Sister Laurie Brink, OP: Uncovering the hard, gritty yet beautiful Truth

When I sent my first manuscript off to the Whitman Publishing Company, I was quite certain I would receive accolades for my recently finished book, Pokey P. Turtle and His Magic Tail. I did not anticipate that the manuscript, carefully typed and illustrated by the author, would be returned with the following note: “Dear Miss Brink, Thank you for your submission. We suggest you go to high school first and then, perhaps, pursue a writing career.” I had just turned 12 and was no newcomer to the profession. I had begun my creative writing career in grade 2 with classic tales retold in a startlingly fresh fashion—as only a 7-year-old without a knowledge of various forms of punctuation could.

I followed the publisher’s advice and attended high school, where my interest in creative writing was forged in the fires of adolescence and a growing realization that all was not right with the world. Watergate and Vietnam had spawned an interest in journalism, and, though at the time I was too young to understand the impact of these events, I knew that the Truth mattered and uncovering the Truth was a noble venture.

It is not that you wake up one day and say, “Today I will be a writer.” It is more that you realize that your way of being in the world, of feeling connected, is through words. The very thought of a string of alliteration delights you. The making of an extended metaphor that steers far from trite and heads straight for insight is sheer pleasure. The process of capturing, if only briefly, a glimmer of Truth, so that others may know and see and understand—this is meaningful. This is joy.

As a reporter for a daily newspaper in Knoxville, TN, I eagerly pursued my career while finishing a journalism degree. And then everything changed. Everything. One day in Dec. 1980, I walked into the wire room to retrieve the latest photos from the Associate Press. As I watched, grim images rolled out of the wire photo machine. Twisted bodies being pulled from the dirt. The faces of onlookers stunned and staring, their hands folded in prayer. I lifted the photos and read the caption: “The bodies of four Church women brutally raped and murdered were recovered from shallow graves in El Salvador.

Somewhere along the way of growing up, it happens. You stop thinking about what you can get and begin to realize that living is about figuring out what you can give. I graduated with a degree in journalism and four years of full-time reporting under my belt. With diploma safely shelved in a box in my parents’ garage, I headed for Jamaica—not for vacation, but for a stint as a volunteer. I worked for the diocesan newspaper. I taught children. I cared for orphans. I did things that may sound heroic in the retelling, but I am no hero. And if I have learned one thing, it is that Truth does not come finely wrapped in neat packages. It is crusted with dirt, sweaty from the cane fields, and forgotten in garbage dumps. And it is profoundly beautiful, deeply intoxicating, and a pearl of great price.

I am a Dominican because I am possessed by a passion for Truth. Writer, reporter, teacher, preacher—I am and have been all these things because, along the way of life, I have come to realize that it is not about writing my word, but proclaiming the Word. So to quote Paul: “I have become all things to all, to save at least some. All this I do for the sake of the gospel, so that I too may have a share in it” (1 Cor 9:22—23). 

Sister Laurie Brink, OP

Sister Laurie Brink, OP is a member of the Sinsinawa Dominican Sisters.  Her experiences with the poor as a lay volunteer in Jamaica, West Indies encouraged her to seek a permanent and public commitment to the Gospel.  Sr. Laurie is Assistant Professor of Biblical Studies at CTU.

This article first appeared in Dominican Vision, Fall 2003, published by the Sinsinawa Dominicans.  Reprinted with permission.