a Sister on vacation

I had the great pleasure of being on vacation last week.  My idea of vacationing is pitching a tent and going hiking in the mountains which I don't get to do very often here in northwest Missouri.  The closest 'mountains' to us would be in the Ozarks which is a several hours drive to the south.   We, Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, are fortunate to have a little monastery in Dayton, WY at the foot of the Bighorn Mountains (real mountains!) so that was a good excuse to head west for a little R&R.  My intrepid companion was our novice Maria who also loves to hike and camp.   

The fastest route to Dayton is through South Dakota so we had to make some side trips to some notable sites.   One cannot be close to Mt. Rushmore and not drop in.  I am also fascinated by the area known as the 'Badlands.'   It's like a 'moonscape' in many areas.    

The colors are incredible, though, as your eyes travel down the formations and you travel eons through time.  It just goes to show that even something called the Badlands can be a place of great beauty.  Even here there are grassy meadows so there is sustenance for creatures even amidst the 'moon scape.'

Once we hit the mountains we sought out cold refreshing mountain streams.  Neither one of us fish, (the fish are certainly grateful) but we would plop on a rock and meditate on the water rushing by. If you have ever sat on a rock in the middle of a madly rushing mountain stream, you will know what it feels like to read Psalm 36 verses 8 - 9:

They feast on the abundance of your house,
    and you give them drink from the river of your delights.
⁹ For with you is the fountain of life;
    in your light we see light.

In the stream there are little waterfalls, pools of quiet water and always the water rushing down, down, down.  Some of the droplets leap as they race over the rocks...if this water could talk, I would imagine it screaming wildly for joy and perhaps some fear too.   I am reminded of the book Hinds' Feet on High Places by Hannah Hurnard.  It is an allegory of the Christian life and the journey of faith as we make our way toward the High Places of the Shepherd.   I read this book when I was discerning a religious vocation many years ago.  I highly recommend it for anyone who has not read it.  I just finished re-reading it a few weeks ago.   When I was discerning I could very much identify with the main character 'Much Afraid', who belongs to the Fearing family.   Even as I re-read it, I had to admit there are areas where I am still 'Much Afraid.'  

In one chapter she is standing at the foot of a high water fall.  The Shepherd asks her,
 "What do you think of this fall of great waters in their abandonment of self-giving?"  

"I think they are beautiful and terrible beyond anything which I ever saw before.  It is the leap they have to make, the awful height from which they must cast themselves down to the depths beneath, there to be broken on the rocks."

The Shepherd asks her to watch the water from the moment it leaps over the edge until it reaches the bottom.  Once over the edge, the waters were like winged things, alive with joy, so utterly abandoned to the ecstasy of giving themselves that she could almost have supposed that she was looking at a host of angels floating down on rainbow wings, singing with rapture as they went.

"It looks as though they think it is the loveliest movement in all the world, as though to cast oneself down is to abandon oneself to ecstasy and joy indescribable." 

This is what I thought as I watched the river race down, down, down... exploding on rocks... leaping in the air...perhaps a respite in a quiet pool until once again a water droplet was drawn into the current to start down again.  

I have to ask myself, am I still ready to abandon myself in the Lord's river of delights even though it might mean crashing into rocks and leaps of faith.  Hopefully, I say YES!!!  And hopefully you do too!

Summer Hiatus

It's been a couple months since I posted anything.  I didn't intentionally take a summer hiatus...it was lack of inspiration...or pure laziness.   It's not that it has been a really dull summer; although some may wonder if ANYTHING exciting ever happens in a contemplative, semi-cloistered monastery located conveniently next to no-where.  

We had a lovely college student volunteer for most of the summer here in Clyde.  She was the best volunteer ever!  She also happens to be my niece Sarah (not surprising that she was the best ever, then).  She is going to be a senior at Benedictine College in Atchison, KS this fall.  You can read her story here at  student volunteers.  She decided that hanging out with the sisters would be more exciting than assembling sandwiches at the local Subway where she has spent other less than exciting summers.   I must say, at her age I think volunteering at a convent would have been the last thing I would have wanted to do.  I wanted to go work in Yellowstone Nat'l Park during my college summers, which I never did do!

Just this past Tuesday we had another woman cross the threshold of our monastery chapel to enter our postulancy.   We have the ritual at our Noon Prayer and it began by having Arana  knock on the chapel doors while we awaited her coming in.   (If anyone was going to cut and run, that would be the time to do so because she is out there by herself...nobody ever has, though :)

Sr. Cheryl, Assistant Prioress General and Sr. Lynn, formation director, officially welcomed her into the postulancy during the ceremony.  Arana brings Cajun cooking skills to our midwest monastery which will be something new for our meat and potatoes type of community.   But, we do have other sisters among our newer entrants who like 'hot' food with a kick to it.

We also hosted a week-long monastic experience here in July.  "Listen with the Ear of your Heart" was our theme.   The attendees received input on - Why pray the Psalms?, Lectio Divina, Centering Prayer, Discernment, Life in Formation and heard great vocation stories.

One highlight when guests come to our abode is to take them out for ice cream 10 miles away to the nearest ice cream stand.  That might not sound so exciting but the local town of Clyde has a population of 82 and Baskin Robbins is 45 miles away!  

One can also get fried gizzards at this
ice cream stand, but I generally pass on that
option.  I would say both Dairy Queen and
Baskin Robbins would have a hard time matching
up with that!!!!  

Postulant Rosa enjoying a cone as it
quickly melts and starts to drip.

    

The Body of Christ meets celiac disease

We celebrated the Solemnity of Corpus Christi this past Sunday which is a special solemnity for our congregation.  We joined Pope Francis and the rest of the world in the world-wide Holy Hour which was 10am-11am our time.  As I sat in our chapel I was thrilled to know that millions of Catholics around the world were simultaneously joining in prayer before our Eucharistic Lord.  We had it easy here in Clyde...we didn't have to get up in the middle of the night to be synchronized with the 5pm Rome time!

One special way our community contributes to the greater church is by producing

sisters at old bakers

the communion hosts that will be changed into the Body of Christ.  We have been doing this for over 100 years now.   The 'old-timers' in community fondly recall the old bakers we used to have that required one sister at a baking machine to produce the single sheets that would be cut into the round hosts.
If a sister was really good, she could handle 2 bakers at a time.   I've heard some claims to handling three!

pouring batter 

    
By 1992 we upgraded our altar bread equipment and switched to one large baker that contained 30 plates - the equivalent of 30 baking machines, as seen below and to the right.  This monster baker can churn out 1 baked sheet every 5 seconds or so and only  
requires one alert baker.

'new' baker

Needless to say, we were able to produce more breads in a shorter amount of time than previously.  

In recent years, celiac-sprue disease or gluten-intolerance has become an issue for many people.  Our community was the first altar bread producer to create a low-gluten bread that still satisfied the requirements that 'some' gluten be present to make it valid in the Catholic church but was a small enough amount that most celiac sufferers could take it.   

Sr. Jane spreading batter on
 waffle irons

I think it took about 10 years to come up with the right recipe.  This has been a labor intensive project as we have used basic breakfast waffle irons (with flat plates instead of ridges) for years until a recent generous gift of a modern baker from an anonymous religious community no longer using it.  The 'waffle-iron' breads were kind of crunchy and rough looking (but decent tasting). The  breads from our new baker are smooth and almost melt in your mouth.

This has been a blessing for us to do  as we receive letters or e-mails like this one just sent yesterday from a woman in Connecticut:

Dear sisters:
We just received a new box of your low-gluten hosts.  I just want to tell you that I am forever grateful for your efforts on the behalf of Catholics with celiac disease.  I never receive Communion without having you in prayer.  I have to admit that part of me is going to miss the funky handmade hosts, because it was such a tangible demonstration of your commitment to this small population.  

I was desperately sick when I was finally diagnosed with celiac disease in 2000.  I was literally dying of starvation--90 pounds at 5'8".  But I accepted the gluten-free diet with bitterness until you produced your low-gluten host.  THAT the was one thing that changed everything.  After that, I could accept everything else.  Thank you for everything you have done for us, the celiac Catholic community...

It's hard for me to imagine what it would have been like to have celiac disease and NOT be able to receive the Bread of LIfe before our community was able to produce low-gluten breads.   But we get new e-mails like the one above several times a week so all the years of failed experiments were worth it to our sisters.  

Truly we ARE all ONE body in Christ.

I love a good mystery

I was a big fan of mystery novels when I was growing up.  I think I started off with the Bobsey Twins and then moved onto the Hardy Boys and  Nancy Drew.  Good ole Nancy was my favorite, I thought she was so cool.  I have since become a fan of Brother Cadfael who is a monk in a medieval monastery in England.  In fact, there are several murder mysteries set in medieval monasteries on the market today.  It's amazing how many people die under suspicious circumstances in or at a monastery in the middle of nowhere in these stories.

Why do I bring up mysteries?  Because every year when we celebrate Trinity Sunday, it reminds me of the great mysteries of our faith.  I went to Google Images and typed in "Trinity" to see what would pop up.  Try it, it is rather interesting.  There are a lot of triangular images and a woman wearing black leather appears rather frequently...I had no idea what THAT connection was so I had to click on it to see where it would take me.  When I saw the MATRIX, I realized it was that movie I had heard about that came out a few years ago.  (I never did see it, don't know if I ever will)

They offer semester long classes in seminaries and tomes have been written over the centuries to try and make sense of it.  If I were to take such a class I am pretty sure that after it was all said and done the most I would be able to say is, "It's a great mystery."

Three persons in ONE God?

Come on, that makes NO sense logically if you really think about it.  But what about God IS logical?  

We have the luxury of living with 'defined' doctrine about the Trinity because of those church councils that hashed all that out in the 4th and 5th centuries.   So in one sense all I have to do is sit back, accept it and not worry about it.

However, last year I had a niece ask me, "Where in the Bible does it mention the Trinity?"  She asked this because she was contemplating becoming Mormon and apparently that is an argument a Mormon will bring up.  I had never really thought about it before so I was a little stunned by the question.    

My first thought was "You silly child", but my actual response was, "It's all over the place, just because it isn't formally defined in scripture doesn't mean that the Trinity doesn't exist."  

Our beloved John is really a great Trinitarian Gospel writer even though he probably didn't know it at the time.   He talks about the Father and the Spirit a lot, especially in the Last Discourse during the Last Supper.  I especially like this from John 14:16-17:

And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—  the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.

I don't believe I'll try and wrestle with trying to understand the Trinity beyond the above scripture passage.  Why mess with what already works?!   :)

The Long Arm of the Law

I got to experience something I've never done before in my life this past Friday, stand before a judge in a court room!  Why would a Benedictine Sister of Perpetual Adoration in quiet little Clyde, MO have to appear in court?

My crime...I had a car accident in St. Joseph, Missouri in March that I must admit was my fault.  Being good Benedictines we don't own our own personal cars but our convent has five general use cars that we can sign out when we need to go somewhere.  I was on my way to Atchison, KS with another sister for a vocation fair at Benedictine College when a closed interstate forced me into a part of the city of St. Joe that I was not familiar with.  

We were lost, we were trying to figure out how to get back on the highway, the two-way street we were on became a one-way with both lanes going in the same direction which I was not aware of.  I was driving along in the right lane and proceeded to turn left when suddenly, there was a huge bang/jolt on my left and I looked up to see the front of a pickup sticking in my driver's side door.   We were very shook up but no one got hurt thank God.  The police were called, I got a traffic citation and we were towed to our car dealership.  Our Sr. Cheryl who is in charge of the cars has a reputation for being hard on any sister who gets a little dent, etc.  She was very kind to me, though, and was more concerned about our health than the state of the car.  (She is actually a softie inside...but she likes having that reputation :)  Of course, the car I was driving had to be our newest car!  

I've never been to court so I was nervous not knowing what to expect.  However, a part of me was very curious to experience a court room.  I was sort of familiar with those TV shows like "Judge Judy."  My 'appointment' was at 8am and after checking in I was told to proceed to the court room.  It was a small room in the basement of the courthouse and 20 people were already sitting on the benches around the room.  I thought to myself, "Great, this is going to take forever."   Plus I also thought, "Hmmm...I wonder what they are here for?"  There were people of all sorts...but no other nuns as far as I could tell!  I wouldn't be surprised if as they were looking at me they were asking themselves, "What did that Sister do?"

A judge's bench was at the front of the room.  At 8am  the TV screen lit up and our judge appeared on screen in a video.  He explained what would happen during our appearance and what would happen if we plead guilty or not guilty.   I was grateful to hear at the very end of the short video that traffic court violations would be heard first.  After the video ended, our judge appeared in 'real life.'  

My name was the third one he called so I didn't have to wait very long. 
"Do you understand the charges against you?" he asked.  
"Yes," I replied.  "How do you plead?"  
"Guilty."  
"Okay, that will be a fifty dollar fine plus court costs, that total will be $76.50.  There will also be a couple of points on your license."  Then he smiled and said, "And have a nice day."

That took all of 45 seconds!  I was expecting a bigger fine so I was grateful.  

Sometimes I think about judgement day, especially if we have had a scripture reading at Mass pertaining to that.  What will it be like to be thrust suddenly before the face of God the instant we die?  

I will have to plead 'guilty' in that instance also.

I trust that God's mercy is as great as his justice so I'm counting on a big smile and "have a nice eternal life" from God, too!

What 2nd graders teach me

Yesterday afternoon I had the pleasure of helping out with a tour group from the nearby Catholic grade school in Maryville, MO.  These 2nd graders just made their first communion on Sunday.  

I remember making my first communion many years ago and thinking I was a 'big person' now that I could go to communion and not have to stay back in the pew while everyone deserted me and went up to do something I couldn't really make out.  

Do these kids look happy or what?   This picture was taken outside of a Marian Grotto we have on our property.  Now of course a field trip day always makes kids happy.  

The kids received a tour of our main chapel and relic chapel and then I gave them a little speech on where their communion breads come from.  The thing I love about 2nd graders is that they are pretty attentive (not sure what the attention span for an average 8 yr old is), do look at you, listen to what you are saying and aren't afraid to ask questions...perhaps with their teacher and parent chaperones hovering over them they do better.  :)  My experience with teen agers is often that they don't look at you and are pretending that they aren't interested in what you have to say lest their peers pick up on that and tease them.  However, once being a teenager myself, I can't hardly blame them!

I told them we use 100 pounds of flour and 16 gallons of water in each mix of batter.   In one week of production we use 5200 - 6500 pounds of flour and 832-1040 gallons of water.  We also produce approximately 2 million breads per week.   If you were to stack up all the breads we make in one week it would stretch 1.97 miles!   It is really a sacred work for our community to produce the bread that will be changed into the body of Christ.

The beauty of these kids is that the whole Eucharist experience is new for them.  They are excited to receive Jesus and proud to be one of the older crowd now.  They haven't been jaded by scandal in the church and they aren't arguing about church doctrine.  They are just happy to be receiving Jesus.  (Once you get through the scariness of your first confession, everything is pretty much downhill when you are 8 yrs old.)  These kids are the ones just doing what Jesus commanded 2000 years ago, "Do this in remembrance of me."   

 So what these kids teach me is to see the beauty of our Eucharist with fresh eyes.   As a daily Mass goer, I know that the Eucharist can lose it's luster when you receive every day.   I can take it for granted and be very complacent.  

As a Conception Abbey Monk used to say in his homilies to us - "those things you do daily, you do dully, unless you do them deeply."

Did St. Benedict really say THAT?

This past weekend my community celebrated one of our postulants moving on to the novitiate.   One sister remarked that it was significant to happen on Divine Mercy Sunday, "Let's pray your novice director has mercy on you!"   Poor Maria had to endure for the first couple of weeks after entering as a postulant hearing sisters sing, "How do you solve a problem like Maria?"  Not because she WAS a problem but because The Sound of Music is a perennial favorite movie of nuns.

Sr. Pat gives Maria the
Benedictine medal to wear during
her novitiate

Sr. Pat gives Maria a copy of
the Rule of St. Benedict 

Our dear holy father St. Benedict in his Rule starts out Chapter 58 (The Procedure for Receiving Members) by writing - "Do not grant newcomers an easy entry, but, as the Apostle says, Test the spirits to see if they are from God."   

It seems a little harsh to say that...it doesn't seem to be very inviting.  

Benedict apparently made those poor men stand outside knocking for 4 or 5 days and made them bear 'harsh treatment' to see if they had patience and persistence.  He doesn't describe what the 'harsh treatment' is, however.   Apparently it wasn't too devastating because men did enter the community.  

Candidates often remark to me, even in 2013, "You really don't make it very easy to enter religious life."   They are referring to the autobiography they have to write, various interviews and the dreaded psychological testing.  I've been tempted to make them wait outside the door but I'm sure my community would disapprove.  :0  "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger," is not always a good maxim to live by!

Postulant Rosa shares in the
joy with new novice Maria.

Suffice it to say that while we do still have to test the spirits; we go about it in a more civilized manner  (I think).  Life in general tends to be enough of a tester without adding more to it!