Convent Tuesday, February 5, 2013

It's an uncertain day here at the convent; neither cold nor warm, not quite rainy, nor is it snowing. There's no anticipation in the air, no expectation at all. Just a nagging sense of disquiet, as if I've forgotten to take my vitamins.

I went outside in search of a small blue thing, something to remind me of the soft, still voice that I was having trouble hearing above the quiet of winter.

Almost immediately, a tree whispered to me. I stood under it and listened for a bit.


















I discovered some directionally-challenged moss growing on the southwest side of a brick.












I passed a wheelbarrow having a smoke behind one of the outbuildings. It tipped its hat as I went by.

I sat for a bit with an order of crocuses napping among the trees, their wimple clad heads gently nodding.

I think it was their snoring that finally drove me back inside.

Whose are the little beds," I asked, "Which in the valleys lie?" Some shook their heads, and others smiled, And no one made reply. "Perhaps they did not hear," I said; "I will inquire again. Whose are the beds, the tiny beds So thick upon the plain?" "'T is daisy in the shortest; A little farther on, Nearest the door to wake the first, Little leontodon. "'T is iris, sir, and aster, Anemone and bell, Batschia in the blanket red, And chubby daffodil." Meanwhile at many cradles Her busy foot she plied, Humming the quaintest lullaby That ever rocked a child. "Hush! Epigea wakens! -- The crocus stirs her lids, Rhodora's cheek is crimson, -- She's dreaming of the woods." Then, turning from them, reverent, "Their bed-time 't is," she said; "The bumble-bees will wake them When April woods are red."                                            Emily Dickinson

Convent Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Tis the week before Christmas

and all through the Convent,

Not a thing seems different.

Can it really be Advent?

(Oh yeah? You try rhyming convent. Wiseacre.)

As you might expect, the All Saints sisters don't buy in to the commercialism of the holidays. No lights are strung, no wreaths adorn doors. There's no tree decorated with ornaments and tinsel, and no garland on the mantel.

There's not even a trace of a blow up lawn ornament waving in the wind at the entrance to the chapel.

There is one addition to the altar- a lush, fragrant Advent wreath with fresh greens and candles as thick as my wrist.

Also present is a contemplative silence, heightened by a profound anticipation.





At the end of this week the sisters will assemble a cresh in the nave of the chapel. Constructed of wood and straw, the cresh conveys in the simplest way one of the most complex miracles of the Christian faith.

Both my house and the house at All Saints share the emotion of anticipation- theirs for the coming of the Christ child, and my kids' anticipation of their own Christmas miracles- an Ipod Touch for LB, the first season of Modern Family for Trouble, and the entire clothing inventory of Anthropologie for Oldest.

My husband anticipates an oxygen tank and a walker, as he will likely require these items after practically painting the entire house in the last week. I anticipate 50 family members descending upon our house on Christmas Eve.

I hope to be mindful of the simple message of peace and serenity offered by my friends at the convent as I rush headlong through the upcoming days.

Happy, Happy Holidays to all of my blog world friends.

"Maybe Christmas," he thought,
"doesn't come from a store.
Maybe Christmas… perhaps…
means a little bit more."
                                            Dr. Seuss

Convent Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Some things in life are bad                                                                                                               
They can really make you mad
Other things just make you swear and curse                   
When you’re chewing on life’s gristle                              
Don’t grumble, give a whistle                                            
And this’ll help things turn out for the best ...And ... (Music slides into the song)

... always look on the bright side of life ... (Whistle) 

Always look on the light side of life ... (Whistle)
                                                                               Monty Python

                                                                              

Although I have gotten a bit better at looking at the bright side of things, I am genetically programmed to see the glass as half empty.

It's been a bit of a struggle, fighting a natural pessimism, one driven by an overactive thought process. Life would often hand me lemonade and I would make lemons out of it.

Sometimes good karma disguises itself- by the time you realize it was in front of you, you've moved it to the side.

It can be difficult to stay out of your own way.

Thank God, with age came wisdom. Well, first came anxiety, then bitterness. I believe I am moving into the wisdom stage. Baby steps, baby steps.

Today the convent is bathed in an icy rain, drops dripping off of leaves, railings and rooftops.












It's easy to recognize blessings when I'm here, somehow they are clearer, brighter, much easier to see. I look out the window at the hazy mist and can not be more grateful for the day God has given me.

There's no questioning why I'm here, or wondering what I should be doing instead to better myself and my situation. I still handle some real life work on my Convent Tuesdays, but emails that might normally cause hours of anxiety are handled with a polite out of office reply.

All that anxiety can wait until tomorrow, and by tomorrow the problem may well have resolved on its own.

That lemonade is lookin' mighty tasty.

Convent Tuesday, November 20, 2012

It's very quiet at the convent today, the rooms hushed and still, the silence broken only by the occasional squeak of the sisters' rubber soled shoes as they travel the lengths of the halls.

I asked Mother what everyone was doing for Thanksgiving. She looked mildly amused as she informed me that the sisters would be doing the same as the general U.S. populace- gorging on turkey and lapsing into food comas.

"But wouldn't the sisters want to go home for Thanksgiving?" I innocently asked.

"They are home," was her gracious reply.

Well played, Mother E.

The kitchen sister, who is responsible for preparing an entire Thanksgiving feast for 13 nuns and assorted beasts of the field, was running in and out of the convent all day on forays to the local grocery stores.

One thing these women do not have a problem with is remembering to give thanks. I'm sure Thanksgiving Day at the convent will be full of small blue things, tiny moments of gratefulness piecing together to form a  blanket of warmth and love.

The sisters normally take all of their meals in silence, but Thanksgiving Day offers a break in the routine. I believe the din may be deafening as the sisters dig in to a well-prayed over Tom and all of the trimmings.

I certainly give thanks for being a small part of these women's lives.

From a Small Blue Thing-  a Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours!

Convent Tuesday, November 13, 2012

"A person who has not done one half his day's work by 10 o'clock runs a good chance of leaving the other half undone." Emily Bronte

Given the fact that their day begins at 5:30am, it is certain that the nuns of All Saints are in agreement with Miss Bronte's thoughts on the value of early morning labor.  Each of the sisters here is assigned a task, or several tasks, to complete each day. For most of the sisters the task involves one area of the house- for example, the kitchen, office or shipping. Thus, one gets used to seeing a particular sister in her own particular domain throughout the day.

Sister H is one of my favorite nuns at the convent. She has been a religious for many, many years, entering the Order in her twenties and staying within the same Order for the last 40 years or so. She is extremely gentle and soft-spoken, truly one of the kindest individuals I have ever had the pleasure to know. Her capacity for caring is huge, and she often surprises me by inquiring after someone who I may have mentioned in passing weeks or months before.

Sister H's domain is the laundry room, which is located in the bowels of the convent. 

Surrounded by noise and heat, H works in this room every day, processing an endless succession of black and white habits; washing, drying and ironing each piece. No surprise that the finished laundry exiting this room looks and smells heavenly, as the attention paid to each piece surpasses the attention I pay to my own children.

At the end of a long dark hallway filled with pipes and steam, the laundry room is not a place one would normally expect to find spiritual fulfillment.


H believes, as her fellow religious do, that any task performed, no matter how small, should be performed for the glory of God. She applies herself to what most people find to be an endlessly boring chore with a sense of fulfillment I rarely derive from any area of my life.









Through her patience and the tangible sense of contentment exhibited by every gesture, Sister H has taught me that true grace is not found through the greatest acts, but rather in the seemingly menial chores that fill our every day lives. You never know where you'll find a small, blue thing.

Convent Tuesday, October 23, 2012

I have a real affinity for libraries. Fiction, non-fiction, children's, periodicals, you name it, I can get absorbed in any section for hours.

As a child, my best friend and I would ride our bikes to the library at least three times a week to take advantage of the books and the blessed air conditioning. We wouldn't speak for hours; she in one corner intent on the latest trials of the Black Stallion, and I in the other corner immersed in Nancy Drew, her closeted gay friend George and her speedy yellow roadster.

Oh, the epithets Hannah Gruen must have muttered under her breath as she prepared midnight snacks for the overprivileged white folks in the front room.

As an adult, I've been on the board at my local library for many years and have donated countless volunteer hours.

Heck, I even had my wedding reception in a library.














Everything about a library engages my senses in the best way. The sight of the books marching neatly down the stacks, and the sound of the silence, interrupted only by an occaisonal voice, laptop keypads, and the rustle of turning pages.

But, oh the best part is the smell of the books. Organic and musty with a slight hint of binder's glue. If they bottled it I would wear it every day.

Eau de Geek, by Lancome. Henry Kissinger could be the spokesmodel.

The library at All Saints Convent is one of my favorite libraries. Not large in its physical dimensions, but immense in the sense of contemplative anticipation it bestows on any who enter.

Don't be fooled- the library mainly contains religious texts, most dealing with Catholicism, but these books are not for the faint of heart. Some of them are pretty exciting.

Don't mess with monks on the warpath.




As in most libraries, guests are expected to be silent. However, unlike most libraries, the silence that cloaks this room is joined by a spiritual peace as well. On a rainy day, I never want to leave.

Convent Tuesday October 16, 2012

It is a perfectly crisp Fall day, and there is nowhere I'd rather be than volunteering at All Saints Convent. The language of the breeze through the trees seems especially clear here at the convent, as though Nature finds it easier to communicate through these trees that live on this quiet, soulful property.

I can tell you from experience that the souls of the trees themselves speak to humans and animals alike in this special place. I often go outside during the day to have a little chat with a maple here, an oak tree there.

Linus loves it here.

Of course, his main form of communication with the trees is generally less oral and more urinal.





My job here is not strenuous to say the least, and I often spend lots of time gazing out the window, very happily.

Today I was visited by Sister Ann who had successfully renewed her drivers license after letting it lapse for a decade or so. We shared a lively conversation as she described the perils of the driving test, a topic I am extremely interested in as Oldest (my 16 yr old daughter) will be making an attempt at the same in November.
 Sister Ann learned that the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration (MVA) gives quarter to no man, and that includes nuns (click here if you'd like to read an Op/Ed piece I wrote on this subject). This test is hard, and includes a lot of real road driving on streets with narrow lanes and irate drivers. One almost thinks the MVA hires stunt pedestrians and road construction crews just to tighten the screws a bit.
It doesn't help when one has to peer around a wimple in order to change lanes.
But Sister Ann prevailed and is now a licensed driver in the state of Maryland.
She's considering changing her name to Sister A.J. Foyt. Probably not worth another visit to the MVA, though.

Convent Tuesday Oct. 9, 2012

All Saints Sisters of the Poor Convent is located in one of the most beautiful areas of Catonsville, an oasis of woods and gardens tucked away at the end of a road and surrounded on all sides by state park land. Maintaining the grounds and buildings, not to mention the care of the nuns themselves, costs a very large amount of money. The sisters have cannily managed money gifted to them for the past 100 or so years.

In addition, the All Saints Sisters bring in pin money through the gift shop located on the convent grounds.










The gift shop works on an honor system. Purchases are made by dropping money in a small cash box and retrieving one's own change.

Seems like an open invitation for theft but actually works in the converse manner. Customers often tell me they ended up leaving more than they owe. This is such a statement about human nature- when trust, something most people are used to earning, is freely given, a person usually responds with gratitude. Of course, the occasional teen has wiped the sisters out. I'm hoping the lightening that repeatedly strikes them as they attempt to spend the money dissuades them from further crimes.



The gift shop's main item for sale is cards. For many years, the nuns calligraphied and illustrated the cards by hand.















These days, Sister Barbara Ann, the current resident artist, uses a pretty stellar computer program to come up with new card ideas. The drawings and calligraphy, however, are still her own, and she produces some of the sweetest cards you'll ever see.

All Saints Sisters of the Poor

I volunteer once a week at a cloister; a Catholic Order of nuns who live in a quiet and imposing stone convent atop a hill on the edge of my town.
I'm here today, absorbing the silence in the hallways that is as thick as jam and just as delicious.


As one might expect, it's very easy to spend time in this place, where life moves forward linearly, without the sense of attention deficit I usually experience in my normal, scattered day to day craziness.

The All Saints Sisters of the Poor are a wonderful group of women. As a priory, they are part of the Catholic church but retain complete financial independence, and run the priory as they see fit. With 13 Sisters, 2 cats, a visiting Weimaraner  and a revolving door of guests, there is always something going on at the convent, and the Sisters carry it all with grace and dignity.

I often bring Linus (our dog) along with me, as most of the nuns are animal lovers and really enjoy seeing him. Things can get a little crazy when 2 or 3 Sisters, Linus, Gracie the Weimaraner and the cats are in a room together. The grace and dignity part I mentioned above goes out the window a bit when the Sisters are getting their party on.

This is one of my favorite places on earth and I always hate to leave. As for finding a time in my day to connect with my soul, it's a no brainer. Almost every moment of my day here reminds me that life is an internal journey.