Timothy Fullam shares the exhilaration of returning to a favorite instrument. Then Max talks with Sister Helen Prejean about what dedicating her life to ending the death penalty has taught her about facing her own mortality.
Do you know someone who should be on 70 over 70? We’re looking for all types of stories and people to feature at the top of the show. To nominate yourself or someone else, email 70over70@pineapple.fm or call 302-659-7070 and tell us your name, age, where you’re from and your “70 over 70 story.” Our only rule: to be on the show, you have to be over 70.
transcription
[PRE-ROLL]
[OPENING MONTAGE]
Madeleine Albright: I know this program is 70 over 70, but I really wish I were younger. I wish I was 70 … but, I am ready!
[THEME MUSIC STARTS]
William: I’m 72 years old.
Paula: I’m 75, miraculously enough.
Sandy: I am 83 years old.
Betty: I am 88 years old.
James: You know, I’m here at 92.
Lucia: I’ll be 94 in May.
Donalda: I’m 101 years old.
Timothy Fullam: I'm Timothy Fullam, I'm 77 years old, and I live in Juneau, Alaska.
[THEME MUSIC FADE OUT]
Timothy: What is the most impulsive thing I've ever done? I would have to say that it was buying a large church organ for my house…alright let me see. Let me get this thing going.
[ORGAN MUSIC STARTS PLAYING]
Timothy: I was always interested in organs as long as I can remember. Um, well it’s what I look forward to everyday. It’s just I just like doing it, you know [laughs] I don't know. It's-it’s like sex, you know, you just like doing it. [laughs]
Timothy: And so when, um, Stella and I got married, I still had all the music that I had I had acquired when I was taking lessons back in high school and college. And I--I think somewhere along the line I mentioned that I like to play the organ and she announced firmly that she hated organ music. [laughs] And uh and then I dropped it. And I didn't touch an organ again for like almost 50 years.
[ORGAN MUSIC CONTINUES]
Timothy: Well um, after my wife Stella died, of course, I--I was just heartbroken. I mean, it was awful and--and um I think I just wanted a reason to get out of bed in the morning, you know. So I didn't want to become a crotchety old man that [laugh] that stared-- yelled at kids. [laughs] I wanted to have something more enlightening than that. And that's when it occurred to me that I might start practicing the organ again.
[ORGAN MUSIC FADES OUT]
Timothy: Uh, what would Stella think about my organ music now? Well, you know, this is-- this is something--I have a conversation with her every morning when I get ready to start practicing. I say, ‘OK, Stella. It's time to hold your ears now.’ You know, so ‘cause I [laughs] I figure that she would roll over in her urn if she [laughs] if she knew what I had done to the house, you know, putting an organ in here. Um, it’s big and heavy. It weighs about 900 pounds and it's connected to 32 loudspeakers, which occupy most of a whole wall. So she's either gotten used to it by now or figured out how to [laughs] how to hold her ears. [laughs] But on the other hand, um, what I have gained from all of this, I think, is well, a--a big sense of accomplishment...the ability to actually do what I wanted to do back when I was a teenager. [laughs]
[THEME MUSIC FADES IN]
Timothy: It only took me 70 years to get there. [laughs]
Max Linksy: That was Timothy Fullam and from Pineapple Street Studios, this is 70 Over 70, a show about making the most of the time we have left. I’m Max Linsky.
[THEME MUSIC CONTINUES]
So this is the first episode of 70 Over 70, and over the course of this series, you’re going to hear from 70 different people, all of them over the age of 70. Here’s how it’s gonna work. The episodes will come out once a week and each one will start with a story, like the one you just heard from Timothy.
And then I’m going to have a pretty long, pretty personal, conversation with one guest. A lot of them will be people you know, but I’m hoping you’ll get to hear from them in a way that you haven’t before ‘cause I've got some big questions for them, meaning of life stuff.
[THEME MUSIC FADES OUT]
And my first guest has a totally unique relationship with a very specific end of life experience.
For the last several decades, Sister Helen Prejean has had one goal: to end the death penalty in America. That work has taken many forms. She’s pushed the catholic church to change its position on capital punishment, she’s written three books, including Dead Man Walking. You might remember Susan Sarandon playing her in the movie version.
And she has been the spiritual guide for six different inmates on death row. She counsels them, she advocates for them and she’s there with them when they are executed.
Sister Helen and I talked back in December of 2020. It was the end of the Trump administration and there was an unprecedented rush of federal executions underway. One of those prisoners was Brandon Bernard, who Sister Helen had counseled for years. His memorial service had ended just a few hours before we talked.
I would have understood if Sister Helen had canceled our interview, but she didn’t.
Instead, she got on the phone with me from her home in New Orleans, where she’d been for months on end, and she indulged my questions.
[MUSIC FADES IN]
She helped me understand what that constant proximity to death has taught her about letting go. She told me about how she makes sure to find time for what she calls “the alive things” like watching a good movie, or grabbing a beer with her friends.
And she told me what she thinks is waiting for us on the other side.
Sister Helen Prejean is 81 years old.
INTERVIEW
Max: Sister Helen, thank you so much for doing this.
Sister Helen Prejean: Glad to be here.
[MUSIC FADES OUT]
Max: You are 81.
Sister Helen: Correct.
Max: The same age that your parents were when they died, right?
Sister Helen: Correct.
Max: How are you, um, how are you feeling about death at the moment?
Sister Helen: Well, you know, it's different when you get to be 81 because inside yourself you are simply yourself. But time changes, for me, in that I'll think of projects I'm going to do or when I think of a year like this will be at hmm 2026. Hmm, wonder if I'll be around or I wonder if I should undertake this. You know, my mother has died. My father has died. Uh, my sister died in 2016 and now my brother, I always call him my little brother, Louis – he's five years younger than me – has been diagnosed with covid and he's now on a ventilator in ICU.
Max: Oh, I'm sorry to hear that.
Sister Helen: So it's very much on my mind. And something happens when you look at the totality or the wholeness of a person's life. The feeling I had when mama died, daddy, and Mary Ann was like the wholeness of their life somehow became present. You can't comprehend it. Don't...don't get the idea that I have rationally figured this whole thing out. [Max laughs] But I figured out too that the deepest things in life, you can-- you do not comprehend. You don't comprehend when you love somebody. I can't comprehend fully that I got embarked on this mission of witnessing these executions then educating the people to abolish it. The big things are bigger than we can put into words or comprehend.
Max: Was there a point where you got comfortable with the idea that you weren’t going to be able to comprehend those bigger things?
Sister Helen: No, this is an ongoing thing. I used as the image of my book about waking up spiritually as a river, it's all flow. [Mhmm] It's all flow. And even while you and I are talking, I might get something of an insight about it. And then it's all going to be flow. Then I’m gonna be thinking about the chicken I'm cooking for supper [Max laughs] and what's next on the agenda. [Mhmm] I have to tell you my sister's story here, because when we were growing up, Mary Ann was always braver than me about physical things and so it would be all the kids in the neighborhood--these big live oak trees you have and you have these big limbs that go out--and there was a swing and you’d get up and you'd stand on the limb and they'd throw the swing up to you. It was just a rope with a little wooden seat. But the big thing was that you couldn't get the swing up under you and sit on it firmly on the limb and then zoom out--
Max: Right. You had to jump onto it.
Sister Helen: You had to make the jump. And I-- guess who's the last one on the limb? And guess who, my sister's down there, disgusted with me. "Helen, you are such a sissy. Look, we all did it. Grab the rope, do it." And that's what I--after she died, I heard her saying inside me, ‘Now, look, momma has died, daddy, I'm doing it. And you're going to die, too. Don't try to do it ahead of time. When it comes, you'll have what you need, but don't be a sissy, you can do it,’ And that's what sounds inside me about dying.
Max: That courage she was asking for in you – have you been able to hold on to that since she died?
Sister Helen: Well, because I'm saying it to you, you know what I just told you about flow?
Max: Yeah.
Sister Helen: It flows in and out. And I have to tell you, I just had this incredible experience, which is, I was just with a man, Brandon Bernard, that the Trump administration just killed with the federal executions they've been doing.
Max:Yeah.
Sister Helen: I was able to be with him, and I met a poised man. He was able to sleep at night in his death row holding cell where they were going to come for him when it was time. And so I have met people who have been able to meet death like head on and poised like he wasn't-- he could sleep.
Max: How do you explain that?
Sister Helen: I do not. That kind of death is very surreal because it's not like he's in a hospital fading, his life energy’s ebbing away, he's fully alive, his consciousness is fully alive, his imagination is fully alive. And he, I could tell, all of his energy was going into relating to people. He was being grateful for what everybody had done. Had a good sense of humor. Uh, he was able to be present..and maybe that's the gift. Maybe if we can be alive, fully alive in the present moment, that when it comes to death, we'll be able to do that, too. I'll be able to do that, too. He certainly did.
Max: Can you tell me a little bit more about the conversations you're having with him and whether you're guiding him or whether you're just listening and responding? I'm just--I’m just interested in the texture of them.
Sister Helen: OK, no very--ok that's a very interesting question. With someone like Brandon, who was so transformed, I could tell from his being that he already kind of--not not kind of that's we don't need diminutive words--he had an inner peace. He had an inner resilience. And so then I could respond to that in him. And I could then share with him what my own faith is, that God is bigger than all of this and that, you know, the whole Christian thing that Jesus taught that not a sparrow falls to the ground without your heavenly father knowing. The--the way that each person is loved and treasured and has a dignity. And I believe that about Brandon. And I also wrote him a couple of letters, too. And it's like whatever happens, Brandon, some things are just bigger than us. We can only control so much. And then it's this act of trust. And I just said, ‘Brandon, all I know is –and with people I've been with– you, you will have what you need as you need it.’ So I shared that with him and at the heart of it is a loving regard for others that we have, that we direct toward them. Where there's love in the world and when we love each other in the world, it's got to be in the fabric of the universe some kind of way.
Max: Is that what you mean when you say some things are bigger than us?
Sister Helen: All these mysteries. You know, the word mystery, mystery covers a lot. It covers--I mean, there's so much of life that's simply bigger than trying to figure things out rationally. Though I believe that things have to make sense. It's a big thing that I have in my book, River of Fire, [Yeah] that you can't just take these articles of faith. And oh, yeah, I believe. Like, for example, how did I get so committed to carry on this mission for 30 years and not waver from it and not burn out? That's a mystery to me. ‘Cause I got grasped by something bigger than me, I experienced myself as being a witness, being brought into these executions, and that--then the moral imperative was just born in me. I got to be a witness and go out and wake up the people on this! Why didn’t I waiver? Why didn’t I burn out? Because the energy is alive and it--and it's fresh as it ever, ever was. [Hm.] So I said, shoot maybe, I'm like that burning bush in the Old Testament that Moses saw this burning bush, and the bush it burned but it wasn’t consumed. Maybe passions in life are like that for us. They get a hold of us and then we-- it's almost like we're following them. You know what I mean?
Max: I sort of know what you mean. Although, I also feel like what you're talking about is--is, um, sort of exactly what I'm struggling with in a way, which is that I want to figure it out. Like I want there to be an answer.
Sister Helen: Yeah.
Max: You know, I want-- I want there to be like a...a way to solve this puzzle.
Sister Helen: Yeah, the more intelligent you are the harder that is because you used to trying to figure things out, but you’re never gonna figure it out, Max.
Max: I should just give up now, huh?
Sister Helen: But not give up but just be present. To me, isn't that all we got?
Max: Yeah, maybe when you--maybe when you reduce it down, that is all we got. But Iike -- it's funny that you were just saying about not burning out and how you stuck with this...for so long.
Sister Helen: You see stuck ain't even the word. Stuck just means you're enduring and okay, here we go again. It’s really not even stuck.
Max: So how would you describe it?
Sister Helen: You’re in the flow.
Max: In the flow?
Sister Helen: In the flow of it, yeah.
Max: And one of the questions I had was basically, how did you do that?
Sister Helen: Well you do and you don't do. Just like here's an athlete that knows how to do the balance beam... jumps up on it. If you're figuring every step with your mind, you're going to fall off that beam real real quick [Mhmm] or a pianist that goes to play a piece. It’s brain straight into fingers. It’s not the thinking process of bringing it through your rational consciousness. That first man on death row that I wrote to, Patrick Sonnier – never written anybody in prison before much less on death row. Sure, I'll be a pen pal to this man. I'll write a letter. Then it moved to well, I'll go visit him. So I wrote him a letter and I said, ‘Pat, I'll come visit you sometime.’ Boy, he’s so excited. Boy, return mail. There, fill out the visitor forms. And he simply said, ‘Well, I'm a Catholic and you’re a nun. Would you be my spiritual adviser?’ I don't have a clue then that two and a half years later, when he is executed, the only one who's going to be able to be in that death house in the cell with him--near the holding cell with him--three days before he dies and in the execution chamber is the spiritual adviser who's going to be me. I guess maybe if I had known that, I never could have done that.
Max: That's interesting what you just said, like, if you had known who you would have had to be, you not-- you might not have been able to do it.
Sister Helen: Yeah, and that's that anticipatory time and that future thing...that doesn't exist and you go, well, what about this? What about this? [Max laughs] Could I do this? Wait, I can't be doing that.
Max: And what has it done to that fire to have federal executions happening at the rate they are now? How do you make sense of how much time you have dedicated to this and where we are with it right now?
Sister Helen: Well, see, for me, that's an ego question. Oh, look at all the time, and now look at this. Look what they're doing now, but see what it has done. And so--see when I experience this, and I can just see it’s wrong, how morally wrong and corrupt and morally bankrupt it is, and that the people can’t see it but I’m in there, and I'm the witness, that’s the fire that keeps burning in me to be able to get out there to talk to ‘em.
Max: But like that doesn't have an impact on you. Is that true?
Sister Helen: I'm trying to describe to you the dynamic that is happening out of these deaths that make it a teachable moment and that plunged me deeper into the mission that is mine. See, an ego thing would be all this time. Look how hard I’ve worked. Look how much I try. And now look at all these killings. That would be ego. Oh, look what it's doing to me. Oh, you know--and that and then the energy fades out of me. Oh, because of what it's doing to me. It's got nothing to do with me, except I've been placed in this position to be a witness and I found I can talk to people, you know, about it.
[MUSIC FADES IN]
Sister Helen: Uh, and that's what it does. That's what the fire is. See, it's just like, get out there now and do what you're supposed to be doing.
[MUSIC FADES OUT]
[BREAK/MIDROLL]
[MUSIC STARTS]
Max: Can I go back to the--the the ego thing for a second? Why do you think it is that you can do that, that you can talk to people about it?
[MUSIC FADES OUT]
Sister Helen: Well, first, I have a gift of being able to talk to people, and I've had that from the time I was a young person. I could speak to our whole student body in high school. It’s a gift and a lot of ego went in it in the beginning. ‘Hey look I got all this going on here,’ [Max laughs] Uh, then when I was plunged into this very big thing, I mean, when--Max--when Dead Man Walking came out the book in 93, 80 per-- 80 percent of the American public believed in the death penalty. 80 percent. In Louisiana it was 90 percent --all the former slave states that have been doing all the executing. And so what chance did this have, right? So all I knew was I had to take people close to the death penalty so that they could see for themselves and know that as an American people, we do not want to do this.
Max: Can a person connect with other people in the way that you're describing if you don't have that fire? Like, are those--like are those things necessary for each other?
Sister Helen: Well, I think the thing that makes us connect with each other the most is when we say, ‘hey, let me tell you what happened to me,’ Where, what we talk to each other about is what we have experienced. What we understand, what we don't, but it has been experienced by us in some way. It has flesh and blood in it...or fire. [Mmm] I think that's the way we really connect. See, you and I right now, Max, we’re having a real conversation, we're talking about real stuff. I mean, you're asking me real questions of things you wonder about, and I'm giving you my real answers of what I've experienced. And that makes us connect. You know, William Faulker, the southern writer, once he was doing a master class on writing and he went up to the front and he wrote on the uh whiteboard: only connect. [Hmm] And we're longing for connection, especially in these covid days. People have been so isolated. I mean, I can't even go in there and be in there with my little brother. The desire for human connection is so strong.
Max: Mm hmm.
Sister Helen: Another name for that is love. I mean, love is that ability in us to leave ego and leave self behind, to enter into the feelings and thoughts of another human being and connect with them. So connection’s everything to me.
Max: How are you connecting with your little brother right now?
Sister Helen: Well, only through right when we went in and before he got put on the ventilator, I was texting with him and I just offered to pray with him, uh but then he couldn't speak anymore. And so the connection is through prayer and through members-- with his daughters and with his wife staying close and following every inch of his journey as he makes his way.
Max: Yeah. Maybe this is just a um like a side door way to ask you that question I was asking before. But--
Sister Helen: You little sneaky being. [both laugh]
Max: Does this life you've led,this life you're leading, does it feel like a choice?
Sister Helen: Yes, of course, because we are creatures, we are made to choose. We are always choosing. It's always you’re making choices. But I guess some of the bigger things in life kind of seek you out and...and plunk you in. I don't know.
Max: I guess I'm just trying to find the--the line between that and what you've been telling me this whole time about whether it feels like you are just being taken down this river or whether you're like picking which forks to take in it, you know?
Sister Helen: Yeah, well, when the lawyers for Brandon Bernard asked if I'd get involved, I said yes. So there's always--we are always making choices, but it's flow. See, you keep looking for that little line, the line on this side or that side, you know.
Max: Hmm.
Sister Helen: Well, we all do. You're just doing what a thinking person does. How do you know this? Man, I'm trying to figure this out...
Max: I was hoping then you were going to just say the answer.
Sister Helen: [laughs] That was the answer. Didn't you hear? [Max laughs] That's like somebody plays a concerto on the piano and they say, what does that mean? You play the concerto again. [Max laughs] But see, it's so much bigger than me, Max. I've realized that now. I'm part of something really bigger than me. I got to play my part in and be true and faithful to it. And the energy keeps coming up inside me to do it and uh...and so I do. And this..I’m--I’m--the man that I'm accompanying on death row in Louisiana now – I take one person at a time – his name is Manuel Ortez.
Max: Mm hmm.
Sister Helen: Out of seven people I've been with, he's the third one I believe to be innocent. But Manuel is going on 30 years, 30 years, Max. He's going on 30 blooming years in a cell in death row.
Max: How do you choose, Sister Helen, if you're going to-- if you're going to work with one person at a time? How do you choose who to give that energy to?
Sister Helen: Well, if you are picturing a little blueprint thing and a little rational thing where you get a little sketch of him and you say, I choose you uh-uh. You fall into it. So with Manuel, he fell into my life because I was accompanying another man, Dobie Gillis Williams, and I had met Manuel when there had been a gathering, when they were allowing them on death row. And and he's from El Salvador. And he goes, ‘Sister Helen, if you ever don't have anybody after Dobie, would you take me?’ And so he was like standing in line, and Dobie was killed in ‘99. And I wrote to him right away and I said, ‘If you still want me Manuel, I'll be happy to accompany you and be your spiritual adviser,’ which I have been ever since. How many years is that now? Since ‘99? That we've been together over 20 years.
Max: It's so striking and powerful to hear you articulate that thing, and you've done this like a bunch of times in this conversation where you're talking about yourself as a younger person and then you just, kind of, get so quickly to the present and what's animating you, where your passions are right now. It's just-- it's just interesting. That's happened like...maybe half a dozen times that you’ve been telling me a story from 20 years ago--
Sister Helen: Yeah. Probably so.
Max: And in the span of a sentence or two, you're just here and--
Sister Helen: You know, that is the nature of time, you know.
Max: What do you mean?
Sister Helen: It's not a linear thing where you can just do it point by point. You're always-- we’re always flowing back. Past, present.
Max: Right, but that's also about being present, right? [Yeah.] Is you're just connecting that time to today?
Sister Helen: Well, and that's what memory allows. See all of this is present. I'm like a cloud I guess. We all are like clouds. They say when you look at a brain scan of the thought-- thoughts are clouds, they’re not these little linear things like little BBs going around in grooves.
Max: Here's a question I have, and it's fine, you can just keep--you can just keep telling me they're all clouds. I just got to ask you.
Sister Helen: Go ahead, go to it.
Max: This work you do, this fire, you have, it seems to me, from the outside, as though it must be taxing. It must be hard. It must take something out of you and--and maybe that's just an assumption that's wrong, but if it is, I'm interested in how you think about that. Like, does this take something out of you? How do you take care of yourself? Or do you not feel a need to do that?
Sister Helen: Oh yeah, of course. I mean, the heaviness and sadness--
Max: How do you absorb all of that?
Sister Helen: Well, you don't completely. But you do - you do feel it, of course. Brandon, I just did his memorial service today. And with the lawyers, what happens to the lawyers and the people on these legal teams that try to save their clients lives? And then, like one of them, Chuck, who had to be there, to watch as Brandon was killed. And so you saw their pain, too. It's painful and it's so futile. It's so wrong when you--when you know the wrongness of something that this is happening. And, of course, it impacts you. There's a sadness, there's a weight, there's a heaviness. And uh you kind of just have to take it in. And you have to just say, as much as I feel this, Brandon's momma is feeling it a whole lot more or these people that are suffering through it, are feeling that a whole lot more. Even the guards, I've been thinking of them, who were those two guards that came to his door and had to tell him, ‘come with us, Brandon,’ and they knew they were leading him to-- what is happening to them? I feel for them too. And you take it in. And then what it does to me is I have to do my best that this is going to stop. Uh, and not give in to the sadness.
Max: So it's there and it gets diffused in part by putting yourself in conversation and in relationship to the other people who are around--
Sister Helen: Yes, of course. And with my friends, I have close friends in the sisterhood here and friends that are human rights lawyers uh that I'm close to. And I got to tell you, Max, maybe this is from being Southern, but we get together, we cook some good food, play cards, have a beer, see a good film, read a good book….all the alive things.
Max: You've been by the side of a lot of loved ones, like best friends and your family, your sister... and my understanding from your books is like you've been right at their side--
Sister Helen: That's right. Yeah.
Max: In an incredibly present way. And the thing that I was wondering about was, if there's a difference between the prisoners that you have in those situations and the one-- and the way that you are with Brandon.
Sister Helen: Well, of course, there's a difference. I mean, there's an essential human connection with Brandon, but with my sister that I grew up with, my mother who gave me birth and loved me and daddy, and there's long long years of those connections that, that, again, I can’t equate them that they're absolutely the same because, you know, one has a lot of skin in a lot of years, lot of experiences. But, you know what, as you're asking that question, Max, it’s making me think...it’s the gratitude.
Because one way – and I guess this is the ego thing. Oh, look, I'm losing my sister. Oh, look, I'm losing my mother. Oh, look, I'm losing – and gratitude is, oh my God, look at the gift they gave me. Why did I have such a good mother and father? [Hm] Why did I have such a good sister who loved me? Or my friend Ann Barker, that I talk about. Why was I given such gifts of love and friendship? And it--it kind of distills into gratitude...when it's at its best, but then there's that whole grieving, it's bittersweet. It's bittersweet. And I can tell you after Mary Ann died because we were so close – she died 201 – it--it just knocks the wind out of here for a while. It just does. Like, where's the joy in life. Mary Ann’s gone. She's gone. How could she be gone? Grieving is just part of it. You got...to take it in so that you're not, like, just living on your surface soul. And uh... and then you get some sleep--you know what you got to do to keep moving--you keep moving. And when you stay in the current and don't just shiver and kinda get in a fetal position over on the bank by the side of the life river and then fall into uh self-pity. And it’s--it’s...you can’t stay in it, you have to keep moving with it and gradually it does get better.
Max: And part of the way it gets better is through gratitude.
Sister Helen: Yeah, the gratitude is the gift that happens. The way you would put it in faith terms is you continue to do as you understand it and have been given it the will of God in your life. Now, that's not a super- being imposing something. It has coincided or aligned with the desires of my own heart. And uh in a way, I was made to do this, called to do this. And I can do this. I am doing this. And uh, I mean, that's the way Jesus talked about the kingdom of God. It's already inside of us. And it's-- but you got to be working it. You can't just be waiting for it and letting other people do--you got to be working it, doing your part of it. Then you experience hope. I do. It's an active verb when you're in it. If you're not in it, if you're not putting your hand on a rope and pulling, if you're not engaged, you could be really hopeless.
Max: So optimism–
Sister Helen: Nope, nope.
Max:You don't like that word?
Sister Helen: Well, it's a very different word. Optimism is you believe that no matter what's going on, everything's going to be better. And hope is an active verb of engagement because you believe in the deep down goodness of people, you believe that you could set up really bad systems of 40 million people all still living in poverty. And people do not have health care in this country and they-- there is not affordable housing. All these things are things that we can change.
Max: So hope is a byproduct of work.
Sister Helen: Well, when you are hopeful, you are engaged.
Max: Right, of engagement.
Sister Helen: Hope of engagement, you put your hand on a rope and you start pulling your little part.
Max: You can't find it if, um...you're sitting on the bank of the river.
Sister Helen: Right. You know what my image of it is, it's kind of like we all have this fire banked in us.
Max: Mm hmm.
Sister Helen: But when we gather with people--and I gotta just tell you, this conversation is very life-giving that you and I are having.
Max: I feel the same.
Sister Helen: And it's like you blow on the coals, you blow on the coals. And then the-- what looked like was kind of a little dead coal then you just see that fire flicker. And St. Paul would use that as an image: stir into flame, the gift of God that's been given to you. We stir each other into flame. And that's been the gift of belonging to the sisterhood, the Sisters of St. Joseph. They helped grow me up. My motto in the community, because I had all of these half baked [laughs] half baked ideas like you would not believe, and--and the little saying about me was, ‘there goes Helen again, with one of our harebrained schemes, her feet firmly planted in mid-air,’ [Max laughs] And they helped me grow up. I love them dearly. I'm close to them. Thank God for the sisterhood.
Max: There's Helen up with the uh up with the clouds again.
Sister Helen: Feet firmly planted in mid-air. [both laugh]
Max: I got one more mystery question for you. It's the big uh-- it's the big mystery.
Sister Helen: The big one! Bigger than any of these we've talked about life and death, love, all that. Bigger than that?
Max: [laughs] What's your current conception of the afterlife, what's gonna-- what's waiting for you on the other side?
Sister Helen: Well see the other side may not be another side. It may be--what if we just can't see....uh you know, there was all this talk of alternative universes and the more we learn about quantum physics and the universe and black holes, I do not know that I would call it an afterlife. I don't know. I don't have any knowledge of that, direct knowledge. But it was what I was talking about earlier, if we can see the deep down connectivity in things here….and how even as they're saying about the trees can communicate with each other through the fungi and through the--that everything is so connected, I just can't quite bring myself to comprehend that suddenly all the consciousness, all the love just is snapped short and it's completely over and there's no connectivity. I just simply--I can't, even as a rational being and what I've seen, bring myself to say that. But I got to say, I don't know.
Max: What do you hope is waiting for you personally?
Sister Helen: That connectivity, that love connection. You know, that mother and father-- I got more love than the law allowed. We had such a loving family, Max. And the sisterhood too. I mean I've been surrounded by love. But I just hope that that I'll be able to be some kind of force, you know, how they say rest in peace, I'm not so sure there's rest. Where all you do is get a hammock and you get to sip an eternal lemonade for the rest of your life or play a harp. Sounds really passive. [Max laughs] What if it's a vibrant energy? That love energy that we experience kind of on-- if we want to call it-- this side continues and somehow we can stay connected in the good love energy that is flowing in and out of the world. I guess that would be, if you had to state it, what my hope would be.
Max: Some version of a uh...fire still burning.
Sister Helen: Yeah, getting away from the whole idea of rewards and punishments of a rashful uh God who's going to demand punishment, put you-- burn you in an eternal skillet in hell. I don't buy that. Speaking of fire, what if fire is just love.
Max: Right. Right. [both laugh] Good kind of fire.
Sister Helen: Yeah. Good fire. Good fire, Max.
Max: And right before you go there, Helen, who do you think you want by your side? And what do you want them to say to you?
Sister Helen: I don't know, you know, you come to a point next where all those little speeches and those words… I mean I could give you some stuff now, but it wouldn't be real. I'm going to just trust that...when it comes time for me that I'll be able to, somewhat graciously, trust God and turn my life over as I've watched these six human beings-- I mean, they were killed. And uh I just hope I can be grateful enough. The way Einstein put it, he said, ‘look, one life's enough to really live our lives,’, that I hope I can just trust enough and be gracious enough. And because I'm a sissy, ‘cause I'm the last one to jump from the limb onto that swing, I just hope that in God's mercy I can go quick, ‘cause if I have too much pain and stuff, I’m gonna handle it badly. So I'm going to pray that I could leave with a modicum of grace and uh and humor and trusting and if it's been this good here, let's just see what we got coming next.
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Max: Sister Helen, thank you, uh, thank you for this life you're living.
Sister Helen: [laugh] Max, and you. And you.
Max: Thank you for uh... dealing with my dealing with my mysteries.
Sister Helen: Yeah look, great talking to you.
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Max: A few weeks after we recorded this interview, Sister Helen's brother Louis passed away due to complications from Covid. He was 76 years old.
CREDITS
Max: 70 Over 70 is a production of Pineapple Street Studios, and it’s produced by Jess Hackel.
Our associate producer is Janelle Anderson. Our editors are Maddy Sprung-Keyser and Joel Lovell. Research and additional reporting by Charley Locke. Our mixers are Raj Makhija and Elliott Adler. Jenna Weiss-Berman and I are the executive producers.
The organ at the top of the show was played by Timothy Fullam, our theme song is Like a Dream by Francis and the Lights and music you’re listening to right now is by Mavis Staples. Additional music by Noble Kids and music licensing by Dan Knishkowy
Our cover art is by Maira Kalman, and our episode art is by Lynn Staley, who is also my mom.
Special thanks to Josh Gwynn, Aaron Lammer, Guy Linsky, Jenelle Pifer and Evan Ratliff.
I’m Max Linsky. Thanks for listening.
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[41:40] END