Speaker 1: Mary was out. After twenty years, twenty years of uplifting
Speaker 1: moments of spiritual grace, twenty years of vexing questions about
Speaker 1: her vocation. Mary Johnson put on her Paisley skirt and
Speaker 1: gold blouse and stepped out of the convent in Rome
Speaker 1: and into a van. This was it. Mary left the
Speaker 1: Missionaries of Charity. Her sister picked her up from the
Speaker 1: airport in Houston. On the way to her house, they
Speaker 1: made a stop. Mary would be living outside the convent
Speaker 1: for the first time in decades, and her sister said,
Speaker 1: she need a few things. I need to pick up
Speaker 1: a mattress for you. I didn't know if you like
Speaker 1: the hard ones or the soft ones. Mary wasn't used
Speaker 1: to getting to choose a mattress, let alone having a
Speaker 1: real mattress. As a missionary of charity. They'd stuffed their
Speaker 1: own mattresses with wool or whatever was around, and it
Speaker 1: was only about three inches thick. And here I was
Speaker 1: going to get to choose my own mattress from this
Speaker 1: enormous selection. So that was kind of weird. Then her
Speaker 1: sister had an their errand in mind, she had a
Speaker 1: pool at her place, and she knew how much Mary
Speaker 1: loved the water, at least when she was a kid.
Speaker 1: So of all things to do after twenty years in
Speaker 1: a convent, they went some suit chopping. I mean, most
Speaker 1: of my body hadn't seen the son in twenty years.
Speaker 1: And there I was going to get a swimming suit,
Speaker 1: and I was just so embarrassed and like, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: let her come into the dressing room with me. And anyway,
Speaker 1: we found a swimming suit that fit end and brought
Speaker 1: her home. Mary had her own room, and even though
Speaker 1: so much was new, new mattress, new swimsuit, new bedroom,
Speaker 1: she still automatically woke up at four or forty every morning.
Speaker 1: It was like she was still in sync with the
Speaker 1: community she had left as an MC. She felt that
Speaker 1: sense of community from the moment she woke up. But
Speaker 1: now early in the morning she just lay there quietly alone.
Speaker 1: She might even go back to sleep. And she liked
Speaker 1: that too. No l was going to ring, that was
Speaker 1: going to force me out of bed and onto my knees.
Speaker 1: That was really nice. I could choose what I wanted
Speaker 1: to get up. First thing each morning, Mary went to
Speaker 1: her sister's pool and swam. It felt luxurious, It felt free.
Speaker 1: You can take off the habit and grow your hair
Speaker 1: and start walking around like a regular person. But inside,
Speaker 1: being a missionary of charity leaves a very, very very
Speaker 1: deep mark. And for me, I've been there for twenty
Speaker 1: years and so deeply immersed. Separating wasn't just simply a
Speaker 1: matter of of leaving from a cocoa punch. And I
Speaker 1: heard radio, this is the Turning America Lands Part ten.
Speaker 1: Out there the world had changed since Mary Johnson became
Speaker 1: a missionary of charity in the late seventies. Some things
Speaker 1: she had a reference point for, but a lot of
Speaker 1: it was completely foreign. Pumping your own gas going to
Speaker 1: be a t m using a computer. One time, my
Speaker 1: niece made popcorn in the microwave, and I thought the
Speaker 1: house was going to explode because I had no idea
Speaker 1: what that was. I had no idea these noises. Popcorn
Speaker 1: in the microwave was a revelation. When she left the order,
Speaker 1: a sister gave her four German marks, the equivalent of
Speaker 1: a little more than two hundred dollars for her twenty years.
Speaker 1: I looked at that deposit slip and I thought, look
Speaker 1: at that. They gave me eleven dollars for every year
Speaker 1: of services. Oh my gosh, talk about a minimum wage
Speaker 1: a year, eleven dollars a year. Mary still trusted in God,
Speaker 1: but that wasn't going to pay the bills. One of
Speaker 1: her first jobs was at J. C. Penny in December,
Speaker 1: the Christmas rush. I was used to to silence and prayer,
Speaker 1: and here it was Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer and
Speaker 1: Frosty the Snowman playing all the time. And it was
Speaker 1: all these people with credit cards buying gift after gift,
Speaker 1: and a lot of the stuff in the gift department
Speaker 1: were useless Chatski kind of things, you know, these little figurines.
Speaker 1: I couldn't figure out why people wanted little figurines. I
Speaker 1: was used to repairing broken toys to give to kids
Speaker 1: who would otherwise have nothing on Christmas. It was strange.
Speaker 1: It was strange for me. Mary still remembers the first
Speaker 1: time she went out to eat in a restaurant. Her
Speaker 1: sister took the whole family out to dinner. I was
Speaker 1: faced there with this menu, with all these choices. It
Speaker 1: took me forever to make up my mind. I didn't
Speaker 1: know if I would ever again, and you know, have
Speaker 1: a chance to choose what I was going to eat.
Speaker 1: It was like this momentous decision. I think everybody was
Speaker 1: getting kind of nervous with me because I wasn't making
Speaker 1: up my mind, and the waiter had to come back,
Speaker 1: and then eventually I ordered something. As Mary mapped out
Speaker 1: her new life, her mind wandered back to Tom Father.
Speaker 1: Tom had made the thought of leaving possible. He had
Speaker 1: helped her imagine a life outside the convent. They pictured
Speaker 1: waking up together, making coffee, holding hands in public without
Speaker 1: guilt or shame. He'd given her a taste of a
Speaker 1: fuller life, and she knew that's what God wanted for her.
Speaker 1: When Mary asked the MCS for ex claustration that year
Speaker 1: of contemplation before officially leaving the order, she had called Tom.
Speaker 1: He had asked her, does this mean you would consider
Speaker 1: marrying me? She couldn't tell if he meant it. It
Speaker 1: was such an awkward proposal, but she needed time. Now
Speaker 1: she was in Texas, out of her sorry and away
Speaker 1: from the convent. So at a certain point I knew
Speaker 1: I was ready to talk to him, and that if
Speaker 1: he was going to ask, actually, really directly, if I
Speaker 1: would consider marrying him, I was ready to entertain that notion,
Speaker 1: so she called him. It was the first time they talked,
Speaker 1: and she left, but once she got him on the phone,
Speaker 1: it was clear Tom had decided to remain a priest.
Speaker 1: I definitely had to honor that. That's that's what he wants,
Speaker 1: That's that's the way it is. And yeah, how did
Speaker 1: it feel to hear that? I was prepared to hear that,
Speaker 1: you know it it was. It was kind of sad,
Speaker 1: you know, it kind of shut one door for me.
Speaker 1: There's very often even if something said, if it comes
Speaker 1: to a certain sense of clarity, it's a kind of
Speaker 1: a gift. I appreciated the clarity that was. That was good,
Speaker 1: and she moved on, still trying to hear what God
Speaker 1: had to say. When Mary left the Missionaries of Charity,
Speaker 1: she had work to do, not just finding a way
Speaker 1: to make money or learning how to use technology. She
Speaker 1: had to face the way the m c s had
Speaker 1: changed her internally. She told me about a time she
Speaker 1: was staying at a religious center. She had moved out
Speaker 1: of her sister's house after a couple of months, and
Speaker 1: she found the center with sabbatical programming and wellness treatment
Speaker 1: for clergy. It was around this time that she noticed
Speaker 1: how muddled her emotional responses were. I was talking with
Speaker 1: the sister who was in charge of the place, and
Speaker 1: it was some thing very sad or upsetting. I don't
Speaker 1: really remember what I was talking to her about, but
Speaker 1: I remember that I was. I was very sad, and
Speaker 1: I felt like I wanted to cry about. What came
Speaker 1: out was these giggles and this laughter. It was like,
Speaker 1: I don't know how to express my emotions properly anymore,
Speaker 1: because missionaries of charity are not supposed to be sad.
Speaker 1: You're supposed to be cheerful all the time. You're supposed
Speaker 1: to smile. And I had just been disconnected from what
Speaker 1: I might be feeling inside. How to express that I
Speaker 1: didn't know, And so whenever there was something said, I
Speaker 1: was like laughing instead of crying. I think that one
Speaker 1: of the big things that I've been working on for
Speaker 1: many decades now is trying to reconnect my emotions and
Speaker 1: their expression, trying to reconnect my mind and my body,
Speaker 1: trying to be fully connected. I have been consciously working
Speaker 1: on that. In a way, she had to relearn how
Speaker 1: to think and how to feel. God had called her out,
Speaker 1: but in the real world, it would take time to
Speaker 1: shift her mindset. She had to untangle guilt and questions
Speaker 1: about faith, come to terms with her relationship with Mother Teresa.
Speaker 1: There is no one moment, no final epiphany. Mary was
Speaker 1: at that center for priests and nuns when Mother Teresa died.
Speaker 1: I found out from one of them who had heard
Speaker 1: it on television, and it was it was a shock.
Speaker 1: It was very hard to mourn Mother Teresa's passing alone
Speaker 1: without the sisters. Why well, you imagine someone who's very
Speaker 1: close to you in your family, and perhaps you're own mother,
Speaker 1: and when she dies, you can't be with the family.
Speaker 1: You have to be off on your own, by yourself.
Speaker 1: That's hard. I had tried to call the sisters in
Speaker 1: Rome many times, but never managed to get through. Of course,
Speaker 1: the phone there was always busy, even during regular times,
Speaker 1: so when mother died, even more so I never managed
Speaker 1: to get through. A few days after Mother Teresa died,
Speaker 1: there is a memorial celebration at a cathedral in Houston.
Speaker 1: Mary went and sat in the back. In his homily,
Speaker 1: the bishops spoke about how he met Mother Teresa once
Speaker 1: when her plane had a layover in Houston, and he
Speaker 1: spent about half an hour with her, and there I was,
Speaker 1: who had known and followed and loved her for twenty years.
Speaker 1: In the back, she knelt in the pew and cried,
Speaker 1: and it all felt so strange. They had a big
Speaker 1: picture of her up at the front, and after nearly
Speaker 1: everyone had gone, I went and stood in front of
Speaker 1: that picture. For a long time I did. I felt
Speaker 1: like I had lost a family member or someone who
Speaker 1: knew me, someone who I cared for, someone who cared
Speaker 1: for me. Of course, my last conversation with mother had
Speaker 1: been very, very difficult, so that's also kind of hard
Speaker 1: knowing that somehow I had disappointed her. That feeling did
Speaker 1: not go away easily. Over the course of your life,
Speaker 1: there are times when you have to leave things behind,
Speaker 1: maybe a relationship, a job, your family, home. Leaving the
Speaker 1: m c S is all of those at once, and
Speaker 1: that's just the first step. Then you have to make
Speaker 1: your own way. I mean, the first couple of weeks
Speaker 1: you're just happy to be back with great meals and
Speaker 1: a great bed and you know, incredibly loving people around you.
Speaker 1: But for me, the other piece of the pain is
Speaker 1: you're gone for so long and you're trying to come
Speaker 1: back into your family and so many years of their
Speaker 1: connections and growth and life you are not a part of.
Speaker 1: Sue Webber is the sister who ran the AIDS hospice
Speaker 1: in San Francisco. Even now, for me, there's elements, and
Speaker 1: they're not good or bad. I think they're just I
Speaker 1: think it will always be that way where you're you know,
Speaker 1: you're a part of the family and you're super connected.
Speaker 1: But there's an element that there's so much that you
Speaker 1: missed in that journey that you're a lot of time
Speaker 1: was on the outside looking in. People don't really know
Speaker 1: what you've been through. How could they? How do you
Speaker 1: describe what it's really like inside a closed community led
Speaker 1: by celebrity sat How do you get past people's assumptions.
Speaker 1: When Sue first left, she still wore her sorry. She
Speaker 1: was still weighing what to do, go back to the
Speaker 1: m CS or leave. She'd moved to her hometown in
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania to live with her parents. She says, when you
Speaker 1: wear the white and blue sorry, everyone notices you. You know,
Speaker 1: people would stop you on the street and be like,
Speaker 1: can I touch you? It's like people didn't see her.
Speaker 1: They saw what she wore and what that represented. They
Speaker 1: saw a Mother Teresa. The Mother Teresa they thought they knew,
Speaker 1: and that got in the way of her decision making.
Speaker 1: I couldn't come to any clarity unless I took off
Speaker 1: the habit and was seen. So she wrote to the
Speaker 1: m c's and got permission to wear street clothes. Sue's
Speaker 1: sister Joan, has been out of the MCS for more
Speaker 1: than three decades. She still has a picture of Mother
Speaker 1: Teresa in her office. I love her to death, and
Speaker 1: she is I consider I have certain saints in heaven
Speaker 1: that I love and read about and call out to
Speaker 1: and you know, ask for divine intervention many times. She's
Speaker 1: one of them. So it was weird for her when
Speaker 1: she was teaching a religion class for kids and a
Speaker 1: Mother Teresa impersonator came by. She puts an outfit on
Speaker 1: that looks like Mother Teresa's outfit, and then she like
Speaker 1: hangs laundry, and then she kind of tells the story
Speaker 1: of Mother Teresa's life. I don't know, it's really weird.
Speaker 1: It's just you look at her and you're like, I
Speaker 1: can't even explain it. It's like, you know what the
Speaker 1: demeanor of of a Mother Teresa none is you know
Speaker 1: what it looks like and what they do and really
Speaker 1: do you know? You know, you're sitting there and you're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's not true, that's not true. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1: It's like they try to understand by her readings or
Speaker 1: her or things that have and written about her, but
Speaker 1: they really don't know, and so it wasn't there. That's
Speaker 1: all I used to saying. It's weird for me to
Speaker 1: watch someone portray mother Teresa. Sue and Joan both new
Speaker 1: Mother Teresa. It's a comfort that they can talk about
Speaker 1: their time in the missionaries of charity and they get it.
Speaker 1: It's part of what makes them close. There's not many
Speaker 1: people that understand the missionaries of charity, and no matter
Speaker 1: how many times you try to explain it, a lot
Speaker 1: of people look at you like you're weird because of
Speaker 1: the penances that you did and didn't understand where we
Speaker 1: were coming from when we did the penances. So so
Speaker 1: I don't share my I really do not share my
Speaker 1: story because people can't relate. If you haven't had the experience,
Speaker 1: you can't relate. Mary Johnson doesn't usually tell people she
Speaker 1: was an m C. It's just easier not to go
Speaker 1: there where It usually comes up actually as people will
Speaker 1: ask me where are you from, because I still have
Speaker 1: a slight accident in my voice, and I'll say, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I I was born in Michigan. Um kind
Speaker 1: of grew up in Texas as you don't sound like that,
Speaker 1: And then you know, eventually I get around to saying
Speaker 1: something very vague, like, well, I lived for a number
Speaker 1: of years in an international community where we all spoke English,
Speaker 1: but hardly anyone as their first language, and I had
Speaker 1: to develop a way of speaking so they could understand
Speaker 1: me with clear vowels and clear consonants, and they'll look
Speaker 1: at me with this big question mark on on their faces.
Speaker 1: And sometimes I just have to explain what I did
Speaker 1: with my life for twenty years. And when I do,
Speaker 1: people who aren't Catholic, they say, oh, what a wonderful
Speaker 1: thing to have done with two decades of your life.
Speaker 1: And tell me about mother Teresa. What was she really like? Nearly,
Speaker 1: without exception Catholics, they say why did you leave? Because
Speaker 1: there are some acceptable reasons for leaving in some that aren't.
Speaker 1: I had so much shame. Kelly Dunham, the former sister
Speaker 1: who's a stand up comic. I felt rejected, like Jesus
Speaker 1: gave up on her offer to give her life to him,
Speaker 1: And now here she was on the outside with no money.
Speaker 1: And I really didn't have any skills. I didn't have
Speaker 1: any more skills that were applicable to the American workplace.
Speaker 1: Like I was two years old and I had almost
Speaker 1: a four year gap in employment history. That was hard
Speaker 1: to explain, you know. And I remember I had a
Speaker 1: composition notebook that had like all the jobs I was
Speaker 1: applying to, and I'd cut out a New Yorker cartoon
Speaker 1: and it was a guy doing a job interview, and
Speaker 1: he said, am I a team player? Are you kidding?
Speaker 1: I was in a cult? And I had crossed out
Speaker 1: cult and put convent uh. And that cartoon actually helped
Speaker 1: me a lot, because I felt so alone. When she
Speaker 1: first left, she was embarrassed about leaving, but over time
Speaker 1: she feared being judged for joining in the first place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was more closeted about it. I didn't know anybody
Speaker 1: else who was an ex nun. And then as I
Speaker 1: started going to something called the Conference for Catholic Lesbians,
Speaker 1: and the whole thing was full of X nons. Kelly
Speaker 1: was done to learn just how many lesbian x nuns
Speaker 1: there were. They had pool parties and prayed the Rosary,
Speaker 1: which I thought was like such a great thing to
Speaker 1: do at a pool party. And then at some point
Speaker 1: everyone took off all the clothes and went swimming, and
Speaker 1: I was like, this is great. This is than the convent,
Speaker 1: this is really great. When Colette Livermore left the m
Speaker 1: c s and went home in Australia, mother Teresa sent
Speaker 1: her letters asking her to come back. She talked little
Speaker 1: cards inside them. Three times she sent me, uh God,
Speaker 1: depicting a crossed figure. In the illustration, Jesus was covered
Speaker 1: in wounds and bleeding, with his hands tied, with her
Speaker 1: riding at the bottom, saying be the one. But Collette
Speaker 1: didn't go back. It's edge pursued what she dreamed of
Speaker 1: as a teenager. She went to medical school. Most of
Speaker 1: her classmates were thirteen years younger than she was. She
Speaker 1: says in med school she learned to think again, to doubt,
Speaker 1: to analyze the evidence rather than to give unquestioning assent
Speaker 1: to what she was told. But even as her world
Speaker 1: view shifted, she still felt the shadow of her eleven
Speaker 1: years as an MC. In med school, she avoided telling
Speaker 1: people she'd been a sister with mother Teresa. They treated
Speaker 1: her differently if they knew, and instead of volunteering for procedures,
Speaker 1: she'd find herself hanging back hoping she wouldn't be selected.
Speaker 1: My confidence was gone. I was very unassertive as well.
Speaker 1: You know in classes, who got all these young people
Speaker 1: around you bringing with self confidence and they want to
Speaker 1: have a go as a doctor. For a while she
Speaker 1: worked in Northern Australia and every week or two she'd
Speaker 1: fly two hundred and eighty miles on a mail carrier
Speaker 1: to a remote settlement and treat the Aboriginal community there.
Speaker 1: Sometimes Collet work alongside EMC sisters. On a rare occasion,
Speaker 1: when Colett got a chance to eat a meal with them,
Speaker 1: they asked her why she left. She explained, and Collett
Speaker 1: found that they too had experiences when superiors told them
Speaker 1: to refuse help to the sick. She was relieved it
Speaker 1: validated her experience. Collett's professional life was fulfilling. Her work
Speaker 1: as a doctor was busy and she got a chance
Speaker 1: to travel and experience cultures that were new to her.
Speaker 1: Her life was full, but the empty imprint was there. Well,
Speaker 1: I haven't married, I would have liked to have. I
Speaker 1: was really really wanting to find a life partner, but
Speaker 1: it just it just didn't happen. Do you think the
Speaker 1: missionaries of charity had affected some of that? Was it
Speaker 1: timing or also just kind of it took a while
Speaker 1: to break out of that mindset, do you think? Or Oh?
Speaker 1: I think it was both. I know I did want
Speaker 1: a partner and to have kids because the biological clock
Speaker 1: was ticking, I had very poor self confidence. I mean,
Speaker 1: lots of people leave the comment and find partners the
Speaker 1: next day, so I don't know what it is with me.
Speaker 1: That's what I chused to wonder. But yeah, I didn't anyway,
Speaker 1: and I'd get very sad and thinking everyone can find
Speaker 1: a partner except me, what's wrong with me? Blah blah
Speaker 1: blah and so. But I got over that in a while.
Speaker 1: I thought, you know, if it happens, it happens. But
Speaker 1: never did. Oh, everybody gets a lonely Sometimes I'd get
Speaker 1: hope from friendships, and I find hoping. You know, my
Speaker 1: nephews had a new little girl. She's beautiful. I've got
Speaker 1: a great nieces and I find a lot of solace
Speaker 1: nature and beautiful things when I go bush walking and
Speaker 1: seeing flowers and beautiful vistas of the sea. All that
Speaker 1: makes me feel happy. You get those moments where you're
Speaker 1: just there and it's everything. The most important thing is love.
Speaker 1: Everything you can do to strengthen that is the most
Speaker 1: valuable thing. I would have been happy to date there.
Speaker 1: Nobody was interested in me. I really stuck out in
Speaker 1: Southeast Texas. You know, I wasn't really kind of dating
Speaker 1: material also in the beginning, and I was still trying
Speaker 1: to figure things out for a while. Mary Johnson toyed
Speaker 1: with the idea of starting her own community, one for
Speaker 1: women and men, open to many faiths, even those with
Speaker 1: no faith. It would be only the good parts of
Speaker 1: the MCS, a life focused on love and serving the poor.
Speaker 1: She ended up working a number of different jobs. She
Speaker 1: ironed clothes, worked as a receptionist in a doctor's office,
Speaker 1: and as a liturgical director at a church. She went
Speaker 1: back to college and then went on to graduate school
Speaker 1: to study writing, and that's where she met Luke and
Speaker 1: we just had an immediate connection. About three years after
Speaker 1: she left the m c S, Mary was at a
Speaker 1: ten day writing residency. On her first day, she was
Speaker 1: overwhelmed and intimidated the people she met, pontificated about authors
Speaker 1: she'd never heard of. At lunch, a charming but shy
Speaker 1: fellow residence that opposite her, they started talking. Luke was
Speaker 1: a doctor, but he was studying poetry. He'd gotten frustrated
Speaker 1: with parts of being a physician, like dealing with insurance companies,
Speaker 1: and he felt like studying poetry was a way to
Speaker 1: restore his soul. And I wouldn't even say that we
Speaker 1: ever really dated. It was this one week together. I
Speaker 1: went back to Texas and uh, you know, within a
Speaker 1: couple of months he was inviting me to move in,
Speaker 1: and that was it. Mary says Luke was a good listener, creative, quirky,
Speaker 1: the type of person who wants to keep growing, always
Speaker 1: improving with time, getting deeper better. Somehow they could talk
Speaker 1: for hours. Moving in with Luke for the first time
Speaker 1: put on display how many habits from MC life were
Speaker 1: still a part of Mary. She apologized constantly for things
Speaker 1: that didn't matter, because that's what she did for twenty years.
Speaker 1: If you broke a plate as a missionary of charity,
Speaker 1: you had to kneel down and kiss the floor and
Speaker 1: confess your fault for having busted displayed, and so you know,
Speaker 1: I was apologizing. I was asking permission for things that
Speaker 1: nobody asks permission for. You know, it wouldn't be all
Speaker 1: right if I have a cup of tea. Now we're
Speaker 1: you know, just ridiculous things. But it took a long
Speaker 1: time for a lot those things to fall away for me.
Speaker 1: Getting closer with Luke allowed to process some of her
Speaker 1: darker times with the MCS. She says he recognized what
Speaker 1: she was struggling with, partly because of his past experience.
Speaker 1: In college, he worked on a crisis intervention hotline and
Speaker 1: he had also been on a board of an abused
Speaker 1: women's shelter, so he was very familiar with the cycle
Speaker 1: of women who get get stuck in abusive relationships of
Speaker 1: one sort or another. And I think he saw my
Speaker 1: relationship with the Church, with Mother Teresa, with Jesus as
Speaker 1: having a lot of those elements of abuse, and how
Speaker 1: very often that abuse can be something that actually strengthens
Speaker 1: the bond between the abuser and the abused, reinforcing feelings
Speaker 1: of guilt, reinforcing an unequal power dynamic, um holding you
Speaker 1: captive in one sense or another. So I think he
Speaker 1: understood all of that even more clearly than I did.
Speaker 1: Mary was racked with guilt for disappointing Mother Teresa, for
Speaker 1: turning her back on her vows in the convent. She
Speaker 1: had rituals that helped with the guilt, and she had
Speaker 1: the discipline. Without those, it lingered, and she couldn't hide
Speaker 1: it from Luke. At one point, I was still feeling
Speaker 1: all this guilt for all sorts of things. One day
Speaker 1: I said, beat me, beat me. And he knew about
Speaker 1: the discipline. He had seen the callouses on my knees,
Speaker 1: he'd seen the scars on my arm. He he knew
Speaker 1: that history there and helped me in his arms for
Speaker 1: a long time. And I cried, And you know, it
Speaker 1: took a while for the guilt to go away. It
Speaker 1: took a long while. Yeah. When Mary left the Missionaries
Speaker 1: of Charity, she often dreamt about the sisters she'd left behind.
Speaker 1: They weren't happy dreams. She'd be in a tunnel trying
Speaker 1: to run away, the sister is chasing her. Or she'd
Speaker 1: be in a house with the sisters and they'd block
Speaker 1: all the exits so she couldn't get out. When I
Speaker 1: awake from those dreams, so I realized there's this icky
Speaker 1: residues still kind of stuck to me, and I can't
Speaker 1: get rid of this goopy, tary stuff that's clinging, you know,
Speaker 1: to me metaphorically. When she moved to Vermont to be
Speaker 1: with Luke, she stopped going to church every week. She
Speaker 1: was still religious, but things just didn't feel as sure
Speaker 1: as they used to. I began to feel more and
Speaker 1: more that the church, in many ways just wasn't making
Speaker 1: a lot of sense. Now she had a chance to
Speaker 1: explore her own spirituality, to reclaim faith for herself, to
Speaker 1: find a way to relate to God without that relationship
Speaker 1: being mediated by rituals and rules. It was liberating, but
Speaker 1: it was also confusing. So it was just a couple
Speaker 1: of years after I had left the Sisters, and I've
Speaker 1: been through so many different changes. I was trying to
Speaker 1: figure out, you know, do I even believe in God anymore?
Speaker 1: I don't know. And it was confusing because there has
Speaker 1: been all these promises about how God was going to
Speaker 1: take care of you and this and that, and I
Speaker 1: don't know. It just didn't seem to be happening exactly
Speaker 1: in the way that everything was just so confusing. She
Speaker 1: and Luke lived in an idyllic house at the end
Speaker 1: of a road with a forest behind it. She went
Speaker 1: out on a walk one day. I went up on
Speaker 1: this hill in the green mountains, overlooking upond. She thought
Speaker 1: about this God that used to be her best friend,
Speaker 1: who she talked to and saying to on the playground
Speaker 1: as a kid, the God who became her spouse. I
Speaker 1: just stood up and I shouted. I shouted, God, if
Speaker 1: you're out there, I need to know. I really need
Speaker 1: to know. Please tell me, Hey, listen, I need to know.
Speaker 1: And there was no immediate revelation, but it was just
Speaker 1: a gradual coming to unawareness that what other people meant
Speaker 1: when they said God, that didn't seem accurate from my perspective.
Speaker 1: Eventually she became an atheist. She says, the stories about
Speaker 1: God just don't ring true anymore. Physics and literature and
Speaker 1: music they feel honest. She says, the mystery of the
Speaker 1: universe is exciting. She's okay living with questions. It just
Speaker 1: became very clear to me that reality was a lot
Speaker 1: bigger than religion, and that any effort to contain reality
Speaker 1: in a box or in a story was doing a disservice.
Speaker 1: How much harm do we do by pretending to know
Speaker 1: things that it's impossible to know. But she still thinks
Speaker 1: love is at the center of it all. When you
Speaker 1: say love and is it a feeling or is it
Speaker 1: an action? Is it is love something someone will's love
Speaker 1: is both a noun and a verb. For me, I
Speaker 1: seek that verb love. I want to love. In two
Speaker 1: thousand seven, ten years after she left the Missionaries of
Speaker 1: Charity and ten years after Mother Teresa's death, Mary headed
Speaker 1: to Pennsylvania. She went to a conference marking a decade
Speaker 1: since what they called Mother's entrance into heaven. A number
Speaker 1: of empty priests and sisters would be there. She might
Speaker 1: have a chance to talk to them. She wanted to
Speaker 1: be around people who knew her in her past life
Speaker 1: and people who loved Mother. She felt on some level
Speaker 1: that celebrating that previous life might finally let her leave
Speaker 1: it behind. During the conference, Mary attended a mass. She
Speaker 1: slid into a pew near the back. She could recognize
Speaker 1: some of the sisters from behind, their gestures a telltale
Speaker 1: slump the way one leaned in. During prayer, the Superior
Speaker 1: General of the Empty Fathers gave the homily. He talked
Speaker 1: about the growth of the MCS that a thousand sisters
Speaker 1: had joined in the past ten years. Mary thought he
Speaker 1: didn't mention the sisters who left. After Mass, she watched
Speaker 1: a documentary about Mother Teresa ate in a room where
Speaker 1: people sold Mother Teresa books, Mother Teresa dolls, Mother Teresa
Speaker 1: c d s medals. She wondered what Mother would think.
Speaker 1: The next morning, during the final hymn of Mass, she
Speaker 1: hurried to the front of the church. She approached the
Speaker 1: superior general at the time, Sister Narmala. She recognized Mary
Speaker 1: the Nada. She said. Mary bowed her head for a blessing,
Speaker 1: but Sister Narmala put her finger under Mary's chin. She
Speaker 1: shook her head as if to say no, no blessing.
Speaker 1: When the other sisters saw Mary, they greeted her with
Speaker 1: a bit more warmth. Initially it was like oh, stern
Speaker 1: to and there was like, oh no, I can't say that,
Speaker 1: I don't have to. Oh no, Mary, Mary right, Mary. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was It was confusing for them because they for them,
Speaker 1: I was always sister do Not Being called to Nada
Speaker 1: felt good because it felt like she belonged. For some reason,
Speaker 1: she still wanted so badly to belong She hoped she
Speaker 1: could sneak in to have lunch with the sisters, even
Speaker 1: though eating with outsiders is against the rules. They ate
Speaker 1: in one place, and I ate in another place, and
Speaker 1: I didn't belong anymore. At one point, she looked over
Speaker 1: the shoulders of a huddle of nuns and spotted the
Speaker 1: person she wanted to talk to you most, Sister Prema.
Speaker 1: I'd always um felt a certain affinities, just a Prema.
Speaker 1: She it was a very loving person. In fact of
Speaker 1: the name Prema means love. When they were stationed together
Speaker 1: in Rome, Mary says Sister Prema even called her her
Speaker 1: twin because Mary resembled Sister Prema's actual sister. Sister Prema
Speaker 1: eventually went on to become the Superior General, the head
Speaker 1: of the m c S, a position she still holds today.
Speaker 1: Mary called Sister Prema's name, and she eventually recognized Mary.
Speaker 1: She smiled and took both of Mary's hands in hers.
Speaker 1: Sister Donata, she said. At that moment, Sister Prema was
Speaker 1: motioned away. She told Mary find me later. After a
Speaker 1: couple of talks, Mary was leaving the auditorium when a
Speaker 1: sister tapter on the shoulder walk with us. Sister Prama
Speaker 1: wants to see you. When Sister Pramma finally talked to Mary,
Speaker 1: she told her she wished she could invite her to lunch,
Speaker 1: but Mary knows the rules. We were talking and at
Speaker 1: a certain point she turn't me and she said, but
Speaker 1: you still love the sisters, don't you? I said, of
Speaker 1: course I love the sisters. Had you heard that ques
Speaker 1: from sisters before? When I left? The sisters asked me
Speaker 1: one of them, just a couple of days before I left,
Speaker 1: when everybody knew I was going to my sister, will
Speaker 1: you still love us? And I said yes. It's always
Speaker 1: very touching for me because they knew that I loved them,
Speaker 1: and they knew that for them it was that was
Speaker 1: an important question. I think it wasn't always obvious that
Speaker 1: people in authority and the missionaries of charity actually really
Speaker 1: cared for their fellow sisters. It was a sorrow and
Speaker 1: a disappointment to Mother Teresa as well. But um the
Speaker 1: sisters had had felt that from me, Otherwise they would
Speaker 1: never have asked that question, do you still love us?
Speaker 1: And that it was still important to them after so
Speaker 1: much time. It was very touching too. I've interviewed Mary
Speaker 1: for hours over many months. She says, looking back at
Speaker 1: her story is strange. It's been a long time, almost
Speaker 1: twenty five years since she left. She leads a totally
Speaker 1: different life now. She married Luke. She taught creative writing
Speaker 1: and Italian. She officiates weddings as a humanist, non religious celebrant.
Speaker 1: She wrote a book. She helped create a community and
Speaker 1: platform for female writers. And they are free time. She
Speaker 1: and Luke watch movies, go to film festivals. They bike,
Speaker 1: they read, they garden, they talk. She says when she
Speaker 1: looks back at that young woman in a sorry that
Speaker 1: Mary is a different person. I do remember once when
Speaker 1: I was cleaning my office, I saw this box at
Speaker 1: the top of my bookcase, and I didn't remember what
Speaker 1: was inside it, you know, And I said, well, what
Speaker 1: what's in that box? Why am I keeping that box
Speaker 1: way up there? She took down the box and opened it,
Speaker 1: and she saw all of these things from her time
Speaker 1: as a missionary of charity. There's a scapular, which is
Speaker 1: a small wearable token that depicts Mother Mary holding Jesus.
Speaker 1: There was a rosary made by an MC sister from
Speaker 1: Seeds Miraculous Metals, Mother Teresa's hair in a plastic case.
Speaker 1: And then there was a cross the size of her
Speaker 1: hand with an iron Jesus on it. The crucifix Mother
Speaker 1: Teresa wedged between Mary sorry and belt during her vows.
Speaker 1: When Jesus became Mary's spouse, she thought she'd wear this
Speaker 1: cross until she died. And when I saw this cross,
Speaker 1: and I hadn't seen a crucifix for a long time,
Speaker 1: it struck me in such a completely different way than
Speaker 1: it had before. And it was like, this is a
Speaker 1: man being tortured to death, and it struck me as
Speaker 1: a kind of a tragic thing. For a while, Mary
Speaker 1: wrestled with her relationship with Mother Teresa. It felt complicated
Speaker 1: and therapy. She did the empty chair exercise to talk
Speaker 1: to her, where you like, pretend there's some person in
Speaker 1: the chair in front of you and you talk to them.
Speaker 1: I did that sort of thing, but nothing felt like closure.
Speaker 1: When she left the Missionaries of Charity, Mary received a
Speaker 1: lot of letters from sisters telling her to come back,
Speaker 1: and one of them sister included notes from a talk
Speaker 1: that an empty father gave after Mother Teresa died. The
Speaker 1: pages are crinkled now. The typewritten notes are cramped and
Speaker 1: tight up against the margins. Not to waste paper the
Speaker 1: Empty Way and this rough transcript. The Friest described Mother
Speaker 1: Teresa at the end of her life in the months
Speaker 1: leading up to her death, and in these notes it
Speaker 1: said that Mother was walking the halls of mother house saying,
Speaker 1: no one loves Mother in her own house. We loved her,
Speaker 1: but she didn't. She didn't feel that all those rules
Speaker 1: that kept us so far from each other, and that
Speaker 1: we're never supposed to reveal ourselves really to each other.
Speaker 1: It's just all of these wonderful women living in their
Speaker 1: own little cages of loneliness. And Mother at the end
Speaker 1: of her life, whom all the world loved and admired,
Speaker 1: is walking the halls saying, no one loves me. I
Speaker 1: don't think that you have to be lonely to serve God.
Speaker 1: H There are so many images of Mother Teresa and
Speaker 1: Mary's memory, her toughness, her sharp eyes, Mother's firm hand
Speaker 1: on her head for a blessing, when Mother pressed a
Speaker 1: crucifix against her lips when she was just an aspirant,
Speaker 1: when they traveled to Sweden together and shared a room
Speaker 1: with two twin beds, Mother hitting the desk in their
Speaker 1: last conversation as she pleaded with Mary to talk to
Speaker 1: mother tell Mother explained to mother why she wanted to leave,
Speaker 1: how Mary refused mother's disappointment. Mary dreamt about Mother Teresa
Speaker 1: for a few years after she left the m c's.
Speaker 1: Those dreams weren't nightmares, they were calm. The last one
Speaker 1: she remembers, Mary was lying in her own bed. Mother
Speaker 1: Teresa walked in and without saying anything, she went to
Speaker 1: the bed and lay down next to Mary in this
Speaker 1: sweet way. They were side by side, just close to
Speaker 1: each other. I don't remember that she said anything, but
Speaker 1: there was just this feeling that she understood me. She
Speaker 1: wasn't mad at me anymore. One thing that's helped Mary
Speaker 1: talk about her past is something her husband, Luke said.
Speaker 1: He told her, just remember it's a love story. I agree.
Speaker 1: But love comes in many forms, and some aren't healthy.
Speaker 1: I've learned that in my own life, and I've learned
Speaker 1: it from the story. Sometimes I think about all of
Speaker 1: the hurt I've heard about from these former missionaries of charity,
Speaker 1: sisters who gave everything of themselves and suffered in the process.
Speaker 1: Love to be real has to hurt. Mother Teresa used
Speaker 1: to say, maybe love hurts, but it's usually a side effect,
Speaker 1: not a goal. I don't think sacrificing people for the
Speaker 1: sake of a mission is right, no matter how much
Speaker 1: love they feel. I'm grateful to the former Sisters who
Speaker 1: shared their stories, but it hasn't been easy for them.
Speaker 1: Hurt was part of the telling too, but they shared
Speaker 1: their stories because it felt worth it. I think it's
Speaker 1: worth it to look at why we put people on
Speaker 1: pedestals and what can happen when we assume someone in
Speaker 1: power is perfect. You could say a series like this
Speaker 1: is digging up old dirt, and maybe it is, but
Speaker 1: you can also hear it as a story from people
Speaker 1: who are just as important as Mother Teresa, just as
Speaker 1: human and just as valuable, who should also be heard.
Speaker 1: It's not easy to figure out exactly what's right when
Speaker 1: beliefs and God are involved, but it's worth talking about.
Speaker 1: It's worth listening to. If you ask me, that's love.
Speaker 1: The Turning is written by Allen lance Lesser and Me.
Speaker 1: Our producers are Allen lance Lesser and Emily Foreman. Our
Speaker 1: editor is Rob Rosenthal. Andrea Aswah is our digital producer.
Speaker 1: Fact checking by Andrea Lopez Crusado. So many thanks to
Speaker 1: all of the people who helped with this project, including
Speaker 1: Liz mac Emily Kwan, Jasmine Aguilera, Organ Gibbons, Daniel Giemett
Speaker 1: and Bryce Street, Cant, Joshi, Ivan Suarez, Susan Bryer, Susan Fields,
Speaker 1: j Bostick, Elizabeth Gavitt, Chubby Such, Dave, Jacob Silber, Gretchen Gavett,
Speaker 1: and Andrew Lesser and the whole wonderful team at Rococo
Speaker 1: Punch and I Heeart Radio for their support. Special thanks
Speaker 1: to the team at Type Investigations and Katherine Joyce, Amy Gains,
Speaker 1: Sarah oh Luder, Maron Frischkoff, Bethan Macaluso, My Guest Hat Ticketter,
Speaker 1: Christine Rogassa, Jen Powers, Travis Dunlap, Andrew Kenward, Brianna Hill,
Speaker 1: Simon Pullman, Sarah Gates, Allison Cantor, Nicky Etre, Holly Decan,
Speaker 1: Dan Conaway, and consulting producer Mary Johnson. Her memoir and
Speaker 1: Unquenchable Thirst provided inspiration for this series. Our executive producers
Speaker 1: are Jessica Alfert and John Ferratti at Rocco Punch, I
Speaker 1: Could Trina Norville at iHeart Radio. Our theme music is
Speaker 1: by Matt Reid. For photos and more details on this
Speaker 1: series follow us on Instagram at Rococo Punch. You can
Speaker 1: reach out via email to the Turning at Rococo punch
Speaker 1: dot com. I'm Erica Lands. Thanks for listening.