roommates and our students in randomly assigned suites and you living with community that there are challenges and joys that come from community life. Can you share any of those, after decades of living in community, with these sisters who have professed the same vows as you?
Sr. Mary Ellen Burns:There's a lot to unpack there, and one of the things about community life that first comes to my mind is the very presence of sisters in community is a support and encouragement to live one's life and their example. In small ways, as I'm sure, in married life and even with roommates, you receive the attentions of small and often hidden acts of charity, of love, the example of their fidelity to prayer, to their passion for the work to which at this moment they and I happen to be called. Because it changes. That is a great thing about community life. Yeah, we don't choose whom we live with, but no matter whom we're living with, that person brings a lot of gifts and the dynamics of the group changes as one person comes or goes. But that's one of the great things about community life. Community life also can reflect back to you yourself in your better and your worse moments. So it's a call to keep growing. It's a call to keep finding God in others and realizing how he's working in oneself and to become a more charitable person. And the charity is not just going out, it's also coming in, also in our ministry, in my ministry. I don't just bring Jesus to others who don't have Him. I see Jesus and they bring Him to me. So it's a back and forth in other ways.
Sr. Mary Ellen Burns:Community is, there's a lot of joy in it and in difficult times. The community that I'm living with now, or the place that I'm living, was where I was when my mom died and the support that those sisters gave in that moment and ongoing, and that's a major thing. But even when there are minor things, disappointments or frustrations, community is there to let you air it out. Community is there to let you know the next day can be better and to provide, in a lot of thoughtful ways, encouragement. So community is the first place, as our founders reminded us. That's the first place we should be bringing the love of Jesus. The old "charity begins at home. It is so true, and the first call to witness to the love of Jesus and to witness the love of Jesus starts at home.
Mary Margaret Schroeder:Well, it's so fun to see all of the sisters around STM. It's such a joy to see you all together when you're able to come for Mass or other liturgies that we have. And even at the beginning of this year, getting to see the ASCJs at the Seek Conference, I was with one of my friends and we went over and we were chatting with some of them and afterwards we walked away and my friend was like, "h my gosh, the ASCJs are so joyful and so fun. And I was like, oh my goodness, they totally are. And I've definitely felt that just in my time at Yale, getting to have you guys around. So it's such a gift to have you here. I'm wondering what was something that surprised you about religious life?
Sr. Mary Ellen Burns:I think the thing that surprised me about religious life is, I think, something everybody can identify with, which, like when I was in high school oh, the sisters seem to have it all together and I am many years beyond the age of those sisters in high school and I'm still waiting for the moment to have it all together. I think one of the things that might have, I don't know, surprised me about religious life, but one of the things that was educational. I guess in a way I only really knew the sisters who taught me in high school and I only knew that mission. So one of the things that of the many things that I learned, was the breadth of our sister's presence in the world. We are not a large congregation, but that we had missions in other countries, where we were in the United States, the kind of work that we did. That was something that it was unknown to me.
Sr. Mary Ellen Burns:I guess one of the biggest surprises I've had in religious life was when I was asked to go to law school and, frankly, other things about religious life I think I had heard about or knew that the sisters did, and I guess some of the things that have been surprising have been my living it, things that were more challenging maybe, and the ways things might have affected me for the good, the things that I thought would be really hard. And I have to say I was kind of a careful observer of sisters when I was in high school and I had an aunt who was a sister not in our community and actually she lived in Canada, so I didn't see her that often but I was exposed to sisters and heard some things about their life. But yeah, those I guess, are things that might have surprised me.
Grace Klise:It is amazing, just living in this community, how often I see your sisters around, whether it's at St Thomas More or serving as principals of elementary schools or doing legal work, as you are doing with immigrants. So maybe we can go to the law school chapter of your life. Was it really something that you were asked to do? Was it an interest that was recognized by your community first, or was law something that you had been interested in studying?
Sr. Mary Ellen Burns:It was something that I was asked to do. There's a lot of lawyers in my family and I think to me I guess in response to the question about surprise, this was a surprising thing. Looking back, I realized that the provincial superior-- our congregation is divided into provinces and the sisters living in the United States we are one province and the title of the person who kind of organizes all that is provincial superior--s o the provincial superior who asked me to go to law school, and I could have said no and ultimately I said yes, she saw something in me that over time I have had many, many affirmations of the spirit-informed discernment that she performed. She saw something in me that I did not see in myself.
Sr. Mary Ellen Burns:I was so sad to stop teaching. I literally cried night after night for a while before I started law school. Then my tears are for other reasons, like I'll never do all this reading. But I realized in retrospect, after starting work as an attorney and while living largely with sisters who were teaching or principals at schools, as I listened to them talk a lot about their school days at the table. They reflected back to me many of them, a passion for teaching, a passion for seeing you know in kids grasp something. I had fun teaching, and I realized that I have a passion for the advocacy that's done in direct legal representation. I don't think I ever had the same sense of satisfaction as a teacher as I have in helping clients achieve one or another of the things that they wanted or needed to achieve in their lives through legal process. So that discernment of hers, she was just really led by the spirit.
Mary Margaret Schroeder:Can you give us a little peek into what life was like as a religious sister at Yale Law School? We talked last season with Father Pat Reidy, who was at law school as a religious priest, but I'm so curious what your experience was like.
Sr. Mary Ellen Burns:Yeah, Father Pat was undercover. I was wearing a habit, sometimes one that went to the ground, and I had actually most of my time in law school I had a great time, I would say. After you know, three quarters of the first semester was over, because that everybody who told me you're going to sit there thinking you'll never learn it, they were so right. I spent a good bit of the first semester thinking I'm going to flunk out, and I actually even told my provincial superior, if you hear about a teaching position that you need to fill second semester, I'm not going to be at Yale Law School anymore. But other than those fraught like a couple months and then at the very end, when I definitely was feeling senioritis, I really enjoyed law school. It was such a banquet for the mind and such great people that I was working with and that I was got to meet and become friends with, in particular the clinical program. That was the thing that when I saw, read about Yale's clinical program, which has only expanded exponentially since the time I was there but was richer at that point than in many law schools, I was really grasped by that, and so that was great. Sometimes, particularly in my earliest time in Yale Law School I felt like my habit was kind of glowing, you know, like it was this pulsing neon thing because, let's say, nobody else was for anything like it.
Sr. Mary Ellen Burns:Yale Law School is probably one of the most secular environments I'd ever been in. But also I only experienced respect there. I had in the weeks immediately proceeding law school starting I thought what am I doing? I'm going to have people yelling at me about this about the Church and that about the Church, and I never experienced that. People might have been curious, but they were never, and I'm sure there were some people who not only were not Catholic but found some of its positions either incomprehensible or just wrong on one level or another. That was never personalized to me. So law school was a really positive experience for me. I really enjoyed it. I realize that is not everybody's experience of law school, but I would think it's many people's experience of YLS.
Grace Klise:And to be, to have your community, because I'm guessing you were still living in community up in Hamden. So even going into that environment that was challenging at times. To fall back on your sisters, your way of life, the order of the day with prayer in the morning and prayer in the evening, I'm sure helped to give a rhythm to those days. That looked very different than your teaching days.
Sr. Mary Ellen Burns:Yeah, that was a challenge, though, to be very honest, because at that point in time because I was the only one who wasn't working in the school, our schedule and for many years thereafter once I was practicing an attorney our schedule remained a schedule that was workable for the majority of the people in the community, which makes sense.
Sr. Mary Ellen Burns:So the life in community was super grounding and supportive, but it was a challenge, as I'm sure for other people.
Sr. Mary Ellen Burns:I had some people in my class who were married with children and I just you know-- how did they do it? It was amazing and it's something of the same challenge as opposed to the majority of my classmates who, other than having the commitments of class time and maybe there were TAs or something, but other than that their time was free. I would just try to read as much as I could until the second time I fell asleep reading every night and I would imagine it was an even greater challenge for, again, my classmates who were married with kids. Community reminds me of my primary commitment and there's a call to accountability, even though nobody was saying how are you using your time? Or, you know, did you remember to pray the office tonight? Nobody was saying that to me, but knowing that the sisters were there you know at five o'clock they were there praying and the day-to-day living was very, very grounding and hopeful, even perhaps when moments in law school were not very hopeful.
Grace Klise:Yeah, the challenge of being a graduate student and just balancing all of the responsibilities and commitments, or even being an undergraduate student and balancing all those things. In some ways, I think that's why school can't go on forever, because it's hard to sustain.
Sr. Mary Ellen Burns:Right, exactly, that is absolutely true.
Mary Margaret Schroeder:What are some lessons that you carried away from your time at Yale Law School?
Sr. Mary Ellen Burns:Well, it was a beginning of learning how to balance doing something completely different from everybody I was living with after a number of years where I was doing the exact same thing of everybody I was living with, and that was something that I continued to learn over time, and so that was good. Of course, I carried away a lot of lessons about you know air quotes here "thinking like a lawyer, which is you know allegedly what law school is primarily designed to do, and then later you study for the Bar Exam. It was my first opportunity, frankly, to be working closely with and getting to know people who weren't Catholic. I mean, I did have some friends and neighbors growing up who weren't Catholic but honestly, a lot of the people even in my public school were Catholic, so that was wonderful. That was part of kind of this banquet for the mind and heart that I found in law school.
Sr. Mary Ellen Burns:One of the lessons I learned from a clinical professor was celebrating small victories.
Sr. Mary Ellen Burns:I was working in a clinic that worked with the homeless and also to try to work on housing issues, so we were all required to represent somebody in housing court in New Haven, with supervision of course, and I had come back from housing court and ran into one of my clinical professors and he said, "ell, how did it go? And I said well, you know, we adjourn the case till for whatever reason, I can't remember now, and he goes well, congratulations, like well, I didn't win anything, we just adjourn the case. And he goes no, you gotta celebrate every victory. That has come very much in handy a lot of the work that I've done subsequently, but I think it's a good life lesson too. So those are some of the things that first come to mind. Of course, I learned a lot of legal stuff, frame working, kind of how to think about things, but the life lessons are probably more significant. <span style="color: rgb(156 163 175/var(--tw-text-opacity)); font-size: 1. 125rem; white-space-collapse: collapse; background-color: rgb(252 252 253/var(--tw-bg-opacity));">Host </span>nd did immigration law as a particular area of interest for you, emerge during your time at YLS, or did that come after?
Sr. Mary Ellen Burns:Absolutely. It came after. I don't even know if there was a course in immigration law when I was in law school. I think I might have been interested in it if there had been, but I couldn't swear to it. And subsequent to my leaving law school, immigration became something that has gotten a lot of attention and certainly at one point there were, I think, several law school clinics that were dealing with immigration issues and focusing on representing people in immigrant communities as an interest, I would say. After law school I worked for about 20 years in New York and I had a couple of opportunities to do some pro bono immigration cases, and so it emerged an interest then, and then it was part of the history of my community. We came to the United States to work with immigrants, which is why our congregation decided to open an office to provide services to immigrants in New Haven. But it emerges as an interest for me over time, I think.
Mary Margaret Schroeder:Can you tell us a bit more about Apostle Immigrant Services?
Sr. Mary Ellen Burns:Sure, Apostle Immigrant Services opened in the summer of 2008 and initially we well, it was myself and another sister, Sister Loreta, was working there about half time and we didn't start with the idea that we're going to do immigration law, but that after you know, less than six months, it became apparent to us that there was both a need for it in New Haven and also there were other advantages to immigration law, and that immigration law allows federal law, allows people working in non-profits to actually represent people before the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, as well as the immigration court, if they get what's called accreditation, if the agency gets what's called recognition. So there was a path for sisters who might not necessarily want to go to law school to nonetheless really engage, and we've had a couple sisters who've done direct legal services with their own clients as a result. So now Apostle Immigrant Services provides immigration legal services, as most of our hours and most of our staff time is spent doing that, and we focus on family-based immigration and we do a lot of DACA and also other humanitarian areas, such as forms of immigration relief specific to victims of domestic violence, victims of other crimes generally crimes of violence as well as immigration relief for young people who have experienced abuse, neglect or abandonment. We do some representation of people in immigration court, particularly at this point. We're focusing on youth when we're representing them in obtaining special immigrant juvenile status. And we do citizenship, helping people attain citizenship through naturalization.
Sr. Mary Ellen Burns:But with the pandemic, we were hearing from clients.
Sr. Mary Ellen Burns:Clients were asking us where can we get food? And one of those sisters, sister Luisa Villegas, who was then working as an partially accredited representative, was also working on census work and through her connections and participations in meetings on census work, which got a little more challenging with the pandemic, she became connected then with the network of emergency food providers and a particular shout-out to a nonprofit called Havens Harvest, which is a food recovery nonprofit with scads of amazing volunteers as well as staff, and so we began participating in their food distribution and with the fall of 2020, we started our own weekly food distribution, which we even did yesterday during the ice and snow and freezing rain to about 50 families who nonetheless showed up to get to get food. And we do that with the work of a couple staff people and then some amazing volunteers, both Apostles, members of the communities and the immigrant community non-immigrants and we've been keeping that up now for over about three and a half years. And the need, sadly we have not seen a decline in need.
Grace Klise:It is astounding just what your small but mighty staff is able to do, as you just list the myriad of things that you're trying to do for your clients and for the community. I know some of our students have volunteered in the past, and Apostle Immigrant Services is a beloved organization for St Thomas More and a place that we love to support, whose mission we love to support as well, and, just thinking of you, who've grown up in this region most of your life, this work has probably introduced you to pockets and communities that you hadn't encountered before. So what have you learned about your home, New Haven, Hamden, through the, the witness of these people that you work with and you serve through the work at Apostles?
Sr. Mary Ellen Burns:I think that a number of the communities we are serving right now didn't exist when I was growing up in New Haven. You know New Haven has as long as nearly all of the United States long history of you know waves of immigrants. And I'm actually working a few blocks from where both of my maternal grandparents grew up, in Fair Haven. I think not just about Connecticut but the United States more broadly. But I have learned both about people's resilience and I've learned about fundamental inequities In many systems in our country. Coming from New York to Connecticut, Connecticut, I'm happy to say, was an early adopter of certain relief for immigrants, such as non federal ID drivers licenses. In other ways, Connecticut is much less generous than New York for people who are poor, for people who don't have health insurance. That was a painful lesson to learn, but I would have had no idea of the diversity of New Haven if I weren't doing this work.
Sr. Mary Ellen Burns:New Haven and Connecticut, New Haven, the towns surrounding New Haven, which is where many of our clients come from. The majority of our clients come from the city of New Haven and by that you know over 50 percent. And then when you add West Haven, East Haven, Hamden, it's an even larger majority. So I think that those are things that I've learned about Connecticut and I've also gotten to know some organizations well, a lot of other kind of partnering organizations that I wouldn't have known about. I got to know a little bit about the incredible breadth of the nonprofit community when I was a student and in New Haven, but even more so now. But I've also gotten to know some organizations whose focus is on the community, is community organizing, which was something that I had the most tangential connection with before I came back to New Haven and got to know like Connect, which is largely active in southern New Haven County not just southern, happy to say, it's spread and Fairfield counties and some other organizations that are quite amazing.
Mary Margaret Schroeder:You mentioned previously the connection between the ASCJs and the immigration services. I'm wondering if there are other ways in which you find your faith intersecting with the work that you do at AIS?
Sr. Mary Ellen Burns:Oh my goodness. Jesus said you'll be judged on whether you welcome the stranger or not. I think our work is truly we are trying to do that and we are trying to live the Gospel through our work, and of course it's not, I don't want to say it's not only Jesus, but the New Testament-- I'm sorry--
Sr. Mary Ellen Burns:The Old Testament is replete with calls to treat the alien in your midst, as well as immigrants, the stranger was part of the triad of orphans, widows and the strangers that the Hebrew Bible, over and over again, is saying: This is the measure of your justice, of your righteousness. What are you doing with the vulnerable? And generally, the answer is not very well for most societies over time. So I find a huge connection between our day-to-day work and the call of the Gospel, but of the scriptures more broadly, and I also see deep faith reflected back to us. I am frequently overwhelmed by hearing from people whose circumstances just, who seem to have just really gotten a very bad hand to play from childhood. To talk about God being with them and their understanding of the mystery of the Cross is something that I have been made aware of and could only aspire to as a result of my encounters with people of faith, and not only of Christian faith, people who find God walking with them in great difficulty, in great challenge and, I would say, great injustice.
Grace Klise:I'm sure, very humbling and inspiring work. I know that it's not without its challenges, especially as you encounter injustices in the system, but to see the face of Christ in those families that you're serving and know that they've put their faith in you and that that is a call that we, especially as Christians, we have to respond to. Yeah, and I just want to articulate that when we talk about our work, we work with our clients.
Sr. Mary Ellen Burns:We don't work for our clients. Of course we're doing this for them, but it's not like they dump something in front of us and say take care of it, and that our clients--o f course any population has, we're all varied human beings, we're all, each of us unique, with our strengths and weaknesses-- but our clients in general are strong, resourceful people of great ingenuity and hope and often what they've endured would defeat me. It doesn't defeat them.
Sr. Mary Ellen Burns:We have had some clients who just have been so badly treated by those who should have been treating them the best that they are recovering. They're gaining that inner strength and we've watched them grow. But for the most part, people walk into our office already super strong and yeah, and we just happen to have had the opportunity to learn a bunch of stuff that is going to inform how they can move ahead in their next steps into both civic integration and to allow them to go on to look at what the next part of their life journey is going to be. If anything, I've learned what a little wimp I am and I'm amazed at what people can do.
Mary Margaret Schroeder:Well, Sister Mary Ellen, it sounds like your days are jam-packed between all the important work that you do as an ASCJ sister, with your prayer life and within community life, and the work, the incredible work, you're doing with AIS. Outside of all of these great things, what do you like to do for fun?
Sr. Mary Ellen Burns:I like to read. I enjoy-- although I don't do it enough-- I enjoy seeing nature. I'm often too lazy to be like hiking in nature, for sure, not even just walking in nature. I like a certain, I can kind of become a couch potato if I like a particular program or films. I like hanging out with other people, chatting, but I am kind of an introvert and so I also like not hanging out with other people and chatting. Doing things in community even something as banal perhaps is driving around and seeing Christmas lights. We kind of make fun where we are just by enjoying something simple. I have a lot of ways that I can just really get a chance to relax and enjoy other aspects of God's goodness, you know a lot of gifts.
Grace Klise:Are you reading anything good?
Sr. Mary Ellen Burns:Right now several things. I am reading one book called the "Last Monk of Tiberine if people are familiar with the film of Gods and Men, it was the Cistercian Monastery in Algeria pardon me and seven of the monks who were kidnapped and killed. There were two monks left in the monastery and this was the last survivor. It's kind of like his life story and interspersed by the kind of day-to-day reactions of being hanging out with these monks, of the author of the book. I am very slowly making my way through a book called A Theology of Migration, which I wish I remembered the author, but that's the name of it A Theology of Migration. That's really, really good. And then I picked up a book that's just been sitting on my shelf. I hate to say I've packed it twice and never read it. It's called New York. It's a novel spanning, I think, life in New York City from when it was a Dutch settlement to probably mid-20th century or something like that. That is a true doorstop, but so far it's kind of enjoyable.
Grace Klise:A great variety there. Well, our last question for all podcast guests is where have you been finding God recently?
Sr. Mary Ellen Burns:It's hard to choose this one, but I think one that is kind of challenging for me is finding God in the day-to-day, in the difficulties, obviously in scripture and prayer and in other people, but in the things that I initially react against. And what is God telling me through that? That is a challenging thing and that is an area I would like to be able to grow in, in finding God there. A long time ago, reading in a book about spiritual reading and talks by the same author, Susan Muto, she said-- and I don't know that it's unique to her the parts of the text-- you should pay most attention to are the parts that you say I don't like, that that's one point where I would like to develop that ability to hear God speaking through my negative reactions to things as well as the easier. Oh, I feel the embrace of God in this beautiful day, which I still do.
Grace Klise:But that's a good challenge for all of us.
Mary Margaret Schroeder:Yeah well, thank you so much, Sister Mary Ellen, for joining us today. It's been such a joy to have you here. I know it's your very first podcast and you did a fantastic job. Thank you for just walking us through all the way back from young adulthood and being in high school with the ASCJs, and then to your time in community life and your time at Yale Law School to AIS. It's just such a fascinating journey and really inspiring for all of us to hear, so thank you.
Sr. Mary Ellen Burns:Oh, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for this opportunity to talk with the two of you.
Grace Klise:Thanks for being part of our community and so all our listeners, we'll see you next time on Finding God on Park Street. If you enjoyed listening today, please share this episode with a friend or relative and leave us a rating and review. The producer of this podcast is Robin McShane, director of communications at STM. Sound mixing and editing are by Ryan McAvoy of Yale Broadcast Studio and graphics are by Mary Lou Cadwell of Cadwell Art Direction. We hope this podcast encourages you to seek God's presence in your everyday life. Thanks for listening and know of our prayers.
