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The Sisters of Mount Angel – Part 2
The second part of a story by Brian Doyle in Best Catholic Writing 2007 on The Sisters of Mount Angel (return to the beginning of the story)
First there was a meal, of course, and before the meal were prayers, and the three nuns offering prayers were a microcosm of the monastery. One was very old and bent and grinning and calm. The second, the prioress, was tall and strong and commanding and gentle. The third was tiny and lithe and exuberant and looked to be about twenty years old. Each was terse and eloquent, and all three were funny, joking about making and selling thousands of jars of their legendary mustard, joking about the monastery’s legendary basketball team in the old days, joking about their eternal battles with blackberry brambles, which they fought valiantly even while thanking the merciful Lord for the berries—the black honey of summer, as the great poet Mary Oliver says.
During dinner I talked to all sorts of nuns—postulants and novices, sisters who had taken first vows, sisters who had taken perpetual vows. I talked for a long while with a cheerful woman who when young had been a sister at the monastery but had finally stepped away to spend her life as a teacher, yet she had never stopped visiting or supporting the monastery and in fact had been crucial in raising a million dollars for the new chapel. I talked to one young woman who was, as she said, an inquirer, a formal designation given to a woman who wishes to acquaint herself with the Benedictine monastic community on the off chance that she might join up. Each of these women was quick-witted and humorous, but there was a calm about them, a direct ease, a warm dignity that seemed to me, thinking about it later, best captured by the word grace.
Finally I gave my talk …
Check in tomorrow for the continuation of The Sisters of Mount Angel.
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{ 4 comments }
Merry Christmas, Sister Julie!
They make the BEST mustard with great names. One flavor -which I gave away for Christmas – is called “Devoutly Dill.”
Merry Christmas Julie!
I am a new fan — since I first saw their mustard, I have been trying to figure out which to get?!
Glorious Garlic won lots of awards. I have friends who swear by Heavenly Honey. You can buy their mustard online: monasterymustard.com