Franciscan Spirituality Center
920 Market Street
La Crosse, WI 54601
608-791-5295

Steve Spilde: Welcome. I’m excited today [because] my guest is Sister Karen Lueck. She has experience as an educator, as a pastoral counselor, [and] as an author. She has been involved in leadership of the FSPA community, most recently serving as president. It’s my pleasure to introduce today Sister Karen Lueck.

Sister Karen Lueck: Thank you. I’m glad to be here, too.

Steve: As I often begin with guests, Sister Karen, could you tell me about your family’s religious tradition. Let’s get that grounded so we kind of know where you’re coming from.

Sister Karen: My family is Catholic, [and is] very grounded in being Catholic. We were from a small town, a German town, in Iowa. Everybody in the town was Catholic, except a stray Lutheran here or there. The town and the church were pretty much one, so everybody was both. We were very dedicated Catholics, I would say – just being very, very much Catholic.

Steve: When you were young, how would you have described the word “God?”

Sister Karen: I think it was always, for me, it was hard to do because I think I knew that God was somebody who really cared about me at some level. But what I heard from homilies and from the church a lot of time was that I was a sinner [and] I was bad. Therefore, the only way I would be able to get to close to God is by confessing my sins and being this perfect person. I think that messed with my head and my heart for a long, long, long, long time, and it still comes up at times, I think. On one hand I was very proud of being Catholic. I was very happy [and] was inspired by the rituals and that kind of thing. But it didn’t feed my soul in other ways.

Steve: People who know me know that I’m a big fan of Brene Brown, and I find her content on shame to be very helpful. But I know that you were studying shame at a deep level long before Brene Brown came along.

Sister Karen: Yes. I could have been the first Brene Brown. My professor said I should publish my work, but I never did.

Steve: Society wasn’t quite ready for it at the time.

Sister Karen: That’s it. That’s right.

Steve: Can you connect some of that work you did later in your academic study to some of those experiences you had as a kid, because it sounds like that was ambivalent. There were good things about that background, but there are also things that weren’t helpful.

Sister Karen: As I went through life, starting in my 20s or probably before that, [I was] always feeling a sense that I wasn’t good enough. As I look back now, I do say that a lot of it came from the religious beliefs or what we were hearing in church. I spent a long time – and at times I still need to revisit that – working on that shame because I kept saying to myself, ‘No, it can’t be that. I want to be feeling like I love myself, and that other people love me, too.’ I spent a lot of time doing therapy, reading books about shame. Then, like you said, eventually going to graduate school and having that be my main focus to look at especially women and their psychology and spirituality or theology. [I] therefore got into the feminist movement more, again feeling like going into that it would sever me from the church because I knew that that wasn’t something the church was really advocating – then or now, probably. I think I had to do that for myself to feel like I was OK. And as I grew through that, my relationship with God also changed because all of a sudden, now I was a good person, so God must be loving me all the time because that goodness is inherent in me, and it’s inherent in others, too. I started seeing myself as a good person and God loving me. It’s all combined, and to this day I am still learning how that is – what does that mean when I believe that I’m good, [and] that other people are basically good and how that contributes. I’ve come to believe or know that God is with me all the time. God is the one who is loving me all the time – even sometimes when I’m not able to do that. That’s a real comforting thing, and it’s something I think that other people need to know. That’s why I’m glad Brene Brown is doing a lot of her work. It’s bringing it to the ordinary people about how we are good inside. We have to fight against anything that tells us that we’re not.

Steve: When you were young, that message … Certainly I know myself, [and] I know a lot of people heard the negative elements of that message. But part of what made it so confusing is that there were also positives. We were hearing these mixed messages that you’re loved [and] you’re good, but also [that] you’re bad [and] you’re evil. Which is it? Where did you experience the positive side to that? When or where did you feel closest to God when you were younger, or feel the love of God?

Sister Karen: I think even though my family was not demonstrative – we’re staunch Germans, and so [we’re] not as demonstrative with love – I did feel centered and loved in that way. I don’t know if I could have expressed it at that time, but I think where I felt close to God, not know that that was really spirituality at the time … I go outside sometimes and go out in our pasture that we had a creek running through there. I would just sit there and just be aware of nature. And sometimes just laying on the grass in the sun, and with my face to the sun, feeling peaceful and whole. I think later on when I was more of a teenager, I remember going into church sometimes when there was no service or anything going on, but just sitting there in the quiet and feeling something [and] feeling like, I don’t know what it was, but I think it was in awe. I don’t even know if I could have defined that as God at the time, although I think I did believe that. That’s where I found God, and where I still find God today mainly is in awe of nature – sitting in nature, walking. Now I find it in journaling now that I know that what comes out of my mouth is really hopefully what God has already put there. Every morning I ask God to let me speak God’s words. That has brought me closer, too.

Steve: Where did you become acquainted with the Franciscan perspective? Was it just simply a matter of meeting Sisters over time [and] learning deeper what their perspective was? Or were you really drawn to a Franciscan perspective?

Sister Karen: At first, I think I was really close to the Franciscan Sisters, our community Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration. I have two aunts who were in the community, and so we would go up to La Crosse to visit them, so I was very familiar with the community. I was taught by them for 11 years; my last year we transferred high schools. I knew them, and I felt comfortable with them. When it was time to join the convent, then that’s where I was going to go. But ironically, at that time – I joined in the late 60s – Franciscanism was only starting to come to … There was more knowledge of that. Before that, I don’t think a lot of the Sisters even focused on Franciscanism a lot. But where it really struck me was when I was invited to go to Assisi with the leadership pilgrimage when I was in leadership the first time. Going there and going where Saint Francis walked and finding out what he said and how he loved God and God loved Francis, I remember sitting on a mountain there and saying, ‘I think I am Franciscan.’ Before that, I had probably been in the community for 25, 30 years already and knowing in my head that I was Franciscan, but here, all of a sudden now knowing in my heart that I was Franciscan. It just struck me that this is what it means to be Franciscan. I think it also went along with all the work I had done on shame and goodness to recognize my goodness, and to realize that that is what Franciscanism is: to recognize that all creation is good.

In the Middle Ages, when there were debates going on, Franciscans lost out in a lot of ways because the dominant message became that we’re sinners – that’s the basic thing. Francis always said everybody is good, and he saw that in everything – in nature, in people. I think that’s where I first really realized that I was Franciscan, that it wasn’t that I got it from being in the community. It was that I was that originally.

Steve: To paraphrase, what I’m hearing is that somewhere inside you, you had this desire to find this source of goodness. It was kind of a pleasant surprise [to discover that], “That’s in the tradition I’ve already committed to.” That’s at the core of Francis’ message.

Sister Karen: Yes. Somehow I stumbled into it, right?