Welcome back today’s guest blogger — Sister Lynne Smith, OSB, a member of the inclusive Benedictine community, Benedictine Women of Madison, at Holy Wisdom Monastery in Madison, WI. Sister Lynne was our guest on a recent Ask Sister podcast so be sure to listen in!

Someone asked me recently if I felt I had to give up a lot to become a sister. Something in me resists thinking about religious life in terms of giving something up. The question might come from the image of monks “leaving the world” to live in the desert or from the image of religious life as made up of strict ascetical practices.

To be sure, one does give up some things to enter a community and there is asceticism involved in religious life. The practice of asceticism is different in each order. For Benedictines, living in community with our promises of stability, obedience and conversion of life is the asceticism. The rub of daily life and living patiently with our own and one another’s weaknesses is asceticism enough!

My aim of seeking God through Benedictine life leads me to make choices that might seem to others to be loss. For me, those choices help me be available to God and others. I find it helpful to think about entering religious life as a change of lifestyle just as marriage is a change of lifestyle. One exchanges one way of living for another. The change involves some loss as well as gain and it takes time to adjust to the new way of living.

Religious life is about pursuing your heart’s desire. It’s like falling in love. When you fall in love with someone and start spending more time with him or her, you give up some of the ways you used to spend your time. In the process, you gain the love of your life. Over time as you nurture your relationship, you discover you have gained much more than you ever gave up. So it is in religious life.

* * *

For a taste of life in community, check out our Benedictine Sojourner experience for single Christian women. Live in an inclusive ecumenical community at Holy Wisdom Monastery for a year. Pray, play, work and learn with us.

For a shorter experience in the summer consider spending two weeks to a month with us as a Volunteer in Community.

* * *

Join the A Nun’s Life Community for prayer at 6 p.m. CT in the chat room today.
Our prayer leader for this week are Audra of Awkward Catholic fame
and Regina who is engaged in Soul Composting!

AS086 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on September 29, 2011. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: Sister and Reverend Lynne Smith talks about her vocation, balancing Facebook and life, battling demons and giants, prayers for discernment

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.
Subscribe to A Nun’s Life Podcasts:

Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• A NUN AND AN ORDAINED MINISTER AT THE SAME TIME: The Sisters chat with Sister Lynne about her vocation.
• SEEKING BALANCE: I often feel like technology takes over my life. I don’t know what a good balance is to use Facebook and stay in touch with old friends and also maybe become a witness to them but at the same time. So if you can help me figure out a balance as to how long to keep facebook – should you keep it up to the point that you’re going to leave for your community? Or should you cut yourself off completely right before? I’m not sure. Your help would be appreciated!
• TANGLE WITH OR RUN FROM DEMONS?: Is it helpful for us to make a “one-time”, “fix-all” decision (e.g., never to open a refrigerator door again because we are afraid we’ll indulge too much) because it then saves us from having to repeatedly battle the same giant? Or do we do ourselves a disservice by not tangling with the giant head-to-head (e.g., like learning to be better disciplined or finding different strategies for coping)?
• PRAYER FOR DISCERNMENT: I am still discerning to become a hermit or sister. Do you know a prayer to enlighten me regarding my vocation?

Do you have a question for us? Visit http://anunslife.org/contact/and leave a message for us. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

It seems only fitting that we should blog about these nuns after having been at the movie theatre to see The Mighty Macs.

Sister Lucia Anne Le, OSB, Popcorn Master at Prayerfully Popped

The Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration have just launched a popcorn ministry: “Prayerfully Popped – Corn From the Cloister”. They have a fantastic website where you can learn about this new ministry … and order some popcorn! Visit prayerfullypopped.com.

The popcorn production will take place near the Tucson, Arizona, monastery, one of three monasteries of the Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration. The other monasteries are in Clyde, Missouri, and in Dayton, Wyoming.

So why popcorn and why a monastery? Well, the sisters, like many religious congregations and people across the U.S. have to deal with these tough economic times. The sisters wanted to find a new form of ministry that would be in keeping with their life and spirituality and also bring in some income. So they reached out to University of Arizona Eller College of Management students asking if the students could take on the monastery as a class project.

With the help of the instructor and a Phoenix-based consulting organization, the nuns and the students did just that!

“We never really have considered going into the popcorn business,” Prioress General Sister Patricia Nyquist, OSB, says. “We are contemplative so our ministries have been in-house.… But the more we heard, we thought, this could be fun, and it certainly opens up a whole new venue of outreach for us.”

“It’s probably one of the most unusual (business ventures) because it’s not overtly religious,” Sister Joan Ridley, OSB, says. “But it does have the name ‘Prayerfully Popped.’”

“Everything we do we try to do prayerfully,” adds Sister Ramona Varela, the prioress of the Tucson monastery, explaining that working prayerfully means that you are singularly focused on the task at hand, much as you are when you pray. Christ is in our hearts so no matter what we do it’s all centered on a life of adoration and worship,” she says. (source: Cathalena E. Burch for the Arizona Daily Star, September 4, 2011)

Visit Prayerfully Popped at PrayerfullyPopped.com or call 800-939-8323. Be sure to check out flavors like pumpkin pie and rocky road!

* * *
Join A Nun’s Life Community for prayer today at 6 p.m. CST (your time zone). The nuns will be at a cheesy nundisclosed location!

I love that Catholic sisters and nuns are increasingly present on the Internet and in social media and networks. Sister Maxine and I have seen astronomical growth since we first began in 2006 with blogging and social media and then adding a forum in 2008, podcasts in 2009, an iPhone app in 2010, and a newly updated forum in 2011. What’s next?!

When we started, there were very few nuns around but today I’m happy to see them in many areas of the Internet, social media, and technology! In fact, there is now a nun who develops software applications, commonly know as “apps”. Sister Catherine Wybourne is a Benedictine nun of Holy Trinity Monastery in Oxfordshire county in southeast England.

Rather than turning to traditional bake sales to raise money for the monastery she founded along with two other Benedictine sisters seven years ago, Wybourne is setting her sights on software application sales, and developing two apps for the iPhone.

She says one app will focus on the rule of Saint Benedict and will be free, and other is an app to help parish priests. The nun wouldn’t elaborate more on the idea, except to say she can’t believe nobody else has thought of the idea before.

“We are going to charge for our apps because we are in the middle of a fundraising campaign and we are trying to get people to get hold of the idea of philanthropic investment,” Wybourne said, sounding more like the banker she was for a few years before entering religious life in 1981. “So it would not be a good idea on the one hand to say please invest in us, and on the other, give everything away for free.” (source: Apple and the App-Making Nun by Margaret Rock, May 11, 2011)

You can find Sister Catherine on Twitter @DigitalNun and at Holy Trinity Monastery.

What other areas of the Internet, social media, and technology do you think nuns should get into?

* * *

Last night at Sister Maxine’s graduation from Catholic Theological Union, Sister Mary Collins, OSB, received an honorary doctorate in theology.

Sister Mary Collins, a Benedictine sister of Mount St. Scholastica in Atchison, Kansas, is one of the premiere liturgical theologians of North American. As a “lecturer, writer, and editor, Mary Collins has been a pioneer figure in the liturgical renewal in the United States since Vatican II. She has attended to critical questions in liturgical theology, language, practice, and spirituality.” (source: CTU honoris causa announcement)

It was a true blessing to see and listen to Sister Mary. It reminded me of a piece she had written a while back on anamnesis, “corporate memory” … on remembering who we truly are.

Anamnesis is biblical language which was long ago taken up by the church and recently recovered as liturgical language…. Anamnesis speaks about a distinctive kind of human remembering. In common speech we are more likely to talk about its opposite, amnesia.

We are familiar with the disorder of clinical amnesia, a diagnosis given to name a memory lapse of a crucial kind. The amnesiac is not the person who has misplaced her glasses one time too many. She is the person who has forgotten who she is. She has lost her conscious awareness of the basic relationships that give her her identity. The amnesiac cannot answer when asked whoa re you? where have you come from? where are you headed? who are your parents? have you any family? where is your home? what kind of work do you do?

“Anamnesis” and “amnesia” come from a common Greek root. The biblical and liturgical use of the word is “anamnesis” rises from a perception that there is a disorder analogous to clinical amnesia that plagues the human community. To be human is to be threatened with spiritual amnesia. At the level of our spiritual identity we do not remember for long who we really are. Those ultimate relationships that give us our spiritual identity slip from consciousness all too easily, and we lapse into noncomprehension about our deepest identity.

(Mary Collins, OSB, Contemplative Participation: Sacrosanctum Concilium, twenty-five years later published by The Liturgical Press, 1990, p. 55)

In celebration and honor of our graduate, Sister Maxine, and all the women and men of Catholic Theological Union who have given their lives to “faith seeking understanding … consider this: What are some of the things that help you remember your deepest identity? What are the relationships in your life that are woven into that identity? How do you return from periods of amnesia?

* * *

The New York Times posted an interesting article on a group of Benedictine monks who, though cloistered, are hopping online in order to raise awareness about their monastery and their way of life. The monks of the Portsmouth Abbey in Portsmouth, R.I. are online and The Internet has allowed for communities that are enclosed to open virtual doors to the world. They are then able to reach people that might not ordinarily have bump into in and around the monastery.

“If 500 years ago, blogging existed, the monks would have found a way to make use of it,” Abbot Holmes said. “Our power is very limited. In the end it’s God who is calling people to himself and calling to people to live in union with him. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t do our part.”

For some, the technological approach to advertising and marketing may seem at odds with the image of an almost hermitlike monastic existence. Not so, say the monks. The use of technology and social media has been embraced even by the Vatican, which has its own YouTube channel and a Facebook page dedicated to the beatification of Pope John Paul II. (source: “Monks Embrace Web to Reach Recruits” by Tanzina Vega in The New York Times on April 17, 2011)

The monks of Portsmouth Abbey welcomes new members interested in becoming a monk or an oblate.

* * *

Join the A Nun’s Life community for prayer at 6 p.m. Central Time (your time zone).

Lent, being a season of anticipation, is a great time to line up my reading list for this spring and summer. One of the newest books on my list is Cultivating Soil and Soul: 20th Century Catholic Agrarians Embrace the Liturgical Movement (2009), by Michael Woods, S.J. Being an Iowan by birth and a Midwesterner for much of my life, I couldn’t resist a book about the land, rural life, and worship.

I came across the book in my research on movements that influenced the directions of the Second Vatican Council. The liturgical movement came from Europe to the U.S. in the 1920s. Virgil Michel, a Benedictine monk of St. John’s Abbey in rural Collegeville, Minnesota, played a key role in it. The movement sought to give Catholics a more participative role in the liturgy. This eventually led to things like missals (which enabled people to follow the Mass in English at a time when all Masses were said in Latin) and the presider facing the people during liturgy, among many other changes. It also aimed to make a stronger connection between liturgy and daily life, especially in regard to the need for social justice.

Ok, I won’t say too much more about the book, otherwise I’ll be tempted to start reading it right now! But here’s one last tantalizer—a description on the back cover that says:

“Even before Vatican Council II, individuals like Virgil Michel and Catholic social movements like the National Catholic Rural Life Conference attempted to promote greater social justice by reconnecting rural life in the U.S. with the liturgical life of the church. …The introduction of devotions, sacramentals, ritual, music, dance, poetry, and dramatic performances helped farmers rediscover the sacramental character of the soil and all the elements of agrarian life that emerge from it.”

I think this book will be pretty close to the top of my reading list. Its closest competitor at this point might be Leslie Tentler’s Catholics and Contraception: An American History (2004). I don’t have my fiction reading list in much order yet, but I’m pretty sure that Tillie Olsen’s collection of short stories, Tell Me a Riddle, will be at the top of that list.

What’s on your reading list for this year? We’d love to hear about ideas for great reading – please share them in the comment box below!

* * *

Join the sisters and A Nun’s Life community at 6 p.m. Central Time (your time zone) at http://aNunsLife.org/LIVE for Praying with the Sisters live podcast and chat.

Yesterday, Sister Julie and I attended the Associate Covenant ceremony of our friend Holly. The ceremony was held in the Motherhouse in Monroe, Michigan. The warm light of the setting sun glowed in the Chapel windows as Holly stepped forward and made her formal commitment to the IHM way of prayer, community, and ministry. It was a beautiful and deeply touching ceremony.

Holly dedicated the ceremony to Bede Griffiths, a Benedictine priest who has done much writing and speaking about the mystical roots of Christianity. The desire to grow in awareness of oneself and of the Divine certainly isn’t unique to Christianity – it is shared by many of the great religions of the world, such as Buddhism, Islam, and Hinduism.

I loved how the ceremony reflected the universal human desire for the Divine. There was a lotus flower, a religious symbol common in Hinduism and Buddhism, on the cover of the ceremony booklet. There were readings from the Book of Wisdom and the Gospel of Luke, as well as from the writings of Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hahn, among others. The music included pieces such as “How Can I Keep from Singing” and “Nocturne.”

As the ceremony ended and we went forth from the chapel, I thought about the many different ways the Divine is at work in humanity and all of creation. And about the power of symbols to remind us of our interconnectedness in the Spirit. This morning, as I was just waking up, I realized that I was dreaming about a lotus flower placed over an open Bible.

Are there particular symbols that have come to light recently for you? If you’d like to share them, please write about them in the comment box below. If it’s an image, you might want to include a link where the image can be viewed.

* * *

Join the sisters and A Nun’s Life community at 6 p.m. Central Time (your time zone) at http://aNunsLife.org/LIVE for Praying with the Sisters live podcast and chat.

Sister Erin volunteers as a lawyer at East River Legal Services (Elisha Page / Argus Leader)

Sister Erin Colgan had a great plan … be a teacher and get married and have kids.

Guess what?

She’s now a nun with the Benedictine Sisters of Yankton in South Dakota. To boot, she’s also become a lawyer!

Sister Erin had met a Benedictine nun while teaching a confirmation class.

Colgan had started attending retreats offered by the Benedictine centers then. She vividly recalls one at the convent at Norfolk where a sister said, “When I came here, it felt like home.” In her head, Colgan said, “You are absolutely nuts.”

“Then I came to Yankton, and at the end of that week, it was, yeah, this is home,” Colgan said.

Read more about Sister Erin in the Argus Leader newspaper, “Sister Erin makes mark in courtroom: Benedictine nun follows circuitous vocational journey” (February 28, 2011) by Jill Callison.

What inspires you about Sister Erin’s story? What ideas pop into your head?

* * *

Join the sisters and A Nun’s Life community at 6 p.m. Central Time (your time zone) at http://aNunsLife.org/LIVE for Praying with the Sisters live podcast and chat.

IGF006 In Good Faith with Sister Laurel O’Neal, a diocesan hermit, recorded live on February 3, 2011. Produced by aNunsLife.org ministry. Our hosts talk with Sister Laurel about about the life of a hermit, eremitical solitude, chronic illness, and more!

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

Subscribe to A Nun’s Life Podcasts:

Guest: Sister Laurel O’Neal, diocesan hermit.

Sister Laurel O’Neal is a diocesan hermit, theologian, spiritual director and author of the blog notesfromstillsong.blogspot.com.

Show Notes:

• what a hermit is
• historical origins of the eremitical life
• eremitical life in the Camaldolese Benedictine tradition
• discerning a call to eremitical life
• relationship of diocesan hermit to the diocese and bishop
• difference between eremitical life and other forms of consecrated life
• the daily pattern of life for a hermit — the horarium
• lay hermits
• the digital hermitage — a blog as a window to the world
• common misperceptions about the life of a hermit
• chronic illness and vocation
• the unusual vividness of chronic illness
• solitude in the life of a hermit
• deepening the relationship with God through solitude

In Good Faith is a conversation exploring God’s call in everyday life hosted by A Nun’s Life Sisters Maxine and Julie. Our monthly program features guests who are nationally known for their ministry in spirituality, religious life, and discernment. We’ll look at how our guests understand their own life as a calling and discuss a variety of perspectives on living faith and call in everyday life. The program is broadcast live every first Thursday of the month from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. Central Time. Tune in at www.aNunsLife.org/LIVE.

For more information, including upcoming guests on In Good Faith, please visit the program page of In Good Faith.

AS056 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on January 14, 2011. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: Benedictine monastics outside the monastery, godly anger, church-going dilemma for a Catholic-Protestant couple, not feeling called, and more!

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

Subscribe to A Nun’s Life Podcasts:

Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• I feel I have a vocation but recently I’ve felt “not called” anymore. Should I be worried?
• How can Benedictines be considered monastics when so many of them work in the world? … Sister Christine Ereiser, OSB, responds
• What would cause God to be angry with us? (from a discussion about Meribah)
• Is it okay to be angry with God?
• What are some healthy ways for a couple to attend church when one is Catholic and one is Protestant?
• Plus, an update from the “nun-ordering-pizza” debate!

Do you have a question for us? Call our toll-free Voicemail Hotline at 888-703-4732 and leave a voicemail for us with your question. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also send us an email or comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

DM003 Digital Ministry with Sr. Christine Ereiser, OSB, on using Twitter and providing meaningful content in 140 characters or less! Recorded live on November 9, 2010. Produced by aNunsLife.org ministry. Be inspired by technology, technique, and theology.

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

Subscribe to A Nun’s Life Podcasts:

Topic: Using Twitter and providing meaningful content in 140 characters or less!

Guest: Sister Christine Ereiser, OSB

Sister Christine Ereiser is a Benedictine nun and the prioress of Saint Joseph Monastery in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and an avid user of Twitter to promote Benedictine values. Sister Christine encourages the use of the Internet and social media within the Benedictine community and at Monte Cassino School, a pre-school through 8 grade school started by the Benedictine Sisters in 1926.

Listen to her story and be inspired!

Show Notes:

• ministry in 140 characters or less
• getting started with Twitter
• tweets and ministry potential
• getting retweets
• choosing topics or themes to tweet
• when not to tweet
• tweeting in support of corporate ministry
• the Benedictine values of hospitality and of stability on the Internet
• amount of time needed to tweet
• Twitter: distraction or ministry?
• advice for Twittering beginners
• a leader’s advice on getting leadership involved in today’s Internet communication
• and more!

Digital Ministry covers a mix of things covering techniques, technology, and theology in order to enhance one’s capacity to do ministry, to witness to the Gospel in every day life on the Internet. The show airs on the second Thursday of the month (today was an exception) from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. Central Time. Visit the Digital Ministry web page for more information including how to download this podcast after the live broadcast and our full podcast schedule.

For more information, including upcoming guests and our full podcast schedule, visit the program page of Digital Ministry.

Continue the conversation day or night at the A Nun’s Life Community Forum and look for the topic “Digital Ministry Podcast Listeners.”

Please keep the Benedictine Sisters of Virginia in your prayers.

Sister Denise teaching in South Africa, 2006

Sister Denise Mosier, OSB was fatally wounded in a head on collision on Sunday, August 1 while riding with two other sisters as they were coming home to Bristow, from the convent in Richmond, for the sisters’ annual retreat. Sister Denise died at the scene of the accident.

Throughout her monastic life, Sister Denise was an educator, a spiritual mentor to women in formation, a retreat director, and an advocate for peace and justice. Her love of liturgical music, movement, and hospitality flowed into the community through her artful use of liturgical dance at special events celebrations.

In the car with Sister Denise on August 1 were Sisters Charlotte Lange, OSB and Connie Ruth Lupton, OSB. They were both badly injured in the accident and were immediately air lifted to Fairfax Inova Hospital. Sisters Charlotte and Connie Ruth … remain in critical condition. (source: Benedictine Sisters of Virginia website)

The sisters also ask for prayers for the driver of the other vehicle, Carlos Martinelly Montano, and for his family.

The sisters have been in retreat this week and today celebrate the Mass of Resurrection for Sister Denise. Michelle Boorstein of The Washington Post has a good article about how the retreat (to which Sisters Denise, Charlotte, and Connie Ruth were headed) provides an amazing backdrop to all that has happened this week (Under God: Forgiveness at Benedictine nuns’ silent retreat, August 4, 2010).

Even in their mourning and in the silence of their retreat these sisters continue to be a message of hope and Good News and healing and reconciliation. Our prayers are with you, dear sisters.

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 are also other community at Holy Wisdom Monastery including the Sunday Worship community and the Oblate community, that is, “an intentional community of women and men who find a practical spirituality in the Rule of Benedict.”

Sisters Lynne, Mary David, and Joanne

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.

* * *

Join A Nun’s Life community for prayer today at 6 p.m. CST (your time zone).

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.