From a recent stunning speech by University regent Carolyn Woo, as part of a series of talks by women from various spiritual paths, sponsored by the University’s Garaventa Center for American Catholic Life. The Garaventa Center is hosting a freedom and faith conference in April, starring U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. For information email Jamie Powell at powell@up.edu.

My story is about how God unfolds, informs, and leads us through all sorts of things; through our family, work, our disappointments, our trials, the unanticipated twists in the road that we never anticipated.

I was born in Hong Kong in 1954. My family left China because of the Communist Revolution. They left everything behind. My mother left behind a life of tremendous wealth, a life where she had three servants to wait on her. So I grew up with a tremendous fear of Communism, of famine and violence and pillaging; and then when I was a teenager I saw the Cultural Revolution unfold. So always in the back of our minds was a sense of insecurity, a sense of how things could change very quickly, how you could lose everything and have to start over again, a fear of chaos. And on top of that we knew that in 1997, some time far in the future when I would be an incomprehensibly ancient 43 years old, that the Communists would take over Hong Kong. So I was raised with a sense that everything could be lost in a moment.

I was the fifth child of six. My parents didn’t want a big family necessarily but they wanted two sons. This is very important in the Chinese tradition: an heir and a spare. But it was quite a journey from their second child, a boy, to the sixth and last, also a boy; everyone else was female. So I was the third daughter in a row to parents hoping desperately for a second son. And my extended family was also complicated — my sister was in a semi-arranged marriage, my father had a terrible gambling habit, and my two grandfathers combined had eight wives and concubines, which was legal and even expected in old China. On the one hand Hong Kong was very modern, with television and Western programs and so on, but on the other hand there was a tradition in which women’s roles were very limited, where men frequently have extramarital affairs. I remembered my mother’s friends gathering to share tales of unhappiness, and I knew of six women who attempted suicides, five of whom succeeded.

We also had a nanny with whom I was very close. Her name was Yau, which means friend, but we called her Gaga. She had been sold as a servant girl when she was ten years old. Her father had tuberculosis. He was a scholar. The family was poor so she was sold to a rich family. Her job was to take care of that family’s girls. She carried their schoolbags and she learned to read by standing outside the schoolroom and listening to the teacher. She taught me five lessons I have never forgotten: to work hard and well, to never lie, to give as much away as possible because there is always somebody in greater need than you, to savor and care for what you keep, and to be faithful and loyal to what you love and respect. She was a Buddhist, and I remember that every morning when she rose she would light incense, and face the window, and kneel, and bow until her head touched the floor, and thank the heavens and the earth. Every morning of her life. That is a faithful woman.

Oddly, in such a culture, my father made sure all his children were baptized. He had been baptized, so all his children must be baptized, go to Catholic school, and go to Mass. He didn’t go to Mass himself; the only times he and I were ever in a church together were for my baptism, my sister’s marriage, and my father’s funeral. But he drove us to Mass and insisted we attend. So I first encountered Catholicism in the person of the Maryknoll nuns. They were missionary sisters headquartered in New York. They came out to work with the women of China and were eventually kicked out by the Communists. So they came to Hong Kong to start a school. These cheerful wonderful women with incredible energy started clinics, social service centers, they took on the British government; they could charm a doughnut out of its last nickel. And they challenged us without fanfare. I remember being sent to help terribly poor refugees who lived on boats. They had no shoes, no bathrooms, and they were filthy, and my job was to clean their feet so we could treat their sores and cuts. To clean feet you must bow low, smell them, handle them, touch them, and I was horrified, but I had to do it, and I learned something crucial from that, that there is much you must do whether you wish to or not.

I learned English from the sisters, and how to express myself, and to debate and argue clearly. Expression allows you to be a person. If you can’t express yourself, how can you let people know what you think? And they taught me to imagine. I could imagine a completely different life than what my sisters and mother had. And they taught me that there was nothing a man could do that a woman could not; that I was not bound by traditional expectations and strictures. And they taught me to make a lot of things happen with very little money — a skill I very much need today as a dean! Those nuns had started the school only with the money they saved by walking instead of taking the bus and ferry. But a little money was enough to start and then energy, passion, and ideas kept them going.

But the greatest lesson they taught me was that God is real. Somewhere in the twelve years I learned that if I asked God for help, help was there. I think perhaps what nuns and priests really do for us is make us see that their lives make no sense if God is not real. They give you a sense of a future that matters. My dream was to go to college in the United States, and that came to pass, partly because I memorized part of the dictionary with my nanny’s help and passed the entrance tests for Purdue University.  My nanny gave me all the money she had. I begged for my father’s permission to go abroad because I told him that if I were a boy he would let me and so he should consider me a son, which made him cry and which is the reason I have never changed my last name, to honor my father.

After my first year in college, if I did not get a scholarship, I would have to go home and everything would be over. I had an hour to wait until I found out about it. So I went to Mass and I ranted and raved at God. I said to Him why does this have to be so hard just because I’m a girl? You know this is just unfair. He didn’t reply. But I got that scholarship, which is why I have to this day tremendous respect for people who create scholarships, and part of the reason I go to Mass every day. In a sense it is my way to kneel and bow and touch my head to the soil and say thank you to the heavens and to the earth for all that is holy.

photo credit: Jin Neoh, www.sxc.hu