Missing Sister Marilyn
By Susan Flansburg
I lost a great friend recently. Sister Marilyn Ring was warm, welcoming, generous, wise and loving. She never said no to a cup of coffee and a chat. She was what another Benedictine friend calls an Amma. Mother.
Sister Marilyn taught me the value of presence. Whenever I was with her, I felt like I was the most important person in the whole world. Like I was really being heard.
I don’t know how to honor her, other than to share who she was. So here’s a vocation story I wrote about her a few years back. I hope you enjoy it!
Coffee Shops? Definitely. Africa? No Way!
It was halfway through the summer of 1948. Marilyn Ring had graduated from high school and now was watching as her friends prepared to leave for secretarial school, marriage and the convent.
Despite an active faith life that had included daily Mass and a fabulous Catholic youth group experience at Peoria’s Academy of Our Lady, nothing called to her. Then, just before graduation, the youth center priest had taken Marilyn aside to tell her he thought she might have a vocation.
“I was dumbfounded,” Sister Marilyn says now, sipping her latte at a cozy coffeehouse. She’s taking a break from her work as campus minister at nearby Augustana College. We are splitting a blueberry muffin.
“I’d seen the pamphlets with the girl on the phone that said, Is God calling you?,” she says. “But those words hit me like a ton of bricks. I trusted them. I thought, Maybe that’s why I don’t know what I want to do when I graduate.
“I asked God, Are you really calling me? I even knelt by my bedside.”
Marilyn and a friend visited a cloistered community that was “out in the middle of nowhere. My friend loved the silence, the all-night vigils. I was looking at my watch, thinking, Get me out of here!”
About a month later, Marilyn visited an apostolic community.
“It was way too big,” she says. “Also in the middle of nowhere. I did not enjoy the isolation or the huge buildings. The only other kind of religious community I knew of was missionary orders. I didn’t want to go to Africa!
“Then I learned about the Benedictine community in Nauvoo. What a difference from the other places! It was a small community, the Sisters were friendly. They invited us to lunch. They really wanted to get to know us. I liked it. And they weren’t going to send me to Africa. I thought, I’ll think about this later.”
Marilyn went home to begin working at Caterpillar. She wrote to Father Carton, who had since moved to Washington, about her experiences. The Benedictine community might do, she said, but she wasn’t ready to enter yet. She’d wait a year and then think about it again.
He wrote back immediately. Fine, he said, but if you’re not ready yet, you should spend the year getting ready. He suggested that Marilyn stop dating, cease going to parties, take up daily Mass. Marilyn was unnerved.
“I thought, I can’t do this alone,” she says. “I might as well go now. My mother didn’t approve but went along with it. My father thought I needed to get it out of my system. I guess we were all a little bit wrong. Because from the moment I got myself unpacked, I knew I was finally where I belonged. I felt such peace.”
Cup and saucer have been pushed to the side. Sister Marilyn needs to get to the office. It’s already been a long morning – weekday Lauds begins at 6:30, followed by Eucharist. Students and colleagues will keep her busy until Vespers at 5:00, followed by dinner with the Sisters. It’s Community Night tonight, which means she will join the others after dinner to do puzzles, play games and enjoy conversation. It’s an evening she looks forward to every week.
“I tell my students that life itself is a risk,” Sister Marilyn says as she pulls on her coat.
“It’s a risk whenever you say yes, to college, to marriage, to religious life. We receive God’s call in so many ways. This way was certainly right for me. It’s been wonderful to live with a community of loving and prayerful women serving God's people in so many different ways.”
Sister Marilyn died September 15, 2019.