This past weekend, Sister Maxine and I stayed with the Benedictine Women of Madison at Holy Wisdom Monastery in Madison, Wisconsin. It was a delight to be with the sisters and with the wonderful community of oblates, retreatants, coworkers, and members of the Sunday assembly. The monastery grounds held so much beauty too — trees, trails, hills, and critters!

Benedictine Women of Madison is an ecumenical religious community in the monastic tradition of Saint Benedict. The sisters community is for single women of any Christian tradition. There is also an oblate community, that is, “an intentional community of women and men who find a practical spirituality in the Rule of Benedict.”

Sisters Lynn, Joanne, and Mary David

Because this is an ecumenical community, women from any Christian tradition are welcome to become a Benedictine sister. So if you are a Christian woman who is drawn to monastic life within an ecumenical context, I invite you to get to know the Benedictine Women of Madison. You can remain as a Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, Catholic, or part of another Christian tradition and become a sister! To learn more, check out the Benedictine Women of Madison website.

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Greetings! Monday is Nunday here at A Nun’s Life because we feature photos of real Catholic sisters and nuns.

Today’s Nunday photo is from Susan, a Lutheran seminarian and oblate of the Sisters of Saint Scholastica in Chicago. (Yes, you can be an oblate or associate of a Catholic religious community and not be Catholic!)

Writes Susan, “Once a year the women of my church make a retreat with the Benedictine sisters at St. Mary Monastery in Rock Island, IL. Theirs is an interesting story.” Sister Charlotte Sonneville, OSB, is one of the nuns that Susan met at the monastery

Sister Charlotte Sonneville is in charge of Benet House, the retreat center.  She is, in the best sens,e a guest mistress. Her welcoming face is the one that greets us each year as we arrive in the February cold for our retreat.  She is efficient and thorough, friendly and conscientious. She relays the rules of the house with an explanation and a smile, making us all feel like beloved family members who have just been away for a time.  I look forward to seeing her each year.

Sister Charlotte is originally from Moline, IL, which is right next to Rock Island, so in a sense coming to St. Mary Monastery and Benet House has been a homecoming for her.  Sixty years ago, she chose to become a nun, she says, because she “wanted to share my faith with others.”  She taught at the school and held many jobs within the order, always striving to do just that. She now sees the running of Benet House as a part of her ministry of welcoming people as Christ, just as St. Benedict stated in his rule.

Her sweatshirt says, “Lord, thank you for letting me see all the colors.” This captures Sister Charlotte perfectly, as she is someone who not only sees all the colors of God’s creation, but loves them all deeply.

To see all the photos of Catholic sisters and nuns and links to their stories, visit the A Nun’s Life Facebook photo album. If you’ve got a photo and story of a real Catholic sister or nun, check out the details on submitting your photo for consideration.

The final 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)

If we are to properly honor and celebrate the legacy of such graceful and strong people as the sisters at Mt. Angel, who have bent their whole lives to the promise that love will defeat darkness, then we must march into our days with rage and song, with hammers in our hands and prayers in our mouths, and build us a new Church and a new world and a new, roaring poem, with all the grace and strength and sweet, wild magic we can muster. It can be done. It’s being done as I write these words and as you read them. These brave women bet their lives on that premise. My mama bet her life on that premise. Are we to tell them they were wrong, and the task is too big? I don’t have the courage to tell my mother such a thing, for she is a tart, tough, tiny Irish Catholic woman from New York City, and even my brothers, strapping men far taller and broader than I, quail at the thought of telling our mum what cannot be done; and it would take a far braver man than I to stand up to tiny Sister Alicia and tell her that the work she has chosen to do is a bust. She would laugh in my face, and she would be right.

So let us go, then, you and I, and forge a new thing. We do not know its shape, but we know the astounding idea at its heart, the idea that has driven the Catholic clan through two thousand years, the idea that remains, I believe, the key to the moral evolution of the human race, the idea that fell again and again from the lips of the gaunt, dusty man with starlight in his veins: love, love, love, love, love.

The End.

The fourth 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)

And I stood there at the lectern, in that cavernous room in that lovely old monastery, with its cedarn air like music in the nose, the extraordinary faces of the nuns held up to me in the twilight, and I tried to imagine or articulate or conceive a world without my mother in it, and I started to cry, and I could not stop. Forty-nine years old, and still sobbing in front of nuns.

No one spoke.

After a couple of minutes I got a grip and looked out at those women, and in the sweet silence, the brilliant shine of tears flashing here and there, I saw them for who they really are. I swear I did. I was granted and vouchsafed a vision: these sisters, and all sisters, are the sinews who hold the Church together. Their prayers hold us like hands. The Church has for centuries rested on their thin, bony shoulders. They are brave beyond words and we take them for granted and we should get down on our creaky knees and clasp our hands in prayer and speak to the dust and say, “Lord, we thank you for these women; for their grace we thank you, for their sacrifices and sweat we thank you, for their hearts in which we swim we thank you.”

Look, I am not an idiot all the time, and I know full well, all too well, that the story of the world is struggle and sad, loneliness and loss, but to my mind there just is no way to stay sad as long as there are thin, bony, brave women like these nuns, like my mom, like your mom, in the world. It just cannot be done. We cannot let ourselves despair at the greed and cruelty of the world, and sometimes of our Church, because the sisters do not despair; they fight the brambles all day and night for us, and they are lodestars and compasses and prisms and leaders of the world that will come, the world of joy and light, where no child weeps from fear, where no one huddles in hopelessness.

If we are to properly honor and celebrate the legacy of such graceful and strong people as the sisters at Mt. Angel …

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

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.

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.

Last year my colleague Jim Manney shared with me the Foreword of a book that he had just finished editing, The Best Catholic Writing 2007 (a series that Loyola Press publishes annually). Brian Doyle, who wrote the Foreword, tells of his experience with the Sisters of Mount Angel. Loyola Press graciously granted me permission to reprint the story for you here at A Nun’s Life. The story will be done “serial-style” with a few paragraphs each day during the Christmas holiday. I’ll be interjecting occasionally to comment and to converse with you. Enjoy!

Some time ago I gave a characteristically rambling talk to a group of Benedictine nuns at their monastery in Oregon. As usual I set out to tell stories and sing prayers and tell jokes and draw tears and foment cheerful chaos and try to connect at some deep, inexplicable level that has everything to do with laughing and weeping, and as usual I was granted more epiphany and delight than I could ever have delivered, which happens to me all the time, which is one of the reasons I feel like the richest man on earth, even though my back is sore all the time and my wife is a confusing country and my children never make their beds and it rains so much here that everyone gets a little mossy come winter.

Anyway, I arrived early at the monastery and wandered around the grounds for a couple of hours, out of respect for my hosts, trying to see and sense something of their lives and loves: their salty days, the way the wind slid through their fir trees, the geometry of the gravestones in their tiny cemetery, the way the hop fields and vineyards stretched away in corduroy rows beneath their little hill, the keening of hawks overhead, the secret words that dragonflies and damselflies spelled in the air among the old stone buildings. I wandered and wondered. I walked the simple stations of the cross that someone had carved in trees along a path. I examined the old washhouse, where millions of prayers had been murmured over socks and frocks during the last century. I sat in the tall grass and prayed quietly for all sorts of things, even for the one-eyed cat glaring at me balefully from the brambles, and then I went to give my talk.

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….

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

Nunday is here and today we have a special remembrance of Sister Julia Wilkinson, OSB, whose second anniversary of death was earlier this month. The photo was sent in by the Rev. Sallie Verrette, of Grinnell, Iowa.

Rev. Sallie writes: “Sister Julia was a dear friend of mine. She taught me about God’s love for me and showed me how to love God. She was mischievous and funny and filled with God’s Grace.”

Sister Julia was a Benedictine Sister of Mount Saint Scholastica in Atchison, Kansas. You can read more about her on the Sisters’ website: +Sister Julia Wilkinson, O.S.B.

Occasionally I am asked if a person has to be Catholic in order to become a nun. There are a number of ways to approach this question.

First, the word nun is used across religious traditions to refer to a woman who takes vows “committing her to a religious life.” Wikipedia further notes that “the term ‘nun’ is applicable to Roman Catholics, Eastern Christians, Anglicans, Lutherans, Jains, Buddhists, and Taoists, for example.”

Here in the United States, the word nun most often refers to the Catholic variety of nuns because that’s probably what most people are familiar with, even outside of Catholic circles. And for many the distinction between nun and sister is rarely if ever noticed by those outside of religious life (a term that refers to a way of life characterized by the vows of poverty, celibacy, and obedience).

Still there are a number of people who have a kind of generic image of nuns as women who dedicate themselves to God, pray a lot, and do good for others. Sometimes this image is also associated with a rejection of not only the world but with ordinary living and being human … that that nuns somehow live a blissfully peaceful, utopia-esque life that is totally unencumbered by the ordinary stuff of life — relationships, heartache, struggle, joy, fun, suffering, busy-ness, etc. While it is true that we live a different kind of lifestyle and seek peace by the grace of God, we are still human and are affected by the world we live in and our own humanity whether we are cloistered nuns or nuns living in the mainstream world. All that is to say that for people who have the generic image of nuns, they may have no idea that being a nun means that your vows and your way of life is located within a particular religious tradition, not just free floating.

The Roman Catholic Christian tradition, of which I am a member, is not the only religious tradition, nor is it even the only Christian tradition that has nuns. I recently read an article about Episcopal nuns who belong to The Order of Saint Helena in Augusta, Georgia. There’s even some who blog — check out Sister Claire Joy who is also a member of Sister Bloggers, “Catholic Sisters, Episcopal Sisters, women in formation, those discerning a religious vocation and others who want to join the conversation.” There are also ecumenical communities of nuns such as the Benedictine Women of Madison whom I’ve had the joy of meeting.

So the answer to the question really is, No, you don’t have to be Catholic to be a nun, but you do have to belong to a particular religious tradition. If you want to be a Catholic nun, then yes, you have to be Catholic!

Did you ever hear about the Hollywood actress Dolores Hart, a movie star of the 1950s and 60s. She is purported to have given Elvis Presley his first movie kiss during the movie King Creole in 1958. Shortly after playing Saint Clare of Assisi in the movie Francis of Assisi, Hart entered a  Benedictine community of cloistered Catholic nuns at the Monastery of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Connecticut. In 2001 she was elected Prioress (assists the Abbess of the community) of the community. She is the only nun to be a voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (givers of the Oscars).

A few interesting interviews with Mother Dolores Hart, OSB.

Dolores Hart: How a movie actress left Hollywood for a contract with God by Barbara Cloud, for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (April 08, 1998)

Excerpt:

… she never saw herself as a nun.

“It was not a lifelong dream,” she said. “I did not grow up wanting to be a nun. I wanted to be an actress. If it had ever been suggested I would one day be a nun, it would have been the last thing on my mind. It was a million to one shot I would ever be a nun.”

… Mother Dolores calls her life as a Benedictine nun “an island of enclosure.” It is a monastic life that includes prayers at several hours of the day, including 2 a.m. It is a structured life with little time for much else than handling chores on the farm and woodlands involving 359 acres. The land maintains the community, the group of 40 women of various professional backgrounds.

From the Glitter of Hollywood to the Quiet of a Convent by Barbara Middleton for National Catholic Register (July 10-16, 2005)

Excerpt:

… [After starring in the movie Francis of Assisi], I met Pope John XXIII, and he was very instrumental in helping me form my ideas about a vocation.

When I was introduced to the Pope, I said, “I am Dolores Hart, the actress playing Clara.” He said, “No, you are Clara!” Thinking he had misunderstood me, I said, “No, I am Dolores Hart, an actress portraying Clara.” Pope John XXIII looked me squarely in the eye and stated, “No. You are Clara!” His statement stayed with me and rang in my ears many times.

Hollywood star turned nun helps Waterbury group by Tracy Simmons for the Republican-American (May 31, 2008)

Excerpt:

… She found herself asking what life is about. Hollywood gave her everything she wanted, she said, she was even engaged to Los Angeles businessman Don Robinson. She told him, however, that she wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do and called the wedding off six months after the engagement. “It would make a heck of a good movie wouldn’t it?,” she joked.

She told him she had to go to Bethlehem to visit the convent again. “I walked up to the hill (on the 400-acre property) and I thought to myself this is it. I’ve got to do this,” Hart said. Six months later she announced that she “had an affair to take care of.” “They thought it was a guy,” she laughed.

She arrived at the convent in a limousine. “I arrived at Regina Laudis in style.” But she said the transition wasn’t easy.

“It was the hardest thing possible. The first seven years I wanted to quit, to turn around,” she said. “But when the seed finally sprouted and I knew God was there and it was the right thing to do, I don’t think there was anything in my life that made me happier and I would never, ever change my mind.”

I am pleased to welcome to the blogosphere the Cistercian Nuns of Saint Mary’s Abbey in Glencairn, Ireland. Their new blog is Cistercian Vocation and it is written by Sister Eleanor, the vocation director. Sister Eleanor’s very first post was “Begin with Prayer“, a wonderful way to begin any endeavor!

The Cistercians of Saint Mary’s Abbey, Glencairn, are just across the Irish Sea from another group of blogging nuns, the Benedictine Nuns of Saint Mary’s Abbey, Colwich, who write the blog Colwich Novitiate.

Cistercian Vocation has gotten off to a great start with some very handy links and information about Cistercians and their way of life.

• Cistercian Spirituality
• A Prayer for Guidance (one of my favorite prayers … by Thomas Merton)
• Saint Mary’s Abbey, Glencairn (the main website of the community) which features a wonderful FAQ about monastic life

Through this blog, I’ve discovered another blog by the contemplative Benedictine nuns of Abbey of Saint Walburga in Virginia Dale, Colorado.

I’ve added both blogs to my list of Blogs by Catholic Nuns. Do let me know if you know of any others.

I had a most delightful experience this weekend visiting the Monastery of Holy Wisdom, home of the Benedictine Women of Madison (Wisconsin). I was invited to their Celebration of Ecumenism in which the community celebrated their first year as an ecumenical community. This is the first Benedictine ecumenical community and so a very historic moment. Abbot Primate Notker Wolf, the highest representative of the women and men in the Benedictinew Order worldwide, was there and gave a wonderful reflection on ecumenism worldwide and the good work and vision that the Benedictine Women of Madison are engaged in.

Though in its first year as a formal Benedictine ecumenical community, the Benedictine Women of Madison have been involved in the Benedictine way of life and in ecumenicsm for many years as a Roman Catholic religious community. Over time, and with much prayer and discernment, the sisters were called to form an ecumenical Benedictine community. Here’s what the sisters say:

In June, 1966, in the spirit of Vatican Council II, we decided to open a retreat and conference center. We would offer hospitality to Christians of any denomination and seekers of world religions. Our community prayers, retreats and programs would include the message: all are welcome here.

The response to our offer of hospitality has been overwhelmingly abundant. Formerly, Christians of various churches praying together seemed innovative; this practice is common today. We continue to know ourselves as Catholic, Lutheran, Episcopalian and Presbyterian. While these labels sometimes separate us, we also know our unity as Christians who live, pray and work together in our world. These experiences continue to transform our lives.

Fourteen years ago, we initiated a dialogue with our federation of sixteen other monasteries of women. We shared our vision of becoming a Benedictine community for women of any Christian denomination. Through these years our vision has become clearer and our desire to be a community of Christian Benedictine women from various churches has become stronger.

We have not made the journey alone. Prayers, encouraging words, counsel from our ecumenical board and discernment with our Benedictine Federation helped us birth this new community.

A new identity calls for a new name. We are now Benedictine Women of Madison. Holy Wisdom Monastery is the new name for our home, replacing Monastery of Saint Benedict Center.

Our community work remains the same: prayer, hospitality, justice and care of the earth.

For more information on how Holy Wisdom Monastery came to be, check out Frequently Asked Questions regarding the monastery name change.

The celebration was truly beautiful and a testament to the beauty, strength, vision, and faithfulness of these women as well as of the Benedictine Order and of the women, men, and children who are part of the wider Holy Wisdom Monastery community. In terms of religious life, single women who are of any Christian tradition can come together and live and worship and serve in a monastic community.

I have had many women ask me about becoming a sister and are looking for a monastic way of life that is not exclusively Roman Catholic. I would highly recommend getting to know this community.