SEVEN HOLY WOMEN
Conversations with Saints and Friends
Melinda Johnson
Georgia Briggs
Katherine Bolger Hyde
Laura S. Jansson
Summer Kinard
Melissa Elizabeth Naasko
Anna Neill
Molly Sabourin
ancient faith publishing 1 chesterton, indiana
Seven Holy Women: Conversations with Saints and Friends
Copyright ©2020 Ancient Faith Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the Publisher.
Published by: Ancient Faith Publishing A Division of Ancient Faith Ministries
1050 Broadway, Suite 6 Chesterton, IN 46304
Cover design by Sophie Ries
ISBN: 978-1-944967-85-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020944834
Printed in the United States of America
Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.
(Ephesians 2:19–22)
For Carina, with thanks for what she has taught me about unselfish love.
—Melinda
For Brigid, who will tell it to you straight. —Georgia
For my daughters, Lena and Elizabeth. We have all struggled with the dragon, but in Christ we shall prevail! —Katherine
For Mother Helena, in thanksgiving for the love and prayers you offer for me, my family, and the world. —Laura
For Nana Helen, who invited me into her friendship with the saints. —Summer
For my husband, who reminds me to be a better person than I would ordinarily be. —Melissa
For the young ladies at St. Raphael: thank you for the journey toward knowing the saints. —Anna
For Beth and Jen, whose faith and friendship have supported and inspired me for twenty-seven years. —Molly
Prologue 9 How to Read and Write This Book 11
STONE n Laura S. Jansson 13 You Are Morwenna 15 On the Life of the Saint 20 Water and Stone 25 My Stones, My Cliff, My Church 32 Building a Wall Together 34 Between the Rock and the Hard Place 36
SONG c Georgia Briggs 39 You Are Kassiani 41 On the Life of the Saint 47 The Better Things 51 Turning Down the Apple 56 Beautiful Struggle 58 The Song of Your Life 60
LEAF p Molly Sabourin 63 You Are Ia 65 On the Life of the Saint 70 A Miraculous Voyage 72 A Resurrection of Hope 79 A Leap of Faith 81 A Gift of Stillness 83
DREAM h Anna Neill 87 You Are Nino 89 Sample pages only. Purchase the full book at https://store.ancientfaith.com/seven-holy-women-conversations-with-saints-and-friends
On the Life of the Saint 94
Daring to Dream with Saint Nino 99
Dream the Hard Things 104
Awakening Lost Dreams 106
Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept It 108
RIVER A Summer Kinard 111
You Are Piama 113 On the Life of the Saint 122
Settling Down with God 126
Expecting God 132
Building Her Faith 134 God Is with You 136
DRAGON 6 Katherine Bolger Hyde 139 You Are Margaret 141 On the Life of the Saint 146
Battling the Ugly Beast 150
Here There Be Dragons 154
Lending a Trusty Sword 156
Recognizing Dragons 158
FLOWER f Melissa Elizabeth Naasko 161 You Are Casilda de Toledo 163 On the Life of the Saint 167
A Dinner Party 170 Befores and Afters 173
Speaking to Our Sisters 175
Seeking Hidden Treasure 177
HOME G Melinda Johnson 181 You Are You 183 The Women Who Wrote This Book 187
Prologue
Perhaps you are one of us—the quiet majority—who longs for a more profound experience of faith but resists, for her own good reasons, the effort of seeking one. Perhaps you are worried this book will land on the tottering pile on your nightstand, where you keep the stories you wish you could tell yourself. Perhaps you are seeking encouragement from strong, joyful companions who remind you of the holy treasure in your tired heart.
This book is for you. Yes, even you—the cautious, curious, weary, skeptical woman who can’t decide if she’s going to read the rest of this small paragraph. You.
Between the title page and the final page, you will open an immersive, imaginative journey into your spiritual life. You will read the stories of other women as your own story. You will be Morwenna, Kassiani, Ia, Nino, Piama, Margaret, and Casilda. You will find the stones you are carrying to build a church. You will hear the song you are writing and the emperor you are escaping. You will breathe the prayer that will topple idols. You will confront a prison cell and a dragon. You will hold your enemies frozen in their tracks and see danger transformed to fragrant roses in your hands.
You will read and write your own story. And, like us, you will find these seven beautiful women lingering with you after the stories are told and the book is closed.
How to Read and Write This Book
Read alone or with a group of friends—a book club, a parish group, or your girls’-night-out posse. Start at the beginning, with Morwenna. Read her chapter together or alone and write your own answers to the Personal Survey questions. Pair up and exchange books with a friend to complete the Observations section for each other. Talk over your observations before you return to your own book to respond to the Journal Prompt.
Let a week pass, perhaps two, and return for the next saint and her chapter. When you have worked through all the chapters, you will have a record of your journey, through your own eyes and the eyes of your friends, to read over again whenever you need company and encouragement.
Many of us have close friends who don’t live near enough for regular visiting. But if you each have a copy of the book, you can meet on Facebook, Zoom, Skype, FaceTime, Google Hangouts, or any of the other online platforms with which we overcome the obstacles of time and space.
Find a way. May it be blessed!
Laura S. Jansson
Sample pages only. Purchase the full book at https://store.ancientfaith.com/seven-holy-women-conversations-with-saints-and-friends
You Are Morwenna
You are Morwenna. You live in a handmade hut at the top of an English cliff. The air tastes of salt spray and seaweed. The cries of choughs and kestrels wake you at dawn and soothe you at dusk. The wind billows and whistles around you, catching your breath and tossing it into your face. A wild sea batters the foot of your cliff, but you pray and seek peace in your hut, and you are not afraid.
The land behind you is lush and green but full of poverty and suffering. You are often there, breaking your solitude to visit the farmers and villagers. Their huts are small and handmade, just like yours, but their burdens are heavy, and they find no peace. Their children are hungry. Their clothes are threadbare. Their hearts are weary, seeking blindly for God.
You feel their sorrows crowding around you. You tend the sick and try to find food for the hungry. They thank you for your kindness, but you know that a full belly does not ease an anxious heart. In your quiet hut you find a comfort that you are not able to share with them.
One morning, you wake early with your face and hands pressed against the stone floor of your hut. You begin praying, as always, but the texture of the stone against your face and hands distracts
you. You begin again, but a ray of early light finds its way through a crack in the door and shines on the stone by your hands.
The stone.
You pause in the middle of your prayer.
The stone.
You scramble up and open the door, gazing down through the mist to the rugged gray shore below. Stones of all sizes are heaped at the foot of the cliff, some bathed in the rush of seawater, some tumbled in piles along the beach. Stones to the north, stones to the south. Hundreds of stones, enough to build a cathedral, if only someone could bring them up to the green land above.
You know a path to the sea, a gravelly, twisting chain of footholds down the face of the cliff. You have traveled this path hundreds of times, and you no longer notice how your body leans this way and that to counter the uneven ground.
You reach the gray shingle, and the water sparkles under the rare gift of a clear sky at sunrise. You take one step, and there on the ground you see a smooth, rounded stone. It is large enough to use for building, but not so large that you are unable to lift it. Squatting down, you hoist it carefully and clasp it against your chest. You turn back to begin your journey up the face of the cliff. After a few steps, you realize you will need at least one hand free to make the climb safely. How will you carry the stone?
You pull up the hood of your thick cloak and rest the stone on your head like a crown. With one hand, you balance the stone. With the other, you steady yourself against the face of the cliff as you climb.
Your stone crown is hard and heavy. You feel the weight of it pressing down through the top of your head, bringing an ache to your neck and tightening your shoulders. You think of the hundreds of stones you will need to carry up this slippery path to
build a church for the people at the top of the cliff. This will hurt.
But you think of the hungry children and the threadbare clothes. You think of the bowed heads and sorrowful eyes. You remember that you will never fit all the people into the bright, sweet solitude of your hut.
You settle the stone firmly on your woolen hood, brace your shoulders against the weight, and chant a prayer for strength as you march up the steep path.
When you reach the top, you walk a few paces away from the edge and lean forward, letting the stone drop to the earth. One journey, one stone.
You stretch your arms and shake your head to ease the muscles in your neck and back. You cross yourself and cross the stone with your shaking fingers. Then you entrust the stone to God and climb down the twisty path to the shore.
A second journey, a second stone. Then a third. The climb is slow and torturous. When darkness falls, you have carried only twenty stones to the top of the cliff. You return to your hut, and you are praying when you fall asleep on the stone floor.
In the morning, you begin again. You carry stones all day, and the craggy mound at the top is larger now. On the third day, you see children from the village staring with wide eyes as you come over the top of the cliff with a stone on your head. “For a church,” you say, pointing to the piled stones. The children scamper away. You know that word will spread to everyone in the village by nightfall.
The stones are your life now. When you are awake, you are carrying stones. When you are not carrying stones, you are praying for sleep to heal your aching body. When you are asleep, you dream of a handmade church with a stone tower facing the sea.
One morning, the pain overwhelms you. Every sinew, every
bone seems compressed and drained of strength. When you reach the foot of the cliff, you wonder if your feet will carry you across the sand to gather the first stone. You have already taken all the stones near the path. You must walk farther and farther to collect new ones. Your journey is becoming infinite. You fear it will stretch you until you snap and crumble, like an old stone ground into sand.
You breathe the simple prayer, the prayer of three words only. Lord, have mercy.
Your eyes light on a good stone, a stone that looks like it would be at home in the wall of a handmade church with a tower facing the sea. You skirt the waves, crossing yourself. You lift the stone onto your shoulder, then up to its place on your head. The thick wool of your hood is worn as thin as a rose petal.
You think, as you cross the beach, that you will survive the journey. You think your strength will last, but your heart fails again as you struggle up the twisting path. For a moment, you feel the stone slipping from your grasp, and you almost tumble to your death on the sharp boulders below.
You stop. Slowly, you move the stone from your head to your shoulder, from your shoulder to the ground. You crouch beside the stone, and your body sinks into the curve of earth where the path meets the face of the cliff.
Your lips move. Your eyes close. Prayer and rest. When you wake, you have not fallen. You are safe, and the stone is safe, and your strength has returned to you. You stand and raise your arms. You throw back your head, and a rare shaft of sunlight finds its way through the clouded air to touch your face.
You lift the stone up from the path and settle it like a crown on your head. You step forward, one hand guarding the stone, one hand guiding your journey up the dangerous, familiar path.
When you reach the top, you add the stone to the pile and step back. The small pile has become a large pile, almost a mountain, almost a cathedral.
You cross yourself, and you cross the stones, throwing out your arms and leaping into the air so that this holy gesture will encompass the whole of your work—the stones, the earth, and the future that awaits them.
It is only as you are returning to the shore for another stone that you see the miracle. When you reach the place where you rested on the path, you find a spring of fresh water, rushing and singing as it escapes the rough earth. Sample pages only. Purchase the full book at https://store.ancientfaith.com/seven-holy-women-conversations-with-saints-and-friends
