My thoughts and feelings about the visitWhen I first got to the monastery I had a lot of expectations about how things would go. I was full of my own experiences from previous monasteries and also full of my own self-importance as a discerner. I thought that the nuns would be eager to get to know me and to tell me all about their community in the hope that we would all be a ‘fit’. I expected some structured meetings with the community and questions from the Prioress. None of my prior experiences in Carmel or elsewhere prepared me for what happened during this visit. On my arrival day, a Thursday, I didn’t see any nuns at all. I was picked up by the Intern and another guest. I was shown to my bedroom by the Intern and then she drove me up to the chapel in the gator (the first and last time – after that we walked every day) where we attended Vespers. There were books provided to follow along while the nuns chanted. Vespers was followed by the Angelus and then Compline and Asperges. Afterwards, we went back to the house and had supper with the men, eating food prepared by the nuns and either delivered to the guest house earlier in the day by a nun or picked up by the Intern from the monastery (depending on the day and who was cooking - as some of the nuns used the monastery kitchen to prepare food and others used the preserving room kitchen for this, which was next to the guest house). After supper, we chatted for awhile and then went to bed. I didn’t see a nun on that day at all. I felt a little ignored but after all, it wasn’t even my first whole day yet.
On the first day, Friday, we walked up to the chapel for Lauds/Prime at 6am but the nuns didn’t come so we returned to the house for a quick breakfast before going back to the chapel for Terce and Communion service at 8am. As we left the chapel, one of the nuns came out of the enclosure and started speaking to the Intern about things she had to do that day, and as an afterthought she mentioned that I might want to follow the Intern around and help her with feeding. That was all I saw of her that day. I did help feed and then later in the day went for a walk and helped clean the chapel. We attended Vespers/Compline again in the evening but I felt even more ignored on this day and was starting to feel upset about this.
Chapel with monastery in backgroundNB: It turns out that during the winter they have Lauds at 6.30am so we just hadn’t waited long enough! The Intern hadn’t been in the habit of going to Lauds so she didn’t know what time it was and the schedule in the guest house was out of date. We found out the right time and when I told the Intern that I planned to go, she started going with me.
The second day was Saturday and on this day I fed animals and walked some more but still no nuns. By this time I was getting impatient and wondering why I had paid so much money and come so far to do a discernment visit with nuns who didn’t seem to care if I was there or not. I was also starting to get frustrated. In my copious spare time I read books.
On Sunday the day seemed much as the previous ones. I was looking forward to Mass but the priest who had been scheduled to arrive for the Mass didn’t turn up so we had to have another Communion Service instead. I was so upset by this time that I cried a lot and slept a lot and was really feeling angry at God for playing games with me again. We got a new female guest, a Jewish woman who had known the nuns forever and had often visited. She and her husband were also benefactors of the monastery, and had donated a lovely painting of Jacob wrestling with God that is in the chapel because she felt they should have something from the Jewish scriptures as well. (I once used the term ‘Old Testament’ with her and she said ‘You mean the Jewish Scriptures?’ We laughed about it.) She had done a Spiritual Director’s course with a Catholic college, and although she didn’t direct Catholics as a general rule, she had a great understanding of the Catholic faith and our love for Jesus. She attributes her own return to the Jewish faith to one of the nuns from the community. I loved her from the moment I met her and gained much comfort from her wisdom and kindness during this time. She stayed for nearly a week and I was very sad when she left. If she hadn’t come that first week, I might have gone insane.
Chicken HeavenOn the Monday, I was invited to attend a singing class with the Intern in the afternoon. It was fantastic and I loved learning about Gregorian chant. I was told that I have a lovely voice, and this encouraged me since I don’t have much confidence in my singing. The Intern and I have voices that match very well and the music nun was very happy with us, so I was very happy too. That was the first nun I really got to spend any time with even though it wasn’t to discuss vocations. The rest of the day was much as usual, the Office and feeding chores and walks and reading. By now I was starting to feel really abandoned by God. I was also starting to hurt inside. I felt He didn’t want me to be a religious and I even went so far as to wonder if He loved me. It wasn’t a nice feeling.
On Tuesday, two people from another island were coming to pick up their two sheep that had been left for breeding so one of the nuns asked all the guests to come help do a roundup of the sheep and get the two into the van that these people had brought. This was a lot of fun, and as some friends of the couple who had the sheep also came along, afterwards we all went to St Joseph’s for a cup of tea and a chat. The sheep nun, who is in charge of vocations as well as guests, came with us and we all sat around while she told us about her travels to Costa Rica and the lovely birds there. This was the longest I had spent in her company since I arrived, so I enjoyed it but it wasn’t at all personal for me, so still very unsatisfying. I began to think that they were using St Benedict’s test of making a newcomer wait three days outside the monastery before letting him in, except that this was the fifth day and I still hadn’t spoken to a single nun about my vocation! I was frustrated beyond words.
Ringing the bells for OfficeFinally on the Wednesday morning, one of the nuns took me to Onesimus to see where she made herbal tea and mustard, and while we were there, she made us a cup of tea and we sat and talked about my vocation for about an hour. It was wonderful. She is also the music nun so I felt I knew her a little bit already. We had a good rapport and I enjoyed the talk. I wanted more of this kind of thing but the rest of the day followed the usual pattern of Office, chores, walks and reading (very much like the daily monastic life!!!
).
Thursday marked one week since I had first arrived. Another female guest arrived to stay for the weekend and a man for two days and one night. The Jewish guest and I went to the local shop in her car where I bought a Diet Coke and some candy bars to help me cope with my frustration, anger and grief.
. On the drive back I told her how abandoned and ignored I was feeling by the nuns and by God as well, and I started crying. We spent a long time sitting in the car and chatting and I felt a little better. In the afternoon I went for a long walk and cried my heart out. I got so angry at God that I was shouting at Him and crying at the same time. Fortunately I was at a deserted beach (winter is a quiet time on the Island) so no one could hear me. I don’t even remember everything I said to Him but I know I dragged up all my experiences over the past five years of trying to become a religious and told Him that it was time for Him to help out a little, that I had done as much as I could already and was ready to give up. I went back to my room and slept and refused to get up for Lauds the next day. I was punishing God!
On Friday I felt a little better but very tired, despite my sleep-in. One of the older nuns came to visit the Jewish lady and I was invited to stay while they chatted. I heard lovely stories and was glad that I had a chance to meet this nun, even if she and I didn’t really have any personal conversations. I had seen her in choir but hadn’t met her yet. Otherwise the day was much as the others were.
Saturday, I was asked to help one of the nuns with laundry from the previous guests and while the clothes were in the machine, this nun spent an hour chatting with me about my vocation. I told her how bad I was feeling and she was wonderful, accepting and understanding. She had been a late vocation too (in her fifties) and she knew some of what I was going through. She answered my questions and helped me to understand a little about the way the monastery worked. She asked if I had told my concerns to the nun who handles vocations and visitors, but I told her I felt uncomfortable talking to that nun because she seemed not to like me and I felt she was ignoring me. This nun told me that it wasn’t true, that I wasn’t to take her manner personally as it was just the way she was. She said that I would now probably be meeting with each sister and getting to know them, but on a day to day basis as they went about their work. They don’t have a structured program of introduction for discerners. They just live their lives and allow the person to come and see them as they are, and to get to know them slowly over time. That is why they recommend a three month visit after the first visit, to allow the rhythm of the monastery to sink in and to come to know each nun naturally. I could see that I was still working within the ‘Carmelite’ structure and framework I had known before and that the Benedictine one was much different. Not better or worse, just different.
The 'individuality' that had been an obstacle for me in Carmel, was welcomed and encouraged here. I only had to be ‘me’, but the ‘me’ that God had intended me to be, and my journey was not about trying to suppress that me, but to discover it and work with it, through His grace to become all that I could be. Not I, but Christ in me. I didn’t have to impress these nuns, but to discover for myself, with God’s help, if this was where I was meant to be. They weren’t going to try to convince me or persuade me or even encourage me, just support me in my discovery process. If God wanted me here, then so did they. If not, then they were happy to have me as a guest. It was really almost liberating to see things from their perspective, and I definitely started to understand that they work with the Holy Spirit as guide and not according to some set procedure or process.
From this point on, I began to think like a Benedictine instead of a Carmelite and as I did, I started to feel as if I was ‘coming home’ again. All those years of fighting to try to fit into the Carmelite shoe, and here I was slipping on Benedictine spirituality like a comfortable old slipper.
Once I grasped the idea of simply allowing the natural process to unfold, things began to change for me and I started to change inside as well. I stopped worrying about time and performance and impressions and anything external but allowed myself to breathe in the beauty and rhythm of life in the monastery. As I relaxed and opened up to Him I felt Him fill me. From then on, I felt His presence all the time. And things started to happen externally as well, once the interior was taken care of. Although my good friend, the Jewish guest, had just left, that afternoon I met with the music nun again and from that day onwards, I seemed to be busy non-stop with one nun or another. I was so busy in fact, that I stopped recording my activities in my diary, as I didn’t have time to do it! I never had any more ‘vocation’ talks with the nuns (until the end), I just came to know the nuns through working with them, helping them, chatting with them, driving with them, taking ferries with them, and visiting them in hospital.
Washington State FerriesThen one day the vocations nun came and picked me up in her car and we took two of the dogs for a run near the beach. She walked with me and we chatted about a vocation to the monastery. She asked how I felt about being there and I said I wanted to stay. She said I would need health insurance of some kind and that the Prioress would like me to continue with my online transcription work until I was sure that I would be staying with them because if I left, I would still have an income. I told her I could do this if I had Internet access and she said that would be arranged and they were happy for me to come back. Then she said she would meet with me again before I left and she dropped me off at Onesimus so I could do some work there with the Intern. I didn’t see her again until the day I left when she just asked me again how I was feeling, and I said again that I didn’t want to leave but was looking forward to coming back. She said that she and I would stay in touch via email and they would prepare a place for me. By this time I had arranged for health insurance and for a US bank account. The only thing left to do in the US is to change my California driver’s license for a Washington one.
In the last week, the Intern and I spent a lot of time together with the nuns, learning new things and helping them as well as each other. She and I became very close even though she is the same age as my daughter. I almost felt as if we were postulants together during that last week. She drove me to the ferry on the last day and we were hugging each other and promising to stay in touch via email. She really wants me to return before she leaves in May, and I am really working hard to do so.
So my visit ended with plans being made for me to return at the end of March (if I can get things tied up in Australia in the next six weeks). When I do return, I was told that I would be put in a separate accommodation from the guests (probably above the Chaplain’s house) so that I would have the opportunity for silence and solitude, although I will still have my meals with the guests at St Joseph’s. The music nun is going to help the Intern with her violin (she used to play) while I am away so that she doesn’t get too far ahead of me in chant class and we will start that up again when I get back. I will also be learning Latin when I get back and more of the Office (it is different from Carmel since they chant in Latin and also do Prime, and they use a Benedictine breviary and Proper). In addition to chores, I will keep the monastic schedule as much as possible and also work on my habit. The nuns each sew their own habit and Postulants wear the tunic part of the habit (the dress), with a belt and a modified black veil, but they don’t wear the scapular or the white headband and wimple until they become a Novice. I will stay outside the monastery for 2-3 months, and then will be taken inside as a Postulant, although I won’t sleep in the monastery proper, but will stay in the Novitiate cottage with one other nun instead, as they like to keep the postulants and Novices separate from the professed community. I would share in meals and some Recreations with the nuns.
The way I am feeling now, time doesn’t matter to me anymore. Once I was very anxious to ‘get through’ the visits and the postulancy to get to Clothing and Profession, and I felt a sense of impatience at any form of waiting, but since I already feel as if I am exactly where I am supposed to be right now, none of that matters. Everything will happen in its own good time. Once I finally knew that I belonged there, I also thought I would worry about having to leave again to go back home, but despite a few tears while walking back to the guest house after Communion today (more tears of love and gratitude than anything else), I really feel a great sense of peace in my heart. I know what I have to do when I get home, so I will just do that in preparation for returning to the monastery. The consuming feeling for me right now is peace. I am happy beyond words, but not in an excited way, in a deep and peaceful way. Perhaps contentment is the right word. I am content. Or as my French Canadian sister-in-law used to say… ‘Je suis bien contente.’ Deo gratias.
