Influencers

A novel I’ve intended to read for decades is “The Tenants of Time,” by Thomas Flanagan. The title intrigues me. Perhaps we own our home, rent our apartment, or live in a refugee camp, but we’re tenants all, temporarily occupying a time on Earth, with leases of unpredictable duration. Flanagan’s novel matters because I’ve been pondering the question of whether it is institutions, the house, that shape us or people, the dwellers. 

“Institution or people?” Whether that is a nature vs. nurture question or chicken-and-egg question, it is a central question for any university. What separates a university — LMU, for example — from others, the people or the institution? And, just as important, do we understand what distinguishes us? The answers are important in nearly every wing of the university: admission officers, fundraisers, faculty applying for research grants, athletic coaches recruiting student athletes. 

Odd I may be, but the question of institution or people is one that reminds me of my extended family. Two of the most important influencers in my life are two aunts, my mother’s youngest sisters, who both entered the Sisters of St. Joseph: Ann Sweeney, S.S.J. and Grace Sweeney, S.S.J. In addition to me, they had some 33 nieces and nephews, and although they moved about in several convents scattered across the mid-Atlantic region, they played a unique part in all our lives. They shaped all six families of their siblings. We all knew Aunt Grace’s skill in wiffle ball, her sharp, quick sense of humor. Aunt Ann the quieter of the two, whose wisdom was as ready as her sister’s wit.

What they gave to the next generation was their deep and genuine attention, love and encouragement, and an acceptance of each of us. They also showed us their commitment to their cause, their vocation. Their congregation, which is institutionally related to LMU’s Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange, dates back to 1650, when it was founded with the help of a Jesuit, Fr. Jean-Pierre Médaille, S.J. The first maxim of the Sisters of St. Joseph includes the words “… become what God dreams for you.” In our family, and in subtle ways, my aunts lived and imparted those words, laced with gentle guidance and occasional firm advice.

Did they shape me and my cousins through their congregation’s charism, its mission, or their personalities? That’s a hard question to answer definitively. I say they were drawn by nature to the congregation’s fulfilling mission and then forever committed to their congregation’s charism, which they shared with their families.

When I first came to LMU in 2006, I met two people, now passed on, who remain part of my daily experience — Pam Rector and Sr. Peg Dolan, R.S.H.M. They were nearly larger-than-life personalities, but I also associate them with their commitment to principles: inclusion, justice, tolerance, teaching, organizing, prophetic witness as well as humor, and clear-headed and realistic love. Today’s LMU students have met neither of them and never will. But Pam and Sister Peg have shaped more people who are here today than I can count — a legacy that lives. They made institutional mission tangible and personal.

Flanagan’s novel, its title at any rate, now holds special meaning for me: We are the tenants; the institution — the structure that outlives us — is the house with the reliable roof, a camp of refuge, a place of safe asylum, a center of learning. For that we work and hope. 

Joseph Wakelee-Lynch is editor of LMU Magazine and host of the LMU Magazine Off Press podcast.