The Wild Reed: 20 Years of Saying “Yes” to the Charism of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet

Wednesday, March 18, 2026

20 Years of Saying “Yes” to the Charism of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet

Earlier this evening I had the honor of delivering the “Jubilarian Reflection” at the St. Joseph Day celebration at Carondelet Village in St. Paul, Minnesota. This year marks my 20th anniversary of being a consociate member of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet – St. Paul Province.

Right: With fellow CSJ Consociates Kathleen Olsen and Rita Quigley – March 18, 2026.

Consociates are men and women of diverse ages, careers, spiritualities, faith traditions, and backgrounds. What we all have in common is an expressed desire to live the charism of the Sisters of St. Joseph (CSJ). A charism is a spiritual gift from God for the good of the church and the world. The charism of the CSJs is the “love of God and the dear neighbor without distinction.” In short, consociates live this special calling and gift of the Sisters of Joseph within the context of their own lives.

My reflection was preceded by the reading of an excerpt from Dorothy Day’s autobiography, The Long Loneliness, in which she writes about the “revolution of the heart.”

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Good evening. My name is Michael Bayly and I’m happy to say that I’ve been a consociate member of this wonderful community for 20 years. I’m honored to have been invited to share some thoughts with you during on this special day for us.

When I was first told of the title of this evening’s event, my first thought was, Oh, how poetic! – “God relied on Joseph to do the really tough things, to which he quietly replied, ‘Yes.’”

As I pondered these words I realized that, like all true poetic words, there’s a timelessness to them. This is because they reflect the eternal spirit of hope and trust in the midst of the many uncertainties and upheavals of life.

I see this spirit of hope and trust in the life of Joseph of Nazareth, and in the spiritual community that bears his name. I’ve witnessed countless example of Sisters and Consociates choosing, like Joseph, to be fully present in the moment when faced with uncertainties and challenges; choosing to wait trustingly for God’s guidance; and choosing to respond with a “Yes” born of compassion, courage, and trust.

Throughout our history as a spiritual community, we have done, and continue to do, some truly remarkable and inspiring things as a result of our saying, time after time, “Yes!”

Left: With Marilaurice Hemlock and Char Madigan, CSJ – March 18, 2026. Char is the founder of Hope Community in Minneapolis.

We have established and maintained ministries and programs, projects and collaborations that have changed lives; that have challenged systems of oppression and inequality; and that have embodied the “Good News” of justice, community, and liberation that Jesus lived and taught.

We have, like leaven in bread, infused the world with our presence and made a profound difference; we’ve lifted people and causes, we’ve taken risks, learned hard lessons, recalibrated and changed course when necessary, and kept going because we keep listening, trusting, and saying “Yes!”

Right: With Mary Ellen Foster, CSJ – March 18, 2026.

I’m sure that each one of us acknowledges that doing all of these things was and remains tough. But faithful doing is always predicated on faithful being – being still, being centered, being open to the flow of the Divine in and through both our individual and our communal lives. Being is just as tough as doing. Sometimes I think it’s actually more tough. There are just so many distractions, so many voices demanding busyness and productivity and results that to take time out, to cultivate quietude and wait upon the still small voice within, just seems crazy; a waste of valuable time.

But then I remember Jesus wandering off into the wild places to be alone. I remember Joseph holding back from acting rashly upon hearing the news that his betrothed was mysteriously with child. I remember Mary making sacred time and space to ponder all the uncertainties swirling around her and then choosing to trust the God of her Magnificat, her revolutionary canticle of praise to Divine transformation and a world liberated from hierarchy, injustice, poverty and shame.

The Magnificat’s revolution is an outer revolution, one that begins, however, as Dorothy Day reminds us, within each one of us as a “revolution of the heart.” Dorothy’s words remind me of a statement attributed to Emma Goldman: “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.”

In our community’s embodiment of the “revolution of love,” we definitely allow for dancing. I sense we intrinsically know that, in the words of Gabrielle Roth, “We dance to fall in love with the spirit in all things.” Some of my most memorable experiences in our community have involved movement and dance.

Some examples:

• Being uplifted by Florence Steichen and Rita Quigley as they danced with colorful streamers at the River Center during our 150th anniversary celebration;

• Watching Susan Hames joyfully dancing with her young nephew at this same event;

• Being inspired by the mindful and graceful moves of Rita Foster, Susan Oeffling, and Cathy Steffens as they practiced and taught tai chi;

• Marveling at the skill and stamina of each and every one of Brigit McDonald’s Irish jigs (right, in 2016);

• Being mesmerized by the beauty of Ansgar Homberg’s creations of oil and brush and the slow, graceful dance of her hand;

• Feeling valued and accepted in watching the rainbow-inspired gestures of welcome from Linda Taylor, Mary Ellen Foster, Ruth Brooker, and so many other Sisters and Consociates as, year after year, they moved with joy and grace in the Twin Cities LGBTQI Pride parade (left, in 2010);

• Dancing to the ABBA classic “Dancin’ Queen” with Kathleen Olsen and the McDonald Sisters at the Ministries Foundation Gala (below, in 2014);

• And, of course, there’s dear Rose Tillemans’ memoir, I’m Still Dancing.

So, yes, there’s dancing of all kinds in our revolution of love – physical dancing. But there’s also always been a deeper type of movement, a symbolic dance; one that we can all partake, even if we can’t physically move and dance to the extent that we’d like.

This is Dorothy Day’s “revolution of the heart.” And I’ve come to understand it as beginning with an internal movement involving four steps:

1) The decision to cultivate stillness. Now this might sound odd, given that we’re talking about dance. But as Henry Miller reminds us: “To relax is the first thing a dancer has to learn. It is the first thing any one of us has to learn in order to fully live.” But it’s tough, because it means surrender.

2) An “active waiting” in the words of Henri Nouwen, for the voice, the flow, the rhythm of the sacred;

3) The saying of “Yes!” to what we hear and feel, be it in the form of guidance, clarity, or the call for further stillness and listening;

4) The realization that intrinsic to this process is a growing capacity to “recognize what is true, aligned, and life-giving, and to distinguish it from what is imagined, projected, or misaligned.” Shamanic teacher Mary Newstrom reminds us that throughout cultures and spiritual traditions, this capacity is called discernment. It is through our active cultivation of this capacity that we begin what’s been called the “great awakening within,” or as Dorothy Day names it, the “revolution of love.”

It’s a beginning that invites us to go beyond the inner realm in which our dance of revolution is born.

The next steps of this dance, and they can be tough ones, involve connecting with others, sharing what we’ve discerned, seeking counsel and community so as to realize and express ever more fully the “true love” that imbues and empowers the dance.

It’s a love that gifts us with vision to see things as they really are, and this might seem like new vision if we’ve become accustomed to seeing things with the ego and its obsession with falsities of separateness, brokenness and lovelessness. That’s not the vision of God. And we know this in our heart of hearts.

Left: With Jane McDonald, CSJ – March 18, 2026.

We know it too from our experiences – especially our experiences of community. It’s community that protects us from slipping back into old habits of ego thinking and seeing; it’s community that keeps the music and rhythm of the dance in our ears and in our hearts.

Our dance as Sisters and Consociates of St. Joseph of Carondelet has a very unique and beautiful rhythm, one which makes us move and flow in very unique and beautiful ways. One way of identifying this rhythm is by recognizing that it is what we refer to as our charism: To love God and the dear neighbor without distinction.

That’s how we move in the world. That’s our dance, our expression of love.

For twenty years I’ve been honored to share in this dance, to embody it with you and with many who are no longer with us as they have danced their way into the sweet unknown. Yet their essence continues to be felt, continues to inspire in and through the rhythm of our shared dance.

Long may the dance of our “revolution of love” continue. And when our feet tire from the dance, which can and does happen; and when we struggle to hear the rhythm of our dance above the world’s noise and chaos, may we again say “Yes!” to the tough thing of both being and doing what it takes to reinvigorate and continue our shared dance of revolutionary love. Amen.