Possumus  Fall 2008

Partnerships

Partnerships. In order to do our chosen work and fulfill our mission, the Sisters of St. Joseph form a multitude of partnerships with others inside and outside our organization. Many people, working together, can accomplish far more than one person can alone. That much is obvious. But when you hold our partnerships up to the light for closer examination, you see facets and depths in them that might surprise you. Perhaps that’s because the Sisters of St. Joseph define partnership in a less conventional way than the rest of the world does.

 To the Sisters, a partnership is not just a collaboration or even a networking alliance. Instead, our partnerships are grounded in human relationships—transformative relationships. People on both sides of the relationship grow and are changed.

Their former selves cease to exist. And for our work to be sustainable, we must be transformed by the relationship. In a partnership, we seek mutuality of interests. That mutuality is transformed not by doing for but rather by doing with the other. A true partnership should lead each of us to say, “I went to help, but in the end, I was the one helped.”

Our work is to create relationships that transform all of us, so that the human faces we see and the stories we hear help us move past the fear of the other, and we begin to trust one another. That’s what this issue of Possumus is all about. Continue the conversation on our online forum. Thanks for reading.