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6/28/15

WHAT 17 NATURE ANGELS HAVE TO TELL US ABOUT THEIR GOOD LIFE AT THE ABBEY

By Robert R. Schwarz


                                    It is love that impels them to pursue everlasting life;
                                    therefore they are eager to take the narrow road.
                                    A  Rule of St. Benedict

            For many of us, monasteries and the lives of monks and cloistered nuns appear other-worldly and  a convenient way to avoid the realities of everyday life;  monastic lifestyles, due mostly to Hollywood movies and the scant number of in-depth media  reports, have  left us  with the distorted  impression that these  lifestyles , though laudable in many respects, are severely strict and  unnecessary  for a Christian life.  As a former newspaper reporter and editor, this once was my perception, too .  But it gradually changed, not due  to any particular religious leaning but rather to  interviewing and writing about  monastic people around the world, including Mother Theresa and her Sisters of Charity  at their Calcutta headquarters.  A few months ago and now retired,  I  decided to update my observations of monastic life and,  with my wife, Mary Alice , drove to the Our Lady of the Mississippi Abbey near Dubuque, Iowa. This is a  report of that visit ( with a  bit of editorializing added, I admit ) .  
         As  a journalist ,  I  naturally loved to probe for the truth of the matter.  After my confinement for ten days in  a Czech  prison during the Cold War and later, as president of a mental health agency,  I valued human   freedom to search for truth  more than ever. I also loathed  the loss of one's free will to realize the truth  about one's self.  Nowadays, though much of  my search for truth is still in a cloud of unknowing, I feel unshackled in pursuing it, thanks to these words from  my  favorite Mentor and Life Teacher:  " You shall know the truth, and the  truth shall make you free."

       
     As you drive southeast from  Dubuque , you see  rolling land shaped beautifully by the  Mississippi river bluffs . Once you turn off the highway, it' easy to pass the small  Abbey Lane  sign . A  little further down the narrow, winding road is the " Our Lady of the Mississippi Abbey"  sign.  It , too,  is obviously not meant to attract  visitors, yet several hundred come here annually;  some (never more than ten)   stay a night or  two in one of the   five , unadorned   guest houses  among the woodlands now in view. Soon  on your right  appears another   narrow road leading  to the abbey's  "candy factory," where the nuns make and process the caramel candy and mints ( 33 tons of it in 2013 ) they ship all over the world t o support themselves.  A few hundred yards later is a road that dips down to a   two-story, stone guest house which, like the others,  has a kitchen with a container  on a countertop for  a free-will donation for your stay.  Near this house is a large barn with a corral , a  vegetable  garden and  an old wooden gate that opens to a dirt road  that transverses 600 acres  of  farm land, more than half  of it  in harvestable  forest .
            Abbey Lane ends at the chapel  and a circle of flowers and gurgling rivulets of fountain water with a statue of  Mary holding the Christ child . The abbey is named after  this statue.  I am reminded of my first visit here more than 20 years ago when I came to produce a documentary  slide program  for retirement  homes in Chicago land suburbs.  The abbey,  I had learned , was founded in 1964 by 13 Trappistine  ( known today as Cistercians ) nuns whose goal was   to continue and extend a tradition of monastic life that had its origins in the early Middle Ages.  The sisters here now  number 17. Their daughter house is in Norway.
Two of the abbey's laborers , Sisters Myra and Rebecca
            After parking my car, I began walking back down the road , enjoying the May day with its loud chirping of  birds and its morning sun dappling upon leaves of trees .  Approaching  me  was an elderly sister  walking a  small dog. She held a cane in one hand and an uprooted flower in the other. We paused  and immediately  struck up a conversation.  She told me she was Sr. Joan and her dog was Pangie, a  seven-year-old rescue dog , part collie and part Shetland Sheep—she thought—and that one of Panjie's eyes was brown, the other blue .  Sr. Joan was 75 and  celebrating her 50  th year of  monastic profession , of  living in an unshared room ( as her other abbey  sisters  did  ) under the  Rule of St. Benedict (  480-543 A.D. ): solitude, silence, prayer, work, and a disciplined life of communal living.  She was amiable and  cheerful and her face radiated contentment. Anyone  would  get the impression she enjoyed speaking to  stranger—church-goer or not-—as much as  she  did to her best friend.
            I asked her about the cane and the flower she was holding . The cane was made by a fellow sister  from a tree branch . " This rose I'm transplanting to the flower garden here , " she said , and again asked Pangie to stop barking  and jumping around so much so I could take a photo of both of them. " He's a nice  dog but he barks," she said.
" Yes," I replied,  that's what dogs  do."  She laughed.
            I told Sr. Joan that before I had left home, I  had asked two nuns from different orders for a  question to ask the abbey sisters , something with an answer  that would  benefit ordinary people.  I asked , " How does one draw closer to Jesus ? " 
            Still holding onto  the rose plant, she leaned heavily on her cane, and looked at  me  as if  I had simply asked her for the time ."Talk to Him in your heart, " she said. "You can draw close to Jesus anytime of the day, any place, while washing, cleaning, or grocery shopping. . The more you do this, the closer you come to Him . "
            I thanked her and suggested she get  some water for the rose. 
" Come on, Panjie," she said, and  headed to the garden…and I headed for my interview  appointment with Sr. Gail Fitzpatrick , the former abbess here .
Wisdom from the Cloister
" Reading the Bible brings us closer to Jesus "
            We sat in a small room adjoining an equally small gift office. At 77, Sr. Gail  was the oldest  sister ( the youngest was  30 ). She was obviously pleased to be interviewed , quick  to listen and empathetic to my needs as an interviewer.  She weighed her  words and spoke  clearly without any pretense . Her nun habit consisted of a black veil  and black scapula and a  blouse with white sleeves. 
She wore glasses , and a  tuft of white hair protruded from her veil . 
     We talked  close to an hour before I asked her what I had asked  Sr. Joan.  I prefaced it with a few remarks  about how ,  as a  roving reporter ,  I had never been be satisfied with what     " having  a relationship with Jesus " really meant . It’s   a common phrase  heard  throughout Christendom ,  and  though I had known individuals  who surely had this relationship—a closer one  than mine, I  surmised—I told Sr. Gail that I still could  not recall any doctrine or individual  defining this phrase   with   street-wise vernacular or with the diction  and semantics that resonated with me. Perhaps it's because  this "relationship" is different for everyone ?  I asked myself .  Maybe inexpressible ?  
      Sr. Gail   replied immediately in a soft voice: " We get closer t o Jesus by prayer,  but a prayer  that is really seeking to know Him. I know this is easy to say but not to people who have had no experience  in praying . And we need to read   scripture about Jesus, to hear  His Word. "
Then she stressed how important—even urgent—it is today  for those who evangelize or give sermons or homilies to " pin point "  the exact Biblical verse or chapter  that applies to the situation at hand .  In her book " Seasons of Grace: Wisdom from the Cloister "  ( can be ordered through one of  the abbey's  website, "monasterycandy.com " ) ,  Sr.  Gail writes: " I believe that it is this daily fidelity to listening to and reflecting on the Bible that  gives monasticism it vitality and makes it appealing to such a wide variety of contemporary seekers—from parish priests to Protestant pastors,  from faithful Christians to those who are deeply distrustful of the Bible and the  religion it represents."
 
A distant view of the abbey chapel on a spring day 
   I asked Sr. Gail to describe a typical day for the  sisters.  " We have a buzzer at 3:30 a.m. that will knock you out of bed, " she began with a smile. "Then there's vigils  that sets the tone for the day. This is the reading of the Psalms and  the Bible  and singing of  hymns. Then after  30 to 90 minutes of quiet prayer and meditation in our  own rooms or the chapel,  we have breakfast .   We go  to the kitchen and help ourselves to cereal or toast, nothing cooked. At 7:15 we have morning prayer , followed by mass . "
     From 8:30  t o 11:30,  the women work at cooking, cleaning, secretarial duties, making candy, and garden work . This is followed by  30 minutes of doing whatever a sister  needs to do, such taking a walk or washing their clothes. Just before lunch , which they call "dinner" because it's their  main meal—all vegetables—they have a five-minute prayer, their  "little hour ".  Siesta time is 1 to l:35 p.m. , then another "little hour" , followed by abbey tasks time until 3:45. 
     "Until 5 p..m ., we do things that are enjoyable, " Sr. Gail said , " such as studying, writing, or going for a walk."
      I couldn't suppress the question  "do you ever go into town to see a movie? "
   " No, " she replied, muffling a chuckle. We go into town only to see a doctor or   shop for things  we can't have delivered or buy online ."
            They gather in the chapel at 5 for vespers, then head to the kitchen for their "pick up"  meal , a sandwich or whatever  an individual sister can find there.  From this hour until  7:15  is their  "grand silence," meaning no talking,  no business. A night prayer sung in the chapel ends the sisters' day.  " A lot of visitors come to hear this prayer, "  Sr. Gail said. " It's short and melodious . Everyone is in bed by 8 p.m.  But we don't have a bell that says you have to have lights out. "
            "  And you keep this schedule Monday through Friday ? ! I asked. 
            " No. Seven days a week," she said,  rather casually, I thought. 
            "You wrote in your book [ " Seasons of Grace " ] about the great value your abbey places on communal living . " Do you ever have spats, conflicts, disagreements ?"
            " We do. Our communal living is just as  difficult to maintain and grow as marriage or any other environment where you have more than one person. The difference is we have a vocation  to love. We here are all trying to live like Christ, a life of love. "
            " Would you mind telling me what kind of conflicts you have and how you resolve them?"    I asked  politely, for  I was beginning to like Sr. Gail as a woman with  CEO-like responsibilities.  .
            " Sometimes it's talking too much, coming in late always to meetings, making too much noise at  night. Or our liturgy committee might not agree on how  the " Gloria  should be sung on a    feast day.  The key [ to resolving our conflicts ] is  to respect one another's opinions, to listen to the other person.  "
            " And what is your  advice to Mr. and Mrs. Jones on Main Street regarding  conflict resolution  ? " I asked .
            "We have to bring a deep respect to our communications with each other. I need to respect you as a person , who you are at this moment, not who you were or what you've done. I'm not the one to judge or call the shots. I need to have inner humility .  "
            We agreed that having true humility requires a  realistic honest   view of  who your are and who your are not. 
Beauty and Gratitude
            I told her I was  anxious to revisit the abbey land I hadn't seen in many  years.  " We used to do all the farming ourselves but it became a little bit  too much for us," she commented.  "Now we rent the fields .  A couple of times we had livestock but it became too much  to handle . But in our garden, we still grow tomatoes , lettuce, carrots, greenbeans, squash, raspberries and  pumpkins for salads , you know. Oh, and  this year we had a marvelous crop of asparagus. "  
Panorama of the abbey's bountiful square mile
            We rose from the table. Sr. Gail had several tasks awaiting her . We exchanged a few spontaneous words about "gratitude"  and then parted  company.  Our words about gratitude and her words about coming close to Jesus  lingered with me as I walked to the field gate below and opened it to a  mile-wide panorama of wheat, calf-high  corn, alfalfa ,  haystacks here and there and, beyond all that the abbey's woodlands.
            I began walking slowly  down a  wide dirt  path shaped by years of tractor wheels running over it. The sky was puffed with white clouds,  and  birds—most often  orioles— kept flushing  up from  patches of  wild  flowers.  Gazing upon this land and the life it was nourishing  as I breathed in part of it,  made me think of those life-lesson parables  Jesus told his disciples about humankind interacting with nature.
            I continued walking until , on my left and about a hundred yards down a gentle slope  of corn ,  I saw a pond with  a cabin on its far bank . A few tree branches , tall weeds, and bulrushes obscured most of this setting  as if nature itself had requested it so. I walked to the pond  down a furrow of corn and stood on a bank opposite the cabin , a stone's throw away.  It was a simple log  structure with windows without  any covering and an interior  empty of furnishings. I recalled being told that it was built without nails by pioneers  and that the sisters sometimes came here to  meditate and pray—as I did now,  sitting on earth and listening to frogs and crickets.
            Those thoughts about gratitude which Sr. Gail and I had shared  came to mind.  "Another thing about knowing God better, " she had said,  " is gratitude, and  gratitude for me is constantly around me when I look at  nature .When I walk around here there is so much beauty and so much life and so much gift that my heart is filled with gratitude. And that comes back to me in prayer.  I have so much to be grateful for: life, love, opportunities to know God in other people. " 
            Her words had  stirred me to say, "This may sound simplistic, Sister Gail,  but I am often grateful   just to have been created   as a human , to be given life instead of no life. "
            Sr. Gail smiled  and nodded her head.  " You know," she said, "the closer we get to God, the simpler  our thoughts about Him and Jesus will be."
            I  kept listening to frogs and crickets.
The founding sisters ( with a visiting priest  ) on Oct. 18, 1964. Holding the
new monastery cross is the abbey superior, Sr. M. Columba.  


The End…and


The Abbey's Prayer for Discernment

Loving God,
You have a plan for each of us, you hold out
to us a future full of hope.

Give us the wisdom of your Spirit so that we
may discover your plan in the gifts you have
 given us, and in the circumstances of our daily
lives.

Give us the freedom of your Spirit, to seek you
with all our hearts, and to choose your will
above all else.

We make this prayer through Christ  our Lord.


Amen

17 Cistercian sisters gather for a meeting in the abbey's refectory 
The sisters fill in the grave after burial of a departed sister.

  







All comments are welcome.
rrschwarz71@comcast.net


© 2015 Robert R. Schwarz

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