When Words Become Flesh

I’m a… word nerd? language geek? literature junkie? I was intrigued by my grandparents’ magical ability to communicate with words I couldn’t understand. As a student in grade school, through high school, college and a teacher in grade school and college, I have loved vocabulary, Voyages in English, reading, writing. Yes, my students diagrammed sentences and memorized poetry. I’m silently correcting your grammar. I majored in languages… you get it!

I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to communicate with people in their native tongue and to travel where Spanish is spoken, opening doors into people’s lives and relationships. This puts me in new worlds, invites me into realities other than my Northeast US white culture and stretches my seeing the world. Often it feels like two worlds! My training, profession and ministry move me in the circles of higher education administration, research and immersion in beautiful language and literature. Relationships, community and ministry connect me to dear neighbors near and far who speak the same beautiful language but have little or no access to literacy.

If you feel my walk in two worlds, you will appreciate my delight when they converged in October at a professional conference for literary types (mostly university professors). I heard an amazing address by Stuart Day of the University of Kansas. Professor Day is an accomplished teacher, scholar and literary critic, thriving in the “ivory tower.” He shared his efforts, building on the work of scholars like Kimberley Nance and Marta Caminero-Santangelo; teaching Latin American and Latino theater in a way that helps students to understand privilege, systemic oppression and the power of community. I was deeply moved as I listened to this kindred spirit clearly in love with the beauty and power of words; seeking to share not just literature but the reality it depicts. Included in Stuart’s “student learning outcomes” are empathy, understanding and identifying entitlement and privilege and then movement to action and social justice.

I was especially taken by an assignment he designed: “dialogical shadow acting.” Students must write themselves into a text with three conditions: they are not a hero, they must help someone already in the play, and they must respond to this question from a character, “What gives you the right to be here?” In processing this assignment, Stuart reminded us, he is evoking a principle of teatro campesino or of the theater of the oppressed – in engaging these plays, we are “rehearsing the revolution.”

Is this writing in of ourselves not a reflection of what Jesus does in the Incarnation, what Father Medaille means, perhaps, when he speaks of Jesus’ humility as he comes to us in Eucharist? In whatever “world” I find myself, how can I write myself into the text? How am I called to be a helper, to further good? What gives me the right to be here? As followers and lovers of Jesus, how are we called to “practice the Revolution?” How do we say, “¡Presente!” with our lives? 

Sister Cecelia J. Cavanaugh 

Cecelia J. Cavanaugh SSJ grew up just outside of Philadelphia. After entering the Sisters of Saint Joseph, she taught in elementary and junior high school before beginning doctoral studies in Spanish literature. She joined the faculty of Chestnut Hill College, a sponsored work of the Philadelphia SSJs in 1991 and was appointed Dean of the School of Undergraduate Studies in 2001. She is the author of two books about the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca.