The Sisters of Mount Angel – Part 3

The third 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)

Finally I gave my talk, singing and roaring, spinning stories, making jokes. I told them about barking “Point it down!” at my toddler twin sons when I was teaching them Guy Rules years ago, and about the puppy who knew a hundred words but just could not seem to get her head around the word no; and I told them about my friend Tommy, who was roasted to white ash on September 11, and my theory that every story I tell about Tommy is a prayer for his brilliant soul and a dart to the heart of the cow-ard in the cave in Afghanistan; and I told stories of priests and firemen and dads and other brave men, and ospreys and daughters and rivers and other miracles, and I tried to make those nuns and their friends laugh and cry, because laughter and tears are prayers too; and finally I concluded my burble and rant by telling them about my mama, the salt sea from whom I came.

She never turned aside a poor or hungry soul, did my mama, and she patiently taught children at home and in school for years and years, and she has the sharpest and quickest of wits and tongues, does my mama, the deft storyteller, my mother with her fingers in the deep, holy loam and skin of the earth; my mother who loves the smoky, magical theater and miracle of the Mass; my mother with the memory of twenty elephants and a mind far quicker and more capacious than those of all her children put together; my mother with a ferocious commitment to peace and justice and honest talk, especially in the political and religious arenas, where lies kill people and bleed souls; my mother who has not a jot or an iota of pious nonsense in her; my mother who thinks that the divisions among Christian faiths are silly and stupid; my mother who knows more about the New Testament than I ever will and is fond of quoting the line wherein children are told to care for their fathers even when their minds go, which used to make my dad laugh in the other room; my mother stubborn as ten mules; my mother who took all her stunning talents and bent them toward love; and my mother celebrating and living the wildly improbable message of the Christ, a message she thought could and should change the world, my mother who de-voted her whole life to the possibility of that mad idea; my mother now near the end of her time on this, God’s earth; my mother soon to sift to dust; my mother more bent and fragile by the minute; my mother whose warm, salty voice was the first thing I ever heard, and I cannot imagine a world without that grinning voice, a world without my mama in it….

Check in tomorrow for the continuation of The Sisters of Mount Angel.

Tagged as: benedictine, book, catholic sister, monastery, nun