Saturday, October 10, 1998

A dying nun gives to the end

By DAVID WATERS

Scripps Howard News Service

Sister Elaine is leaving Monday.

After 20 years of serving the poorest of the West Tennessee's poor, the 54-year-old nun is leaving, but not because she is done.

The poor will always be with us, the gospel says. But Sister Elaine won't be. She has ovarian cancer.

She is leaving because she is dying.

"I can feel the tumor growing inside me, moving up against my ribs," she said last week as she sat on the floor of her tiny Midtown duplex in Memphis, sorting what few possessions she had left to give.

"It's a strange sensation, dying. I feel it when I breathe. It hurts to yawn and to laugh.

"I'm not afraid to go. I just want to do it right. I want to leave with some peace of mind."

Sister Elaine Wicks came to Memphis 20 years ago on Oct. 4, the feast day of St. Francis.

It was an answer to her prayers.

Elaine grew up in South Dakota. Her father didn't go to church, so she and her mother would pray secretly at night in her bedroom.

In the second grade, Elaine began praying the St. Francis Peace Prayer.

"Lord, make me an instrument of your peace," she would pray. And He did.

In 1978, God sent His instrument named Elaine to Fayette County, Tenn., one of the poorest counties in the wealthiest nation on Earth.

Sister Elaine found men and women living in shacks near mansions, bony children dressed in rags within sight of riches.

She started Project Outreach Inc., which allowed her to accept donations from congregations and other groups.

She fed and clothed the people who lived in the shacks. She helped them find health care. She was with them when they were born and when they died.

Few people knew what she was doing; fewer knew where and for whom.

For years, Sister Elaine declined interviews. She feared media exposure might hurt the people she loved, served and protected.

God knew what she was doing and that was enough.

Besides, what she did wasn't really her doing. She was just following instructions.

"The gospel calls us to be in relationship with the poor and marginalized, not to just send money," said the nun, wearing a South Dakota ballcap and a "Hangin' With Jesus" T-shirt.

"I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. It's pretty simple."

Last week, Sister Elaine broke her silence. She wants everyone to know what she found.

She wants you to know you don't have to go overseas to fulfill the Great Commission.

"You can make disciples by becoming one," she said.

She wants you to know you don't have to use words to preach the gospel.

"I've seen the principles of the gospel at work," she said. "God is with the poor, and when we are with the poor, God is with us."

She wants you to know the gospel works.

"The more you give, the more you are given," she said. "I've come home from Fayette County barefoot, coatless. And it never fails. The next day or week, I'll get a new pair of shoes in the mail, or someone will donate a rack of coats to the program."

For 20 years, Sister Elaine gave whatever she had to give.

A few days ago she made one last trip to Fayette County. She left behind her van, paid for and fully insured for three years. She cut off the phone and utilities in her empty duplex. She had given away everything she had left -- a Godspell album, some photographs, a Chicago Bulls cap, office supplies. Then she celebrated the feast day of St. Francis privately.

And now she is off to Franciscan headquarters in Minnesota. There, at Assisi Heights, she will move into a small room at the end of the hall on the third floor, where she plans to die alone.

"I'm not afraid. I just don't want people to watch me die. I'm not a social dier."

Sister Elaine has had time to plan her funeral. She wants the congregation to sing the Lord's Prayer.

And she wants them to hear the St. Francis peace prayer.

"Lord, make me an instrument of your peace," begins the prayer she prayed as a child and lived as an adult.

"Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love;

"For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

"And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life."

When Sister Elaine dies -- be it next week or next month or next year, she will give away the only other thing she has left to give: her cancer-consumed body.

She will be the first Franciscan nun to donate her body to science.

"I want to help find a cure," she said.

"I'd give anything to do that."

(E-mail David Waters at waters(at)gomemphis.com.)