“Would you like to go outside today?” I asked Sister when I showed up at her room on the second floor of the Franciscan convent. Looking at the diminutive figure bent into her wheelchair, gives no indication of her seven decades of service throughout Latin America, China, and finally, immigrant work in the States.

“That would be nice,” she responded. “Would you get my sweater and bring the cap from the hook? The one from Mario Andretti. Let’s go and visit Donna.”

Donna was a classmate during their novitiate. They served together in Peru, teaching and providing healthcare among the Aymara Indians in the Altiplano. Donna now rests in the Convent’s cemetery, just down the arbor path from the Mother House.

Sister’s eyesight is too poor for reading. She functions through shadows and sounds. The people we pass greet her by saying their names as they reach out to touch her sleeve.

“Juan? How are you?” she might ask. “Did Yoseling get the job? Did she pass her driver’s test?”

Sister still keeps up with her Spanish-speaking friends. She depends on ALEXA to make her phone calls and take messages.

We arrive at the end of the black-top and peer out over the wet grass.

“Let’s stop here,” she decides. “We can talk to Donna without going to her grave. We should ask her what to do about Ana. She only asked you to be a pen pal, not fund a lawyer.”

Donna wrote to Ana for years before asking me to take over. Ana is in her 35th year of serving two consecutive sentences. She was on death row – twice. She has served three years beyond her parole. My religious upbringing chides me with, “when you see the least of my brothers, you see me” followed by, “When I was in prison…”

My struggle for discerning my responsibility is interrupted by Sister’s soft voice naming off other departed friends with the final prayer that they intercede with the new bishop and wake him up to his poor decision to move the Spanish mass to another town, thus stranding the present congregation.

“We can go now,” she directs me to turn the wheelchair around. “These new priests are going backward,” she moans. “They want to wear fancy vestments and do services in Latin!”

We head to the cafeteria, where Sister Carol is sipping her coffee. “How are your house mates doing?” we ask about the Venezuelan asylum family sharing her duplex. “The kids are back in school,” Carol reports. “Their parents have daily English classes. Now that they have jobs, they are more at peace and can pay off their families at home.” Yes, pay off their families in Chile and Venezuela who had cobbled together the ransom money extorted from them at the Mexican border.

Sister reaches out and feels for the elevator button. We ride up in silence.

I am thinking about my freedoms. Freedom to visit her. Freedom to buy my own food. Freedom that good health brings to my mobility. Freedom to speak openly. Freedom to help the ‘foreigner’ in my land. Freedom to believe or not if Donna can hear me and if the departed Sisters can persuade the new bishop to open his eyes and heart to his Latino parish.

Outside in the parking lot, I slip into another world inside my car, with its Apple Play list, back-up cameras and hands-free phone. My attention shifted from asylum seekers, politics, and inmates to mowing and, perhaps, baking a zucchini cake.

Dad’s words come to me: “What Gets Your Attention, Gets You.” Positive or negative, it works.

Whether diving into the rabbit-hole of scrolling on my phone or sending a contribution to a worthy cause… which choice will get my attention?

Sister Adela lives a life of paying attention. Being with her is always a good choice.

Please share below: What is YOUR attention for today?

P.S. Remember my pen pal Ana from my July 2021 blog post “My “PEN” Pal, Ana: Reflections on Freedom“? We are in search of pro-bono lawyer for her in Ocala, Florida. Have any connections? 

P.P.S. If you are curious about the life of Sister Adela, please (re)read my article “Brief but Spectacular Moments From a Long Life: Sister Adela Gross”  in Her Voice from 2022 – forward to page 36.