Plática (conversation/interview) with Catholic Women Priests
I'm very excited to write that I have scheduled my first plática, interview/conversation, with one of the participants in my dissertation study! She was one of the first Roman Catholic Women Priests who responded to an inquiry about being in my study that I sent to the organization, Roman Catholic Womenpriests, in 2017. We are planning to meet via Zoom in mid January 2021.
This coming week I want to prepare a letter introducing myself and a short video discussing who I am and why I am studying the struggles of Catholic women priests. I got the idea from a dissertation by Cindy Fierros (2017), Chican@ Scholar: Narratives of Spiritual Activism. She used the methodology of plática for her dissertation and sent the participants in her study a short letter discussing who she was and why she chose her dissertation study. Fierros shared the letter with them because she did not know them personally, yet, because she was asking the participants to be open and vulnerable with her, she also wanted to make herself "completely open and vulnerable to the research process" and to them (2017, p. 78).
Fierros was able to meet with the participants (whom she calls contributors) in person, she travelled to their locations (Fierros, 2017). I am a people person who loves to talk and share with folks. Sometimes I don't think I have much to say and then I find myself going on and on for hours with friends and family. Like my mom, I can start up a conversation with almost anyone and in a short amount of time we are sharing our joys and heartaches with one another.
Once I was visiting a friend in the midwest, we needed to stop at a store to pick up a few items. I had finished shopping before my friend so I decided to sit on a bench to wait for her. An older woman sat next to me, I said hello to her and soon we were sharing our lives with each other. I learned she lived in the town for many years and that she was a widow whose husband recently had passed, she had a son whom she loved dearly and who watched over her. My friend finished shopping and approached us, she noticed that we were deep in conversation. I got up to leave and said good-bye to my new friend. My friend asked me, "Do you know her?" "No, I just met her." She had a quizzical look on her face as I waved good-bye and started telling her about my new friend.
Then she asked, "How do you do that?"
"Do what?"
"Get a complete stranger to share personal details of their lives."
I hadn't really thought about it before. But her question lingered and I pondered it. I knew my friend was shy and quiet and was open to learning so I retraced the conversation and others like it that I have had in my life. One thing that I noticed in the reconstructions of the conversations is that I care about the stories they are telling me; I am sincerely interested. I am naturally inquisitive but hopefully not a "buttinsky". I have learned to be a good listener, to listen deeply not only to the words people say, but also to their tone, inflection, body language, all are important to listening. I probably have had to temper my "need" to know with what people want to share as I matured as a listener.
I later told my friend, "Well, you ask about their lives and then listen deeply and carefully."
Because we are in a pandemic I will not be able to meet with the participants of my study in person. This saddens me, yet, it also opens up opportunities. I will be using Zoom to hold the pláticas with the women priests. Perhaps time and costs would have prevented me from certain participants, now I can virtually meet any participant across the U.S. I'll miss not meeting them in person, but as all of us had to do during this time of COVID-19, we make concessions and move forward.
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