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May 23, 2005 
VOL.
43, NO. 11Oakland,
CA
COMMENTARY
Book relates life of California woman who lives, ministers in Tijuana jails
Like gardening, prayer takes determination and patience
Book relates life of California woman who lives, ministers in Tijuana jails
Twenty-eight years ago, a short, wealthy Californian
pulled on a black dress and a black veil that she had stitched herself,
trying to look “nunny.”
She stood before her mirror and took the name Mother Antonia, chosen for
the Catholic priest who had inspired her to stick with her faith.
Three decades ago, no religious order would consider a twice-divorced
51-year-old novice. So Mary Brenner committed the audacious act of making
private vows and moving into a Tijuana prison where she lived among its
sick and reviled inmates.
Twenty-three years later, Mother Antonia carried the offertory gifts to
Pope John Paul II as he celebrated a vast outdoor Mass in northern Mexico.
Then the pontiff reached out and touched Mother Antonia’s cheek.
That gesture—toward a woman denied Communion for a quarter-century
because she divorced and remarried—was profound, report Mary Jordan
and husband Kevin Sullivan in their new biography, “The Prison Angel”
(Penguin Press, 237 pages, $24.95)
Yet for hundreds of souls in Tijuana and San Diego, the pope’s touch
was a fitting, if late, acknowledgment of the common local wisdom: the
former Mary Brenner amounted to a living saint.
Now 78, Mother Antonia still lives in an unheated cell in La Mesa, the
notorious Tijuana prison, taking frequent hits from the oxygen tank that
eases her breathing. That is where Jordan and Sullivan found her in 2002.
News of her radical kindness had reached them, and the two decided to
see for themselves. The result is “The Prison Angel,” a book
both moving and important in its depiction of an exceptional life.
Writing about goodness is difficult, and the authors don’t pretend
to be neutral. They open with the unarmed nun singlehandedly quelling
a prison riot, and they close by writing “there are no words to
describe” what Mother Antonia has given to them personally.
Very few cynics will read “The Prison Angel.” But for those
drawn to stories about seemingly regular people making radical choices,
this book is compelling. After their somewhat purple opening, the authors
employ clean, declarative prose.
Like Mother Teresa, Mother Antonia gravitates toward outcasts, prostitutes
and criminals, corrupt guards and mentally deranged prisoners.
She recruits nurses, grocers, dentists and a plastic surgeon into her
work. She ministers to a captured drug kingpin, reassuring him of God’s
love, impervious to the man’s history of torturing a Drug Enforcement
Administration agent and tape-recording his screams.
At times, “The Prison Angel” veers close to a stack of testimonials,
people from all walks singing the nun’s praises. (The local bishop
recognized her vocation formally in 1978.)
The authors’ keen interest in the failings of Mexican criminal justice
also colors the text. The best parts depict the ingenious ways in which
Mother Antonia gradually undermines the eye-for-an-eye ethos that permeated
La Mesa.
Mother Antonia is most human in the closing pages, where she is worn and
wondering, on occasion, what a pleasure retirement might be. “She
has taken to wearing a long white nightgown in bed, in case she dies in
her sleep,” the authors write. She calls it her “dead in bed”
nightgown.
Readers will leave this nun’s company reluctantly and thank Jordan
and Sullivan for making her remarkable life visible in a jaded world.
(Karen R. Long is the book editor for The Plain Dealer of Cleveland.)
Like gardening, prayer takes determination and patience
Last summer, in a burst of enthusiasm, my husband Terry
and I bought 225 tulip, crocus, and daffodil bulbs, thinking how nice
it would be to have a burst of color after the long, drab winter. Planting
bulbs is simple, we thought. Just dig a hole and plop ‘em in.
Reading the planting directions at home, we decided to carve out a section
of lawn for a sunny bedding area. Thus began the Great Grass Elimination
Project.
After living for years in a desert climate, destroying an area of lush
green grass, even if it’s just a small section around the mailbox,
just doesn’t come naturally. Setting aside our environmentalist
leanings, we broke down and spread grass killer, naively believing the
label that it takes a couple of days to work.
Two weeks later, we finally had a lovely curved area of dead, brown grass.
At least the top looked dead. Looking back, I think we must have had some
form of Super Grass, because the roots clung stubbornly to the sod even
in death.
After trying various methods of removing the “dead” grass
from the dirt, we ended up with a huge pile of fist-sized chunks of earth,
each one decorated with sturdy wisps of wheat-colored grass. After filling
the 64-gallon yard waste container, we discovered that the weight was
such that the two of us together couldn’t budge it. Then we noticed
the faint imprint of “no dirt” on the side of the can.
Envisioning a wrongful death lawsuit if the trash truck’s mechanical
arms lost hold of it, we shoveled the mess back out onto the lawn, spreading
it out in the sun like giant grapes waiting to change into raisins. We
hoped drying it would help us with disposal.
Well, our sod clumps dried all right. The sun baked them like clay fired
in a kiln. Now we had a front yard adorned with misshapen, hairy cement
chunks.
One weekend, I glanced out the window to see Terry thrashing these things
with a hoe, muttering under his breath. This was too much for me.
When he wasn’t looking, I wheel-barrowed the mess to a spot under
our deck in the backyard, building a system of mini-canals and dams to
channel the runoff from melting snow. (My reward for this was a sharp
blow on the head when I forgot the precise location of the deck above
me.)
By now it was mid-October and we were feeling a little desperate to get
the bulbs in the ground before it froze. After doing soil improvements
and installing a planting border, we bought a special tool to speed up
the digging of the holes for the bulbs, a tool which we managed to completely
destroy within 20 minutes of use. Digging individual holes with a trowel
proved to be tedious. In the end, we dug trenches.
At last, our bulbs were tucked in their little winter beds. Suddenly there
was nothing to do but wait. Wait through arctic winds and snow. Wait five
or six months. Did we do all the right things? Would our bulbs bloom in
the spring? Suddenly I felt very helpless before the mystery of life.
Despite the challenges and frustrations of this project, I often receive
spiritual blessings while gardening. Working the soil or tending plants
calms my spirit. It leads to spiritual insights and thoughts of the Creator.
Designing our little flower patch reminded me that prayer, like gardening,
involves a good deal of effort and determination. Digging deep into a
relationship with God through prayer is not for wimps. It takes blood,
sweat, and tears to remain faithful to prayer, day after day, year after
year.
But prayer also involves waiting, waiting for the Lord to act. In Scripture,
St. James reminds us to wait for the Lord’s coming, patiently, like
the farmer waits for the harvest. “Wait for the Lord, take courage;
be stouthearted, wait for the Lord!” writes the psalmist. We wait
in hope for the Spirit of God to transform our hearts into spiritual gardens
that bear fruit thirty, sixty, or a hundredfold.
(Julie McCarty is happy to report that the tulips and crocus arrived
in all their glory, but the daffodils decided not to appear. McCarty,
a freelance writer from Eagan, Minn., writes a monthly column on prayer,
which appears in diocesan newspapers around the country. Contact her at
soulwriting@yahoo.com. )
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