An interview with Sr. Antonia Cooper

Antonia Cooper, OSF, became an accredited of T’ai Chi Chih instructor in 1991, getting her training in Bemidji, Minnesota. Sister Antonia is also an artist, spiritual director, and director of novices for her Franciscan community. Antonia has been a member of the Franciscan Servants of the Holy Child at North Plainfield, NJ since 1969. In November 2003, she accepted the position of Guide of T’ai Chi Chih. In the national and international community, Sister is perhaps best known for her re-dedication ceremony at the annual teacher conferences. She is also known for opening up the entire east coast to T’ai Chi Chih. She graciously agreed to this interview so that we may get to know her better as she begins this new endeavor in the service of T’ai Chi Chih.

VFJ: Sister, what were you like as a child and what childhood experiences shaped your spirituality?

Sr. Antonia: I was always a shy child. My first religious experience came, I remember distinctly, when I was five years old. At that time in the Catholic Church, there was what was called afternoon benediction. I was along with my mother and I remember just kneeling there, my head just about level with the pew, my mother singing in this language I’d never heard before, and wondering what was going on. I just had an overwhelming feeling that this was very special. Later in Catholic school, when I was seven years old in second grade, I wanted to become a Sister. That stayed with me until I began high school, and that thought went out the window (laughter) with the regular teenage life. I dated and all that. When my senior year came, I began to think, “What am I going to do with my life?” The thought came back to me again about religious life. And this is quite interesting—I did not want to teach. The community of sisters who taught me for 12 years was a teaching order. So I inquired about other communities and a priest who was holding a retreat told me about the community that I am in now. It’s interesting because it’s German, and when I entered the sisters were German. The school sisters who taught me really tried to dissuade me from entering this community because it was so backward and it would be difficult for an American woman to make it in that community. I was bound and determined, so I entered, which brought me on a whole other journey. I entered in 1966 right after high school. I worked in our nursing home as a nurse’s aide, and after some time I studied to be an activity director. I began to become less shy, but I still did not want to teach. I then took classes to become a dietary manager here in our nursing home.

VFJ: What brought you to T’ai Chi Chih?

Sr. Antonia: When I was about 40, I was going through a mid-life crisis. All the things I valued, the belief system that I was into—I began questioning everything. Things weren’t working anymore like they had been. My community was very supportive, and in that experience of total brokenness, they encouraged me to go to a program. And so I landed up in St. Paul, Minnesota, at the Franciscan Center for the Religious. That’s where I learned T’ai Chi Chih. Sr. Anita Germane was my teacher. At that time she was the holistic therapist in that program.

We were also learning other things, and we had teachers and other therapists, religious and non-religious, coming in. This one sister who was a therapist was talking about going from the false ego self to the true Self, and she said one way to do that would be through Centering Prayer. And I thought, Oh, that’s pretty nice, if it’s going to be that easy, that’s what I’m going to do (laughter). So I began doing my daily practice of Tai Chi Chih and Centering Prayer together. I would sit, and then I would do the practice. One day as I was sitting I noticed how quiet my body was, but how my head was always all over the place. I didn’t want to waste any time. I couldn’t sit actually; it was just that disturbing. So I got up and did my full Tai Chi Chih practice and sat back down. I was so centered and focused and quiet and energized. I thought, what’s going on here? That’s the moment I decided to become a Tai Chi Chih teacher. It was that experience between meditation and prayer and the form. I felt that if this could happen to me and for me, what could Tai Chi Chih do for other people? That’s what really made me want to become a teacher. Again, I asked my community, and again, they were very open to allowing me to take the teacher training course. I took the course in Bemidji with Jeannie hosting it. I’d just learned Tai Chi Chih in March of 1990—I was one of those quick persons (laughter)—and took my accreditation in February of 1991. I thought if I don’t do it here and now, I might never get out of New Jersey again to do it later. I’d never heard of Tai Chi Chih in New Jersey, and when I went back there were no teachers, so I had no one to connect with. So my community just allowed me to do as many classes as I wanted. They even gave me a car—it was just amazing. They gave me all this time. I think for about five years, I was only doing Tai Chi Chih. It was wonderful. It still is. I mean I have other responsibilities now, but they were delighted that I was so well again, and I was delighted that I was so well. It was wonderful, and it all worked very well together.

VFJ: Was there never any concern among some in your community that this activity was not exactly what a Sister was supposed to be doing?

Sr. Antonia: Yes, there were some very conservative sisters. They were very concerned about me teaching Tai Chi Chih. At one point, we had a visitation from our superior who came from Germany. She asked me to please call it “Spiritual Movement” and not “T’ai Chi Chih” when I would speak about it, so I thought, okay, I can do that. On another occasion, one sister came up to me and said, “Antonia, I’m very worried about you.” I answered, “Really? How?” I knew what she was talking about. “I’m afraid you’re going to land up like Thomas Merton,” she said. And I said, “How did he land up then?” And she said, “He became a Buddhist!” And I said, “No he didn’t.” I told her the story and why he was praying with Buddhists and visiting Asia, and that he died a priest. And I told her that she never had to worry about me becoming a Buddhist nun. I said, first of all I look terrible in orange, and I’m too vain to shave my head (laughter). So she was very happy. That’s some of the stuff I went through in the beginning.

Now, the sisters are just so open. They see me setting up the space here and they say, “Oh, you’re having Tai Chi Chih this weekend.” They love when the people come in because those who are attracted to Tai Chi Chih are such fine people, and my community sees that, and they love to talk to everybody. So it’s a gift to the sisters as well as the space is to the people who come. So it really works out well here. That acceptance has formed me as I am today.

VFJ: Have any of the sisters taken the class?

Sr. Antonia: Yes, a few, but around the country there are many, perhaps as many as 80 now.

VFJ: Do you think there is a link between Tai Chi Chih and religion?

Sr. Antonia: No, rather I think it touches into the deep spiritual part of who we are. It breaks all the religious barriers. The differences that we experience, which are those barriers—it cuts through all of that to the core of who we are. My sense is that it has been a healing experience. I can only speak for myself, but I also know that other sisters have gone through different programs of healing in various ways, and even people who have no religious affiliation tell me what a spiritual practice this is. I think that’s the core of what Tai Chi Chih is and why it draws so many religious people.

VFJ: Many seem attracted to it because they get relief from various physical ailments such as high blood pressure or migraine headaches, and maybe that spiritual dimension is falling into the background in favor of the health dimension. If that is so, do you think the pendulum will swing back? Or that there’s room for both?

Sr. Antonia: I think people are looking for more holistic ways of being, and I don’t doubt that the people actually have received those physical benefits. We don’t ask if there have been any spiritual benefits, and I guess we hesitate to ask those questions because we don’t want to have T’ai Chi Chih be a strictly spiritual practice as such. People can get a little nervous when that is mentioned, and maybe so do we.

VFJ: I know many people were drawn to something like T’ai Chi Chih because they fell away from their religions and eventually needed something to replace what they lost in practicing religion. In hindsight, I was probably one of them.

Sr. Antonia: I would agree with you.

VFJ: Maybe your being the new Guide will give people the confidence they need to name their practice, too, as a spiritual practice.

Sr. Antonia: Well, I’m very careful not to push any religious words in my classes.

VFJ: You have a meditation practice, too, dating from when you learned T’ai Chi Chih?

Sr. Antonia: Yes, what I do is Centering Prayer. You can sit with anybody and still do Centering Prayer. Two years ago I made a Buddhist retreat at the University of Massachusetts done by Thich Nhat Hanh. It was wonderful. He and his monks and nuns and 800 other people were there. It was such a sacred, quiet retreat like I’ve never had before. There was the walking meditation, of course, and during the sitting I was doing Centering Prayer.

VFJ: One person here asked, “Will Antonia have to leave the Church to be head of Tai Chi Chih?”

Sr. Antonia: I guess I would answer with a question, “Does one have to leave a religious practice in order to do a spiritual practice?” It’s my hope within any religion that people will go beyond dogma and rules and regulations to experience a relationship with that God that they are worshipping. Because often that doesn’t happen when one is only following rules and regulations about that relationship. I think that Tai Chi Chih helps develop that personal relationship, rather than take it away.

VFJ: Did your superiors object to your “extra duty” taking on this big job?

Sr. Antonia: When I talked with my regional superior, she was just concerned if this responsibility would draw on the funds of the community. That was her concern. She wasn’t too concerned that I would fly off out of my community. She knows me (laughter). Those questions naturally come out of people’s not knowing what religious life is. I would like to help to clear up some of that.

VFJ: Will your duties as Guide come on top of your present duties at your religious center?

Sr. Antonia: Yes. I have a full-time job, and I know I couldn’t do this if Sandy and Pam weren’t there, and I told Sandy and Pam that I wouldn’t do it unless they were there. I depend very heavily on them. Justin said he sees my responsibility as connecting with teachers, and also leading the conference.

VFJ: As such, would say the role of being at the head of T’ai Chi Chih is evolving?

Sr. Antonia: I think if there were teacher trainings every month, I would certainly get more involved in that part of it. My hope, besides being a unifying force for the community, is to inspire teachers to a deeper confidence in themselves so that they will have the confidence to send their students for teacher accreditation. We’re working with a base of teachers and students who want to embody the essence of Tai Chi Chih and want to pass that on. They make up the community that is going to lead Tai Chi Chih into the future. I see myself in a role of guiding that, but I’m not out there doing all the teaching. It’s all the teachers who are doing that. I don’t think they know how important they are for the future of Tai Chi Chih, and I would like to work with that.

VFJ: On Saturday nights some of us mediate with Justin, and afterward he reads from the works of Zen masters or Indian saints such as Ramana Maharshi and Nityananda. Who would you call your wisdom teachers? Who are your role models as you go about your work?

Sr. Antonia: I suppose being brought up in my own religious tradition, and because I am a Franciscan, of those men and women who have really affected me in my spirituality, the most important for me are St. Francis of Assisi and St. Clare. My life is already modeled on them in a natural way, just by being in this particular community, as being peacemakers.

VFJ: How does your community focus of peacemaker manifest in your work?

Sr. Antonia: One thing that I’ve been doing for 18 years is my ministry of spiritual direction. That has brought me together with people as a peacemaker, to help them become at peace within themselves with other people and with God. A second, equally important, focus is to be reconciled as well as to be at peace. To accomplish this can be as simple as walking next to a person and having a conversation. It’s one-on-one. I am spiritual director to all kinds of individuals, each desirous for a deeper spiritual life—a Catholic priest, a Catholic sister, lay women and men, a scientist who is Lutheran, a minister in the Unification Church. The invitation is to track where God is present in their life and where God isn’t present in their life, or just hearing what questions they have regarding life. I see my role as reflecting back what they’ve said or asking questions regarding what they’ve said. So I don’t give them answers; I give them questions. It’s a very sacred time when people are opening up with their questions and their doubts. People have questions like why they are so sick and are still elated in God’s presence and seeing God all over the place. It’s been a very precious experience.

VFJ: As a peacemaker what concerns you about what is happening in the world today with your fellow humans?

Sr. Antonia: There’s a saying “Think Globally, Act Locally.” I’m disturbed by world events, especially by our troops in Iraq. I have one nephew who has just come back and another who is over there now. It really hits home for me, this whole war, plus the injustice of it. So there’s injustice around the world, and injustice in my back yard.

VFJ: In the midst of a not-so-perfect world, what are your greatest joys?

Sr. Antonia: I have many joys. Being with people is a joy for me. Being by myself in nature is a joy for me. Seeing a baby. Just watching snow fall. My practice of Tai Chi Chih is a joy. Being in stillness is joy. Riding the latest roller coaster is a joy for me (laughter). I love it. Being in the ocean swimming is a joy for me.

VFJ: Do you feel like you are doing what you were born to do?

Sr. Antonia: Yes. I feel guided. I feel so guided. And I feel that everything in my life up to this point was preparing me for this point in time. It’s amazing.

VFJ: Thank you, Sister, for sharing with all of us.