Franciscan Spirituality Center
920 Market Street
La Crosse, WI 54601

Steve Spilde: Welcome. My guest today is Sister Jolynn Brehm. She is a Sister with the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration. I’ve been blessed to know Jolynn for many years. She was a longtime supervisor in our Spiritual Direction Preparation Program. Welcome, Jolynn.

Jolynn Brehm: Thank you. Thank you.

Steve: Today we are joining by Zoom, and this is kind of a new experience for both of us. But it’s a testament that even old dogs can learn new tricks.

Jolynn: Exactly. We’ll either prove it or disprove it.

Steve: Sounds good. Sounds good. So tell me, Jolynn, how long have you been a Sister?

Jolynn: Well, I entered the community in 1954. So actually, that’s about 66 years ago. This year I would be celebrating my 61st year of profession. It’s been an interesting and wonderful long life.

Steve: Amazing. Tell me where you grew up, and tell me where the desire to become a sister, how that evolved.

Jolynn: I was born and raised on a dairy farm in Colby, Wisconsin, in 1939, and I was the first liveborn member of my family. The sister who was to be a year older than me, my mom and dad’s first child, was stillborn. So when I came along, I think they kind of favored me. Obviously they were happy I was alive, so that was my experience as the firstborn of my family. My family heritage, which is very interesting that I’ve kind of thought about with these questions and this opportunity … But I realize that on both sides of my family – paternal and maternal – we are four generations of farmers. So that is very significant, and it has allowed me now to really delve into why it seems my genetics are deeply, deeply grounded in the land. Everything about nature, everything about creation, everything about how I relate to life, to people, to living is all pretty much in the framework of anything that has to do with nature and creation. It would be understandable because having great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents who worked the land, they understood how to live with the land.

Steve: Were all of your relatives kind of around the farm there in Colby?

Jolynn: Yes, they were. I would say probably within maybe a one-hour radius we had at least five or six different homesteaded farms in both my father’s side and my mother’s side of the family was near Auburndale, Wisconsin. That’s the central Wisconsin area – all the same kind of area. I was led to think about religious life when I entered Saint Mary’s Catholic School in Colby, Wisconsin. The principal at that time was Sister Alice McMullen. For some reason or other, we already made a connection when I was already in the first grade. She would let me go over to be with my friends or whatever. Then she left Saint Mary’s in Colby when I graduated from the eighth grade. But the year of eighth grade, she, after afternoon recess, would stand behind my desk since I was tall and in the last seat, she would stand behind there and pray a prayer to the Sacred Heart. Then we also had a family in Colby who had three sisters as FSPAs. The dad invited some of us to go and visit La Crosse, Wisconsin Saint Rose Convent, which I did. From there on, I just sensed from Alice McMullen that I admired who she was, who the sisters were, and so she kind of facilitated my entering. I also had an aunt, a sister of my mother’s, who was also a member of the community. So I had a connection with FSPA, and that’s where I entered.

Steve: The Sister would stand behind you and pray to the Sacred Heart.

Jolynn: Yes.

Steve: For those who are not Catholic, please explain what that means.

Jolynn: That way of taking time out in our school day to have some quiet and to be attentive to the idea that we weren’t just who we were, that God was an entity in our lives. And as eighth graders, I don’t think we had any clue about what that really meant. But in our Catholic tradition, we have a whole, whole long history of people who created ways of connecting with the divine or God or that entity. So we have a long, long history of many, many prayers. The Sacred Heart Prayer has to do with connecting with Jesus. Jesus revealed in his earthly experience how to be a human being, how to be present to people. He really showed that he had a heart for all of humanity. His heart was really the focus for a lot of people to feel connected to our God. So for her to call upon that aspect of Jesus to bless us as kids and to help our lives be better. Somehow or another, that touched my heart.

Steve: She was just praying that you would be guided? Or that you would be guided specifically to become a Sister in La Crosse?

Jolynn: It was just a general prayer for all of us in our class. And it just so happened that because I was right in front of her – she was right behind me – somehow or another it felt we were more connected simply because we were that close in space to each other. That’s how I sensed that it felt almost like it was a personal prayer for me.

Steve: Nice. So then you went to La Crosse, and that’s where you went to high school?

Jolynn: I was a sophomore in high school when I entered the community. And at that time, yes, we had Saint Rose High School, which was located in the north portion of the Viterbo University building. That was our way of finishing our high school, plus we also went to summer school to make the process happen faster, and to give us something to keep us out of trouble. We went up to Modena, Wisconsin, where we had a school for the Native Americans, the Ojibwa Tribe up there. We helped out in the summer. We helped out with the farming that was there. We helped with creating the things to get ready for the school year, and we just basically had a feeling for one another, and kind of a sense of community.

Steve: I know you. I know that nature and connection to the earth, to the universe, is an important part of your spirituality. And it sounds like it was being formed in you already in some of these summer experiences.

Jolynn: Definitely, definitely. And because we were that plot of land that was farmland as well, we would talk about our farming background. I think at that time there were seven or eight of us in that process of needing the summer school, and as far as I know all of us were from farms. Some were from Iowa, so of course we would often talk about our farms and our families and things like that. I think it always entered into how we appreciated even the opportunity to work up there on the farm.

Steve: Talk about your experience with native spirituality as a result of that experience. Were you able to pick up any of that?

Jolynn: Not at that time specifically. But I’ve the privilege of ministering in the Woodruff Minocqua area, which is eight miles from Lac du Flambeau, Wisconsin, which is also the Ojibwa Native Reservation. Through the years that I was up there – about 30 years I lived up in the Minocqua Woodruff area and worked up there – I became acquainted with several of the people from Lac du Flambeau. We would have book discussions, we would have conversations. And one of the things I did was when one of the women especially from Lac du Flambeau would offer programs through the technical institute where I went in Minocqua, I would always attend. There was one very specific time when, Rochelle was her name, she offered the way in which the rituals of the native people were so significant, and we participated in some of those rituals. That really grounded me in the fact that you know, my religious tradition and my spirituality, we have a lot of rituals, so there was a link. It felt like a link between how rituals in their tradition, in their life, and in mine, rituals almost always had something to do with something from nature. Either stones or grasses or incense or sage or oils or animals – something like that.

Steve: Is it fair to say those experiences learning the native perspective on spirituality helped you to have a better understanding of your own Catholic tradition?

Jolynn: I would say yes, because what it allowed me to do was to say, ‘OK, what is the underlying way that all peoples are invited to be aware of the greater dynamic in their lives? How are all peoples invited to sense that spirit world?’ So when I sensed how the native people were so in touch with the creator and everything that was created and how all of earth was gift, I began to realize that in our Catholic tradition, yes, we too – all from way, way back when – use earth items as ways of entering into a ritual that seemed to connect us with the divine. So it felt like that two of them together. Also then, during that same time, I began to be much more attentive to, what are some of the other traditions? What are some of the other kinds of ways people connect with the divine, or that essence, if you will. I heard some things about the Buddhist tradition. I heard some things about other cultures, the Spanish-speaking people. I think connecting with the native people opened my eyes to, how broad is and how fundamental is ritual? And for me, how fundamental is ritual using things of nature as the visuals or the ways to connect?

Steve: Can you give me some examples of that within the Catholic tradition?

Jolynn: In the Catholic tradition, in many of the Old Testament stories, the ways that some of the people understood that God was present to them was usually in some walking that they did. And very often there were stones, or if there is a prophet who realized he is sensing God’s presence, he would lay down and put his head on the stone. It seemed to me that was a way of that. We have the whole reality of way back in the Book of Kings, the leader of that day was encouraged to feed thousands of people with minimal, minimal. It was the use of wheat in the bread and the wine of the grapes. In our Catholic tradition, that particular piece of bread and wine from the earth is very central to our wa

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