GLOBAL – There is nothing more exciting than a birthday no matter how old you are or how you celebrate. But today the whole world is out here to wish Sister Jean the happiest of birthday as this rock star turn a massive 103 years old!
There aren’t many things you can count on these days, but one of them is Sister Jean. If Loyola has a basketball team, Sister Jean is there. Maybe not on the road and maybe not always courtside these days, but she’s always spiritually close by because she’s the team’s chaplain and has been since 1994.
Sister Jean has been a part of the community so long that She already has a platform on the Red Line named for her, and it seems the bobbleheads honoring her — usually with a basketball and always with some Ramblers colors. More than anything, however, Sister Jean is a symbol of something without dimension or weight, an ephemeral quality so rare in our country that it seems to be in danger of extinction. And that quality is happiness.
You look at Sister Jean, you listen to her, you watch her with people, with her players and students and just about anybody who happens to be around, and it’s impossible not to smile.
She makes you smile because she is happy.
She’s happy.
The thing about Sister Jean, of the sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, is that age, sports, friendship, prayer and, as she always says, ‘‘sleeping well’’ have coalesced into this force of goodwill and good cheer that is a pleasure to behold.
In days of old, poets and essayists might sit and contemplate objects in the natural world and let their minds drift where they may. John Keats pondered the Elgin Marbles, for example, and wrote about the mixing of ‘‘Grecian grandeur with the rude/Wasting of old time.’’
Sister Jean says she lives life the way it meant to be lived and will not stop for a reason that cannot be explained with sound logic which by the way is a great way to live. She eats bacon or sausage or pastries for breakfast because, healthy food or not, that’s what she likes. She adds: ‘‘At this age, what difference does it make?’’
