[Dialogue] Brian Stanfield

[Chagnon at comcast.net]

Dear Jeannette and Colleagues on the Dialogue journey,
    After I wrote this, I decided to wait a while to send such a personal e-mail 
about Brian.  
    I hit 70 June 1st, and a lot of gratitude has been welling up for the colleagues who challenged me, positively OR negatively, to grow.  Only once was Brian in a position to challenge me, but what a difference it made.  His calling forth and affirmation of skills no one else had seen in me changed my self-perception as an ICA colleague in the late 70s, just as my friendship with Harold Williams broadened my vision and critical sense in so many ways during that same year.  
    I interned twice at the Kemper Building while I was still a Sister of the 
Presentation of Mary:  a year from one Research Assembly to the other in 1973-4; 
and a year and a half in 1977-78 as I tested my decision to leave the convent.  
Although my Provincial Superiors considered me a free-thinker and self-directed 
nun, I was a naive 37-year-old when I started my first internship in Chicago.  
Guess who identified with Miss Miller at her RS-I in 1969?  Right, Justin?  
   By the time 1977 rolled around, I was a different animal.  One of my first 
assignments was to be on the Academy team that Brian was leading.  Although it 
was obvious to me that I was not on the lecture list or any other list of any 
importance, I decided to take it in stride and learn from the wonderful 
opportunity I was offered.  However, when the time came for the Xavier lecture, Brian 
tapped this RC nun for what seemed to me pretty obvious reasons.  Besides, I had 
gotten my M.Ed. at Boston College, that venerable Jesuit institution!  
    I spent hours preparing that lecture, adding to what the O:E already knew 
about Francis Xavier and incorporating what I had learned about being missional 
as I had lived it for 23 years, as well as what I had observed methodology-wise in 
colleagues' lectures over the years.  I did a dry run of my 4 x 4 x4 with Harold.  
It was a disaster: it was artificial and I was  nervous--something I had never 
been in a public forum.  He reassured me that the 4 x 4 x4 was on target, that dry runs were indeed artificial, and not to worry about it.  I would do fine.  Well, I did.  So much so that Brian told me that it was the best lecture of the 5Academy.  I have my doubts about that.  But it did bolster my self-confidence as a capable colleague and allow me to strongly and successfully lock horns later that year with a colleague who tried to keep me in the shadows in Milwaukee at the first Religious Orders Consult we did, although I was the only nun on the team   She was amazed that I did well!  I no longer was.
    I am not surprised that Brian faced the end of his life with peace and 
openness.  I am deeply grateful that he had Jeannette and wonderful colleagues 
to share his journey toward that moment.  I am grateful to have shared a very 
small part of his own earthly journey that touched mine when I still needed the 
affirmation of someone "in authority."  He was a giant among us.
Lucille Tessier Chagnon
Wilmington, DE