September being a month with an equinox suggests a time of balance and stability.  In fact the opposite is true.  September is a month of change and transition.  In the North while the Autumn leaves mark the end of growth it is also a time of new beginnings for students and educators.   In the South the school year is winding down and Spring Day celebrates new leaves and colourful flowers.  In this sense throughout the world September is a bridging month.  I was reminded of the importance of this recently when I read an article by Sr. Genevieve Mooney OP.  I had already been reading about the early history of the Dominican Sisters in Ireland. 

“There were 38 houses of Dominicans in Ireland in 1531 at the suppression of the monasteries.  How many houses of nuns there were has never been ascertained, but tradition has it that there were communities of Dominican nuns in Drogheda and Waterford and other places throughout the country.”  Weavings, p. 3  In 1652 during the time of Cromwell the last known group of sisters left their convent in Galway and fled to the continent.  Among the group was Juliana Nolan.  It was then I read Sr. Genevieve’s article “Honouring the Foremothers” which tells about the women who played an important role in our later history. 

“The most notable of these tend to be the ‘bridge’ people who each lived at a critical time and ensured continuity and development.  They provide living links between phases of our history. Without them we would not have the tradition we have and therefore wouldn’t be who we are. These include especially Juliana Nolan, Mary Bellew, Eliza Byrne and Columba Maher.
 

By agreeing to come  back to Ireland in 1686, Juliana Nolan formed a living link with the community and tradition going back to 1644.  What if she hadn’t come?  No doubt there would have been at a later stage a group forming a Dominican community and possibly having a history somewhat like ours but it would have been a different community, without an earlier history and an already rich tradition..  In coming to Dublin and starting the Channel Row community (1717-1808), on which she left her mark, Mary Bellew (and her companions) formed a living link between that Galway community and all the communities which sprang directly and indirectly from Channel Row.  Eliza Byrne,  at enormous personal cost, ensured the survival of the Channel Row community when it seemed destined to die and she became the only living link between Channel Row through Clontarf (1808) to Cabra and all that followed. Columba Maher  was responsible for the move to Cabra (1819) and the founding of what became a fertile Motherhouse  She can be seen as the bridge between a long period of dire struggle for survival and a long period of growth and development which her vision set in motion and which continued to our day.”

As we celebrate the Autumn/Spring equinox these women remind us of the importance of bridging in both nature and history.  The symbolic handing over of the Olympic flag from Beijing to London also captured this idea and its fundamental significance is expressed in poetry by T.S. Eliot:
 “In my beginning is my end.
 …. In my end is my beginning.”

The full text of Sr. Genevieve’s article will be published in the next edition of Soundings.