Communio Calling
Communio Calling
Our Sacred Home
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In Season Five's first episode in the Year of Jubilee, host Gabrielle Sinclair is joined in dialogue with Elizabeth Carrillo OSB from the Benedictine Sisters of Mount St. Scholastica, Atchison, Kansas. In our Year of Stewardship, they engage in a nuanced conversation about our sacred home with awe and wonder while also looking at how we engage the lens of Benedictine stewardship.
Elizabeth brings to the conversation vast knowledge from her studies and her work with the Center for Deep Green Faith, which provides offerings that blend eco-theology with eco-spirituality grounded in the Christian tradition.
Welcome to Good Samaritan Education's podcast, Communio Calling. My name is Gabrielle Sinclair, and I'll be your host. In 2025, it is our fifth season of Communio Calling. And in this year of holy jubilee, Pope Francis has asked us to fan the flame of hope that has been given to us and help everyone to gain new strength and certainty by looking to a future with an open spirit, a trusting heart, and a far-sighted vision. So on that beautiful foundation in this year of Jubilee, as Pilgrims of Hope, we're going to dig into our formation theme for the year, stewardship through the lens of Conversatio and Justice. And we've got a special guest as usual to help us tell story and share in this way of life together. Joan Chittister is quoted as saying that the real value of stewardship lies in its equal concern for the care of past, the present, and the future. So today let's dig into all things stewardship with Elizabeth Corrillo. Elizabeth is from the Benedictine Sisters of Mount St. Scholastica in Acheson, Kansas. She has a Master of Arts degree in religion and the environment from the University of the South School of Theology in Tennessee. She is a board and staff member of the Centre of Deep Green Faith, which provides offerings that blend eco-theology with eco-spirituality grounded in the Christian tradition. She is an alumni of the Centre's Contemplation and Care for Creation certificate program and provides workshops and retreats at the Sophia Centre and elsewhere. And she's here in Australia with Judasira fighting retreats and workshops for the Good Samaritan community. So let's dig in, shall we? Welcome, Elizabeth. It is wonderful to have you part of our Good Samaritan Education podcast.
SPEAKER_01Well thank you. It's wonderful to be having this conversation with you. And welcome to Australia, of course.
SPEAKER_00Well, our communio calling podcast is very much about being grounded in story and understanding a part of this big connected universe and understanding the parts that we play in it and how we express our diversity and who we are. So if you don't mind, would you like to share some of your story, where you come from, your background, family, influences, and perhaps where you first encountered Benedict and Lyfe?
SPEAKER_01Hey, well, I'm originally from the southwest of the United States, the state of Arizona. And actually growing up, I was not introduced to faith background. I had been baptized out of cultural considerations, but not ever brought up in the church or any particular faith tradition. But even from my earliest years, I remember having such a connection with the natural world. And one of my favorite places as a small child was a small little Aleppo pine tree in our front yard that I would climb up and sit. It was my eagle's nest. And just the sense of being embraced in this beauty, but it's a central memory. So early background, I discovered I had a talent for music. My mom's family is rather musical. And so I had two cousins who were playing violin and cello, and their mother was a concert pianist. And saw my cousin Jessica playing the violin and thought, I would like to do that myself. So that kind of set me on a trajectory. Violin was my main calling. And I eventually ended up earning a scholarship to an arts high school in Southern California in the San Jacento Mountains. And there was a sense of sacred place. It's in the middle of the San Bernardino National Forest. And something about that particular landscape spoke with such a strong, evocative kind of voice that I remember having this sense of this underpinning and overarching goodness and somethingness that I didn't have any words for. And I remember at the time thinking, well, is it possible to be a spiritual atheist? You know, because the concepts of God that I kind of received from the corners and the edges was a very small God. Right. What I was experiencing bore no relationship to those smaller box-then definitions.
SPEAKER_00So that was moving away from home to go to the Yeah, it was a boarding school. Yeah, massive change. So tell me about the culture of your family then. Were you unique in your family in terms of seeing the sacred in nature?
SPEAKER_01I think probably my dad is the one who opened our eyes to the beauty of the natural world. Being suburban Phoenix, Arizona, you kind of had to look for wildness. Right. But he would take us out, you know, most every weekend to go exploring in the desert, secret hidden streams and water holes. And so I think it was from him, just by example and his own excitement and the wonder of discovery. And also he liked to garden, organic gardening. And I think from him, just that sense of being very careful and reverent. Remember him showing us how to tenderly transplant little seedlings so that their roots wouldn't be disturbed. And there was just such a gentleness and grace that was part of how he showed us how to do that. How beautiful.
SPEAKER_00Well, then you're off at boarding school. What does life look like from there?
SPEAKER_01Well, from there, I think I was trying to figure out what it was that I was experiencing, you know, in these encounters in the forest. That combined with you know my ongoing love of music. It was there that I also encountered sacred music. So Gregorian chant, medieval polyphony. And so that sense of sacred song and the mystery of that sort of had me searching as well. Where did this music come from? You know, what worldview produced something that is just stirring at my heart in ways I can't describe. And so, you know, a little bit of research in the library and I found the confessions of St. Augustine. And then after I graduated, I left the mountains of California and went to the downtown of Boston. Just a little different, but that curiosity about sacred music and an encounter with Byzantine chant. And once again, trying to track down where this came from. And you know, it's amazing the breadcrumbs that God kind of leaves through our journeys. But trying to discover about Byzantine chant, I found this journal of someone called Basil Pennington and his journey to the Holy Mountain, Mount Athos. And it was just a few steps removed from there that all of a sudden I was plunged into reading Thomas Merton and I found the rule of Saint Benedict. And this is all freshman year in college. That's some genuine freshman year. And I don't know what it was finding the rule of Saint Benedict and reading the prologue, and particularly chapter four, The Tools of Good Works. It just really spoke to me.
SPEAKER_00Now I'm assuming you weren't reading it straight. You had some beautiful commentary or something.
SPEAKER_01No, no, it was this weird, wild old, beat up. I don't know how many times it had probably been like rebound copy of the rule. It was just the rule straight up. That's a challenge. Wow, you get serious sprouting points for telling that. Well, I think that's the Holy Spirit. And then from there to Kansas at some point. Yeah. So I graduated, went back to Arizona, was teaching music at a junior college. And my brother was also working in the library at Yabapai Community College. And it's hard to believe there was ever such a time, but he came to me with the announcement we have this wonderful new thing in the library. You need to come check it out. It's the internet. Ah. So, you know, Julie, I went to see what this was all about. And one of the old like Alta Vista search engines or something. And type in anything you want to know anything about. And I confess I'm one of those people that hate what's your favorite type questions. Oh, because my mind just goes blank. Yeah, because there's so many things. So blank, what do I want to type? And then I just thought, monastery. And I'm like, interesting, where's that coming from? So I type it in, and the Abbey of the Genesee, the Cistercians in New York came up. And I'm like, oh, the Cistercians. Yeah. I remember reading everything I could in the Cistercian study series back in college. So I poked around their website, found the St. John's. And as we know, you can kind of click and go down random rabbit holes. And I ended up, for whatever reason, clicking on Kansas. No good reason to do that because I've always flown over Kansas to get from one coast to the other. Never been there before. Never been there before. But then I found they had a volunteer program. And you could come and you could volunteer and join them in prayers and work and service. And thought, well, I'm not doing anything this summer. My teaching through the college will be done for the semester. So I contacted Sister Rosemary Bertles, who was in charge of the program, and she said, sure, come out. You want to come out for eight weeks or so? It was the summer of 97.
SPEAKER_00The rest is history in some respects.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so after my volunteer time, I realized that my heart had found a home, even if my mind was trying to catch up with it, and which also meant I needed to get caught up on my sacraments. So I duly went through RCIA. May have mentioned that I had been baptized Catholic, but not confirmed. So that was the first step. Doing some temp work and playing in several orchestras, things like that, helping work off some of those student loans. Then finally approached the vocation director who I had kind of been avoiding in my volunteer years. You know, I didn't want anyone getting too excited.
SPEAKER_00I would have that conversation with me already.
SPEAKER_01But I realized it was time. So then I entered, and when I finished the early stages of initial formation, I was going to go back into music, but at the time I had stained an injury. So there was kind of a little career path change there. And so I went back to school for theology and then certification and psychology with the thought that I would, you know, go into high school and then teach religion and psych. And so I did that. And then when I graduated, there were no religion and psych openings, you know, available. So I thought, well, now what? So I drew back on my time back in Arizona at the community college where I'd been teaching music for, you know, little pay, but one of the good perks was you got free credit hours. So at that time I had dived into field biology and all sorts of ecology classes. I took as many bio classes as I could. When I was thinking, well, now I have to teach something, I drew back on that and got my certification to teach middle and high school science. So then I went in and taught earth and life science, seventh and eighth grade, for several years.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, lovely.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So I eventually was called back to the monastery to help with liturgy, did that for a while, and then we had a change of leadership. And there was, you know, this thought of how do we encourage the imagination of our younger members? And is there anything that they might want to study that they haven't had the opportunity to? The theology and my love of environment and biology, that kind of was all starting to weave together.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So I did a little looking on the internet and found there was a certificate program in contemplation and care for creation. And I thought, well, this is intriguing. And as I looked at the materials on the website, I thought this sounds exactly like what I've been looking for. It's steep insights of early Christianity and coming from monastic tradition and traditionally Christian, but very expansive. So, you know, we're reading Augustine and Elizabeth Johnson. So I thought, this is wonderful. There's no having to reinvent the wheel. These people look like there's already something really great happening here. So I contacted them, and at the time, the Center for Deep Green Faith was connected with the School of Theology in Suwanee, Tennessee, at the University of the South. So kind of through that connection, I found out about this master's in religion and the environment. And so I ended up doing both programs concurrently. Right. Anyway, the academic meaty piece of it, but then the certificate program of contemplation care for creation has been so useful because a big piece of that is this living in an icon program, which brings that nature meditation, nature lexio. You have concrete practices for how do we develop this felt sense of being part of the kinship of creation? How do we rekindle that sacramental imagination that everything at every time and place sparks with the divine fire?
SPEAKER_00And here you are in bringing some of that to us here and helping us kind of navigate that space as well. It's been absolute delight. Well, you've kind of led us to the question I wanted to ask. I guess what was the catalyst? You talked about a bit already at the green, deep green, what's it called? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So there's an organization called the Center for Deep Green Penning. That's such an illuminating name, but I would love to know more. Yeah, well, and the concept is that, you know, so many times, you know, our eco-theology is sort of on the side, green team, but it doesn't quite make it into the core life of a religious community or a parish. It's always kind of like an optional fun extra. It kind of stays at the recycling stage rather than wait, we are part of this vast creation. We've been given a mandate to engage creatively, responsibly. So the deep green is how do we bring that so that it seeps in to everything and it's not seen as some sort of satellite environmental concern. And I think kind of one of the things I was trying to share is that what we're called to do is nothing new, it's not a reaction necessarily. Something we've been called to, something we've been made for, reclaiming our own dignity at the same time. As we recognize the integrity of creation, we are ennobling ourselves.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. Sometimes I think of it in terms of Moses and the golden calf. Like we've gone after the flashy kind of things, built all these extra idols, and whereas we need to be called back to what we were made for, what we are part of and is part of us in the fullness of creations. I love that deep green aspect of being brought into the center rather than it just on the side.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. And so much of the work we do through the center is what we've termed eco-catechesis. You know, to go into parishes or work with organizations that are trying to figure out how to communicate with, you know, the parishioners or other publics about something more than recycling. How do you get beneath just the activity to the deep motivation that given fire by the sense of kinship and communion?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's awakening a new level of consciousness so that it becomes second nature, even when you're in the supermarket, not having to do the research on the spot, but it's I know what products and places these things have come from, or I know where I can shop the ethical, bringing that into the center rather than it being something that it's like, oh, it's too hard.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And some of that's a piece of education, but it's also you've got to have the willingness to put the work in for it to become second nature.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Kind of that sense of the worthiness of objects, the holiness of human-created things. You're talking about looking down the long lines of production and you know, where did this come from? Who made it? And does it speak of gospel values? Yeah, does it have exploitation and extraction as part of its journey?
SPEAKER_00Well, good Samaritan education, every year we have a formation theme that we build resources on, build discussion, build our awareness of. And they're all steeped in Benedictine values. This year we're looking at stewardship, but knowing that none of the Benedictine values stand a lot in isolation, it's paired with through the lens of conversatio and justice. As we're trying to unpack and talk about a nuanced stewardship, we're trying to let go of the baggage of unhelpful overtones of anthropomorphic-centered kind of way of being. So, how do you see a way of approaching a reconciled concept of stewardship so that we can connect and understand all as keen?
SPEAKER_01That's interesting because part of my capstone project was looking back at the rule of Saint Benedict, and I wanted to see where are those green trajectories or what lens can I bring to the rule so that it can, you know, speak even more clearly about this issue of kinship and stewardship. And as I looked, I didn't reject the kind of the traditional lens of stewardship, but I thought I think there's a different angle. And the the angle that I took, and then I found a couple others actually had already done this, was that of humility. You know, it's the longest chapter in the rule, it's in the center of the rule, and humility is basically kind of synonymous with pattern of Christ's own action, that that's complete self-gift, service of the other for the life of the other. And so I thought, okay, humility also is so relational. It makes space for the other, it cherishes the other. And so instead of the stewardship as the main lens, I thought, well, what is it to join our humble, self-giving Christ who stands in the midst of creation, through whom all creation came into being, and who has, through the resurrection, inaugurated the new heavens and the new earth. And what is it like to be with Christ in the depth of creation? And I thought, it's one of humble service. That's kind of at least that's how I understand stewardship, is that it is that the care, the responsibility, and the power entrusted to us, but it's certainly a power that is always from below and not over, even the sense of not being, you know, think of the kingship of Christ, not king over, but king for. Yeah. You know, the ruler who is there to ensure the flourishing and that all the systems are working in harmony and that there is justice, a true peace founded on justice.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, one of the things in taking a deeper dive myself this year for stewardship. When I started writing about it in preparation at the end of last year, kind of had this mantra in my head of moving beyond stewardship to kin, but it's not about moving beyond. It's actually more embracing a full of reality of what stewardship is. That embraces kin. It's not letting go of all of that nuance, but it's embracing more, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think it's expanding that concept and it's putting keeping God at the center, so it's not human needs at the center of stewardship, but God is the one we are stewarding this.
SPEAKER_00So from your research and your first-hand experience in having these conversations deeply with other people, what would you say some of the blockages individuals or communities have in engaging in a more transformative way? Collecting stuff or just a deeper awareness of their place?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'm thinking my own community. Through Renewal Vatican II, there was such an embrace of social justice and serving the needs of the poorest of the poor and raising up voices that hadn't been heard. Our community was and still is so active in that sense. And then bringing some of like the concepts of justice for the earth and bringing in the voices of the rest of creation. I think it's been a little difficult. And where I've been more successful is this, you know, I think I was trying to share some of this on the retreat, that sense of expanding those circles of concern and the circles of kinship. But I think it still can be a challenge. I think some of the ways that we can get beyond just sort of the we have to recycle and oh, it's a pain, that it has to be a sense of identification with.
SPEAKER_00I think in my experience, our communities they're very good at programs, you know, initiatives, but sometimes that expanding it beyond a more holistic approach to all things is where there's barriers. And it's a difficult conversation or difficult thing to expand those circles of concern. So it's not a tick-a-box. Yeah, to move it from just the performative sort of to-do list. But not even that, because I think that their interaction with programs and initiatives are genuine. It just hasn't often, and obviously, some individuals definitely have tipped that kind of more highly conscious awareness into their everyday. But how do we tip that edge of a broader engagement?
SPEAKER_01I know your community probably is on this as well, but the Lud Odyssey Action Platform. So that's something that we've been working on our own plans. I think presenting that sort of comprehensive, very holistic view has been helpful for our community. Because sometimes I think our initiative seems very scatter shot, but this showed that wait, no, we're about the single thing with our different gifts. And I think using the language of dual cries of the poor and of the earth has been helpful because sometimes it seemed like there was this dichotomy. Well, people are in so much need. Why are we putting our energy over here in the environment? It seemed like it was this dualistic, you couldn't do both at the same time. So I think the language we've been given that no, these are actually very intertwined and so interconnected. As to you know responding to one is responding to the other, and vice versa.
SPEAKER_00We, as Good Sport and Education, we signed up to the Love Tess Action Platform when it first came out. We had all this momentum, and then for whatever reason it fell away. But this year we're reigniting that, and actually at the end of this month, we're relaunching that as a way to help guide schools through that program and help them along what that might look like for them. And I think that language will be helpful because you know schools are busy places, they have so many masters that they have to attend to. The model of education is particular and they have to serve the regulations or the curriculum for all those sort of things. And so we're always conscious of adding another expectation on them. But at the same time, this is something that they would acknowledge they want to do better anyway. So hopefully in the next little while, we'll be able to help navigate with them a way of actioning that more holistic vision using that as a tool moving forward. Fantastic.
SPEAKER_01I'd love to see what you come up with. So don't I borrow?
SPEAKER_00Well, I have no idea what it's going to look like yet. And I think this first year will be significantly about a consciousness, not necessarily being able to write up massive plans or anything, but really raising a consciousness that this is the journey we want to take together.
SPEAKER_01We'll see where we end up. I think it's so important, especially with children, to keep the Kindle of Wonder alive. Hopefully they still have it by the time you get to them. Because I think it is such a natural thing to, in childhood, to feel a sense of connection and a sense of oneness with the world around you. In my nature Lexio, often people will come back and you know, someone will say, Huh you said, you know, take off your shoes. So I did. When I took off my shoes and put my feet in the grass, I was a little girl back in New Orleans. And I remember how, you know, the earth smelled and the wind felt, and just kind of a sense of homecoming. I so I think whatever experiences we can do to kind of rekindle that sense of homecoming, that will go very far as far as impelling people to lasting action.
SPEAKER_00I like that sense of homecoming because I think so many of the Australian population is urban. They're quite removed from nature and the cycles of nature. We live in you know manufactured environments a lot. So that coming home to create is a beautiful concept.
SPEAKER_01And even in the smallest ways. I remember with some seventh and eighth graders. For a while I worked as a pair with special needs seventh and eighth graders, and one of their science projects was just growing the bean seed. And I remember one of them, he was so tender with this, and we had to dissect it. So you know, we were looking at the small plant growing within the seed. He was just entranced by how delicate the leaf was. And the reverence with which he held it just, you know, it stayed with me. And I thought, oh, how can we continue to keep that alive? Maybe just the simple thing of growing and nurturing something. That's it. Even a windowsill garden, you know, you don't have to go out and farm it.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. I remember someone saying to me once that one of the a couple of ways to get over jet lag is to literally ground your feet in creation, like ground your feet, spend time connected to the earth or have a swim, preferably in the ocean. But if you can't do the ocean, so it's just grounding yourself in the elements, really, to I don't reconfigure your body back and grounding to place.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Which I think is a beautiful way of connecting.
SPEAKER_01Well, even as you're saying, with our technological world that we create around us, we can be so disconnected from where we are. You know, our place becomes interchangeable, places become identical. You know, if we're just looking at our phones or plugged in somehow. But yeah, I think this recognizing the specific beauty of place, getting to know who's here, who's here, even that sense of who. There's a lovely book, Brading Sweet Grass by a Pottawatomi woman, a Native American woman, and she's also a PhD plant biologist, college professor. But she talks about as she was reclaiming her native language, learning the grammar of animacy, and seeing that in the Native American languages, many of them they don't have like an it personal pronoun. It's always a very personal pronoun with a sense of who-ness, even if it's for a tree or a rock or an inlet of water, it always has a personal pronoun. And she just describes how beautifully it changes your world when nothing is an it. You know, everything is a who has kind of this sense of personhood about it. She says, if your oak tree is truly a person, you think twice about chopping it down, or even if you still do, it's with a different level of respect. Yeah, you recognize it's much more just than the number of board feet you can get out of it. Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Definitely in our country, and I suspect across the world, we have a lot we can learn from the indigenous people of place. I mean, even in our Benedictine tradition, place is so important that the stability of place as well as stability of mind and person. Our Australian First Nations people, kin is how they engage with all of creation. Country is for them the earth, the air, the sky. It's the ground beneath their feet, everything that grows in that place. But it is also the people that come on to that place. There's traditions of welcome to countries and now acknowledgments of countries, so that we are always connecting somehow to place. And the Australian colonial history that we're trying to unpack is learning a lot from that deeper ancient wisdom of this place.
SPEAKER_01And how important it is that we protect places that still have more of their original voice. Coming from Arizona where there is so much wilderness and being in Kansas where there's so much that has been put under the plow is difficult. But I find myself trying to find those little corners of wild, extant land. And there still are little corridors of it, even nearby. But just the experience of going from a place where its original voice has been co-opted. You know, it is no longer dreaming the dreams it would originally have dreamt. You know, it's dreaming soy and corn beans now. But along, you know, some bluff areas of the Missouri River, there's some older forest that has never been plowed. And it has such a different feeling. It speaks so strongly, you know, it has its own voice. What a gift it is that we still even have some bits of land like that. And what can we do to protect it?
SPEAKER_00Yes, unfortunately, that's an ongoing battle in many places around the world.
SPEAKER_01Protecting what's left for all of us. That those places are speaking a unique revelation that no other place can, no other creatures can.
SPEAKER_00Well, thank you for so much for sharing your story and your work and coming here to Australia to share all your wisdom with us and to help us along our journey. Each time I interview someone, I have one final question without notice, but it's not too scary, I promise. What is your favorite quote from the rule of Benedict? Now it might be your favorite of all time, it might be just the one that's speaking to you at this moment or holding you close at the moment.
SPEAKER_01And why? I think it would have to be the let us prefer nothing to the love of Christ, and may He bring us all together to everlasting life. The love of Christ that's poured upon us, the love of Christ that we're called to enter into, and the fact that we're being led, all of us, that inclusive community of creation, all of us, into everlasting life. That is what gives my heart hope and joy. Thank you. Thank you for sharing your story and being so generous with your time today. Thank you. This has been a pleasure.
SPEAKER_00Well, I hope you've enjoyed my conversation with Elizabeth as we embark on this year of stewardship. I love the concept Elizabeth briefly touched on. This idea of coming home to creation. Perhaps rekindling an affection for a long-distance kin is something we need to do. Our society is always talking about the importance of belonging. Perhaps if we re-examined our belonging to place and creation, we might make a deeper connection or care of our common home. Maybe in the next couple of days ahead you can make a conscious effort to be just in creation, to have a little coming home, take your shoes off and connect. Rekindle and fan that flame of home. So along this way of life and in faith, may your day provide hospitality that is wide, that you may embark on a stewardship of embrace. That we may not pass by on the other side, but go and do likewise.
