Joan Chittister Column

The church world got a really good piece of advice this week. The pope, we're told, warned the Anglicans not to split over their internal controversies about homosexuality and the ordination of women bishops. He warned, quite wisely, about the dangers and the destructiveness of schism. (See Pope rides to Rowan's rescue) As easy as it sounds to simply go away and play in your own ecclesiastical sandbox, the fact is that divisions are never neat -- if for no other reason than that they not only fail to resolve the present problem but they model how not to resolve the next problem, too. After all, if we can fix one issue by simply leaving it, we can do the same with the next one -- and there will be a next one -- until what was intended to be a nice, clean division becomes one fracture after another, more a splintering and a slivering, than a surgically healing separation of unlike tissues.

This week, in a very real way, I watched the world both come together and fall apart. The interesting thing is that the insight came from where I least expected it. In the middle of Atlanta, Ga., sits Drepung Loseling Monastery, a quiet little Buddhist community intent on reminding us that we may be ignoring one of the basics of life. Here? Us? How could that be? .

Psychologists tell us that it’s often exactly what we take for granted in ourselves that we find so surprising when we see it somewhere else. For instance, missionary work has been a staple of Christianity for centuries. We took it for granted that it was of our essence to go around the world, not to become something different ourselves, but to begin something different, to promote other values and insights somewhere else. And it worked.

There is nothing that makes us pay attention to life as effectively as does death.

With unprecedented grief, MSNBC, politicians of all ilk and stripe, and the nation in general mourned the untimely death of Tim Russert, moderator of NBC's longest-running TV news show, "Meet the Press."

This primary season, one of the strangest in history, is awash in nonconsequentials. It has swung back and forth between the statements of two pastors and the comments of two women, all of them at best secondary to the real issues of the time.

This whole thing is a mess. I’m sure there are more elegant words for it. Like “complex,” for instance. Or, “confusing,” for instance. Or, “destabilizing,” for instance. But in the final analysis, the fact is that the Democratic primary is a mess. What anyone will know with certainty when it’s over, is anybody’s guess. But for right now, at least, the system of choosing a candidate does not feel either clear or decisive.

The question, of course, is why not? And the fact that the answer to that question is no clearer than the primary itself may be the problem.

This week I'm coming back from doing a series of lectures in Hawaii. But I learned more about here than I did about there while I was at it.

I learned that it may be more what we do to ourselves than what is done to us that increases or decreases our quality of life.

Here's a riddle for you:

What voice of religion is almost impossible to hear -- but is everywhere?

Oh, go on, guess.

Fortunately, I've been reading newspapers. Otherwise, I may have missed the major story of the 21st century: The woman's movement is over, I hear. And from a reputable source: young women in this country who consider their mother's concerns for the role and status of women to be "so passé" as one young woman on a recent CNN International interview put it in regard to the present election season in the USA.

[Editor's Note: Sr. Chittister is in Jaipur, India, March 6-10, for the first international conference of the Global Peace Initiative of Women.]

I heard about a conversation last week that I thought explained just about everything we need to know about the current state of human affairs.