A Walk of Faith
By Heidi Bright Parales
Heidi is the author of "Hidden Voices: Biblical Women and Our Christian Heritage" (Smyth & Helwys). She holds a master's degree in theology and owns a small publishing business in Loveland, Ohio, USA.

When Sister Pat Brockman was diagnosed with two types of breast cancer in 1994, she did not fall into despair, plead or bargain with God or aggressively seek treatment. She did, however, feel overwhelmed and asked for prayers from her family, her Ursuline sisters and her friends in the New Jerusalem community.

"The lump was so large, I thought I probably should prepare for my death," she recalls. "The cancer experience led me to look death in the face. My favorite way to deal with that is to call death 'sister death.' It doesn't feel depressing or maudlin. It feels like a grace."

She refused surgery, chemotherapy and radiation treatments. "I'd just seen it destroy people more than help them," she explains. Only after a message came through a dream of her Ursuline superior did she decide to accept radiation treatments.

The treatments didn't help; they only knocked out her immune system, she says. So, she decided to try an herbal therapy. "I didn't do anything to force a cure, to claim it. I was probably asking for healing, but I don't even remember doing that."

Her continued prayerful devotion to God and acceptance of her disease soon led to a miracle. "I went to bed one night, and as I lay there, I began to feel this surge of electric energy through my body," she recalls. "I was just there, kind of in my fear, but resting. And there was this gentle vibration through my whole body. This vibration was a wonderful, gentle thing, very consoling. I finally fell asleep, and anytime I awakened in the night, it was going on in my body. It went on all night."

The next morning, she felt a deep sense that she was cured. "That night says to me that Jesus' human healing power was a directing of love energy toward people. I can only conclude that I was the focus of wonderful prayer. I feel like it moved through my body, and that's really when the healing happened. That was a deeply moving experience of God's presence and faithfulness to me."

The mystery of God working through the dreams and prayers of communities already had been the primary focus of Brockman's adult life. After finishing high school, she prepared to study drama at a local university. God interfered. "All of the sudden it just came, like a whoosh of clarity," she recalls. "I was called to give my life to the Lord as a nun. It was turning me 180 degrees from what I thought I was going to do."

Brockman joined the Ursuline Sisters of Brown County and began teaching. After she became principal of Ursuline Academy, she received a letter one day from a Franciscan priest asking if he and some high school students could come to the academy on Friday nights to pray. She invited them and began attending their meetings.

"I was curious, and inspired by the Rev. Richard Rohr's very scripture-based teachings," she recalls. "He had A kind of inner power about the Spirit. Working under Richard, who himself was very inspired, I had a great change of heart, a daring to move out of my intellectual self into this place of God dwelling in the church and in us as human beings, (the way) that Jesus came to model for us."

During one prayer meeting, a girl who had been sitting next to Brockman got up and staggered over to Rohr and whispered something. Now wide-eyed, Rohr said, "I think you'd better tell this yourself." Foreshadowing Brockman's own miracle cure, this girl had just received the first of three healings from cerebral palsy. "That kind of event, of which there were several, were like God being in my face," recalls Brockman. "I had to drop maybe a more educated view of God's action and be open to being swept by the Spirit of God."

When Brockman's term as principal ended, she joined Rohr and his group while continuing to maintain her membership with the Ursuline Sisters. Her involvement in what became the New Jerusalem community continued for nearly 30 years. "The experience of community was the most profound," she says, "even though I had lived in community and loved formal community life long before that time."

Those rich years helped solidify Brockman's spirituality, she says. Both the Ursulines and the New Jerusalem communities strengthened her foundation in the contemplative life and deepened the Scripture in her heart. During a time of struggle within New Jerusalem, Brockman recalls, "A young woman came to me and said, 'I had a dream and I don't think it's mine. I think it's a dream for the community." This gave Brockman the courage, then, to say, "What if Christian communities dared to dream for the life of their communities?"

This question propelled Brockman into an odyssey that led both to her doctorate and a new ministry. It dovetailed her fascination with dreams and her love for community. Attending Union Institute of Cincinnati, Brockman applied psychologist Carl Jung's principle of groups dreaming for one another to groups of people intentionally and deeply connected. Her research resulted in the book, "The Community Dream: Awakening the Christian Tribal Consciousness" (Woven Word Press, 2000).

Following her doctorate, Brockman continued doing dreamwork, spiritual direction and community facilitation for individuals and groups. She left New Jerusalem about two years ago when she and others experienced a sense of completion in what the Lord had called them to do there as a community.

Now 74 years old, her life focus is shifting again. She recently arrived in Geneva, Switzerland, to direct AN intern program for Franciscans International, a human rights organization at the United Nations. "I guess at the end of your life, you gather all the prayer and experiences and movements of the Lord and focus them in a way that's helpful to a younger generation, which I'm quite excited about," she says. "These are wonderful years to be and to do what is the last step before death," she adds, and laughs. "I'm sure when the actual time comes, there are layers of fear there that are human and natural, but I think we can prepare for that. I think that's the grace that came from the cancer."

"The Community Dream: Awaking the Christian Tribal Consciousness," Pat C. Brockman. WovenWord Press: Boulder, 2001.

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