Category: Writing

This reflection was posted on the website for Catholic Artist Connection today::

https://catholicartistconnection.com/wait-for-the-lord/dec-5-2024

This essay appears page 31 of the inaugural issue of The Branches: A Journal of Literature and Philosophy; one of my paintings is the cover image. I am delighted!

https://www.thebranchesjournal.com/issues

It’s an honor and a blessing for me that this essay appears in the 2024 Fall/Winter issue of “Benedictines”, a journal published by the Benedictine Sisters of Mount St. Scholastica Monastery in Atchison, KS.

On December 26, 2023, the buildings and grounds of Queen of Angels Monastery were sold, an event commemorated on March 20, 2024, at a specially designed transfer ritual.  Thus ended one chapter in the nearly 140-year-long story of the Benedictine Sisters in Gervais and Mt. Angel, Oregon.  And now the page is turned, and the story continues, with more chapters to come.  What are the lessons for a Queen of Angels Oblate?

As events unfolded in recent years that would bring profound change to Queen of Angels Monastery, I was growing into my new vocation there as an Oblate.  Eager as I was to embrace Benedictinism in general and Queen of Angels in particular, had I found myself at a dead-end?  Would the Mt. Angel Sisters’ way of life disappear?  Would Oblation disappear?

Natural questions, which the Sisters in their resilience have answered with a gentle but emphatic “No”.  The answer emerged from their dedication to living the Rule of Benedict.  While an ending in one sense, the closing of the Monastery is also a new beginning … and I know that an informal Benedictine motto is “begin, again”.

People with resilience know how to begin again.  Not just once, but over and over again.  Psychologists tell us that they possess purpose, optimism, adaptability, problem-solving abilities, emotional awareness, social support, humor and other admirable qualities.  When resilience is enriched by faith in God and dedication to the Rule, it rises to the level of a virtue, and people with that virtue are blessed.  Queen of Angels has always been a community of blessed people.

I want to tell you about the resilience of the Sisters of Queen of Angels; that of the Oblates, too.  But first, some background.

***

For a number of years, the Sisters had been facing a situation familiar to other monastic communities.  Demographic, cultural and Church-related changes were affecting the future.  No one was seeking monastic profession at Queen of Angels.  The lovely and capacious Monastery building, designed to accommodate scores of Sisters, had many unused rooms.  Maintaining that building was more and more costly, while caring for the Monastery’s hundreds of acres of property posed additional difficulties.  The time came to chart a new course.  A meticulous, gradual and sometimes painful process of discernment began that was both a true test of resilience and an example of that virtue in action.

Today, the 17 Queen of Angels Sisters reside at Providence Benedictine Nursing Center, Orchard House and Mt. Angel Towers — all located near the Monastery — and Providence Emilie Court Assisted Living in Spokane.  But regardless of where any of the Sisters live, their identity as a monastic community is intact, as is our identity as Oblates.  Just as the Church is not an edifice but is God’s people, so too does Queen of Angels transcend its physical setting.

The new steward of the property is Catholic Community Services, a major Salem, Oregon-based social services agency.  It has long partnered with the Sisters to serve the Mt. Angel locale with programs to help the unhoused, the hungry, single parents, families in distress and migrants.  These ministries will be enlarged, and new ones added; the Benedictine Foundation and the Shalom Retreat Ministry will continue to operate as usual.  The re-purposed Monastery building, listed on the National Historic Register, will burst with life once again.  The park-like grounds — including the labyrinth, the peace garden, the Sisters’ cemetery and scores of specimen trees — are open to the public; a spiritual haven for all who seek beauty, solace and healing.  

Now, to the reasons for the Sisters’ resilience.

***

The centrality of God is a given in Benedictine life.  So is the day-in/day-out observance of practices, the spiritual habits that nourish faith and build up virtue of all kinds, but especially resilience.  

These practices are set forth in the Rule and form the basis for the vows of the Sisters and the promises of the Oblates.  Prayer and holy reading, of course; community life characterized by humility, obedience, stability, balance and hospitality; openness to conversion of life; appropriate silence; commitment to peace in all circumstances; service to all people … and more.  

None of these practices is easy to sustain over years and years of an individual’s life and a community’s life; over the 15 centuries of Benedictine life so far.  But they are necessary to achieve the goal that the Rule sets forth: “to open our eyes to the light that comes from God and our ears to the voice from heaven … to dwell in the tent of God’s Kingdom … to reach eternal life” (Prologue 9, 22 and 42).   

Along the way to heaven, the Kingdom and eternity, as we commit ourselves to “do now what will profit us forever” (Prologue 44), things happen that call for resilience — things such as the reality that a former way of life is passing away and a new way must be identified and pursued, even as the goal is unchanged.    

From my perspective as an Oblate, I see two facets of the Rule as being key to the resilience I’ve observed at Queen of Angels: praying the Psalms daily and cultivating humility, also daily.  

The Psalms — running the gamut of human emotion, while always focused on God — show us how to rise from the lowest of lows, how to keep God front-and-center no matter what the circumstances. Whatever we experience has happened before, the Psalms tell us, and our hope is undimmed.

Practicing humility shows us that we don’t have all the answers.  Instead, the path of life — mortal as well as eternal — is found in treading the steps of the ladder that Benedict describes.  In seeking God’s will, not ours; in praying, watching, waiting and hoping; in seeking the advice of our companions and trusting their wisdom; in making kindness the basis for our relationships; in balancing growth with tradition; in accepting hardship serenely; all “out of love for Christ, good habit and delight in virtue” (RB 7.69).

***

Facing the closing of the Monastery, Oblate leadership guided members through a discernment process similar to that of the Sisters.  Ours was aimed at securing our future within the framework of our Oblate promises, especially of stability, and we have also relied on the virtue of resilience.  As this was happening, I became more and more secure in my own vocation.  More and more joyful that I have accepted God’s invitation to enroll in Benedict’s “school for the Lord’s service” (Prologue 45).

Our vibrant Oblate community — almost 80 strong — has embraced the Sisters’ model of resilience.  We are dedicated to playing our part to assure that Benedictinism not only survives but thrives, that its fruits are available to the whole world.  We are attracting inquirers, nurturing candidates and designing new programs to nourish our spirituality.  Joyfully and seriously, with care and devotion, we will carry the Benedictine legacy of Queen of Angels into the future. 

***

It’s not fanciful to point out that the resilience that characterizes Queen of Angels is also rooted — literally — in the two symbols that appear as silhouettes on the logo of the Monastery.  Nestled alongside the Cross of Jesus Christ is the image of the Giant Sequoia that has grown from a seedling in 1893 to its stature today: about 140 feet tall, its trunk some 30-plus feet in circumference.     

What was in the mind of the pioneer Sister who planted that seedling at the front door of her new home?  Could she have foreseen what the tree — merely by growing but also by surviving storms, disease and mishaps of all kinds, even being designated an Oregon Heritage Tree — would come to mean?  For it became synonymous with “resilience”, the God-given ability to rebound from life’s challenges and to carry on, knowing that change can lead to transformation.  And always, growing stronger from the experience. 

I am sitting in the front seat of a car with Dad.  Perhaps I am four years old.  We are parked on a street near the garden apartment in Bayside where we lived before we moved to Connecticut.  The car is not moving; we are just sitting there talking.  We must have just come from somewhere, because Dad is in the driver’s seat and I am next to him.  But at such a young age, wouldn’t I have been in the back seat?  This was long before the era of seat belts or car seats.

I am stroking my fingers back and forth across what I later learn is called the dashboard, which is made of a material that I think is leather.  The dashboard, tan in color, is ridged vertically and prominently stitched with what looks like upholstery seams.  This design feature fascinates me, as do the push-buttons that Dad uses to make the car start up or drive or back up.  When our next car had a lever to do those things, I thought it very strange.  This car is a Ford Mercury, marketed for its “space age” looks.  The push-button automatic transmission appeared in the 1957 model year and was withdrawn in the 1958 model year.  Not sure about the “leather”.  

Sitting next to Dad, I ask, “But what if God makes another flood?”

“He will not,” Dad answers.  “He promised.”

“But what if God does decide to make another flood?” I persist.

“He will not,” Dad answers.  “He promised.”

I have a feeling this dialogue goes on for a little while.  It is the first lesson in faith that I remember. 

(continued below)

(continued)

My second lesson also took place in Bayside, around that same time, inside the apartment.  Dark, but not night, very early morning.  I was sleepily aware of Dad sitting on the edge of my bed, in his overcoat.  So it must have been winter, probably Advent, though maybe Lent.  He smoothed the covers and tucked them up around my chin.  I do not recall any words between us, but I knew that he was up very early to go to Mass, before going to work.  I just knew this.  This knowledge made me feel secure, and I disappeared back into sleep. 

The childhood faith lessons continued, with the scene shifting to Connecticut, where the family moved when I was six.  I was in school by then, of course — Catholic school, of course — but the lessons that I remember best did not take place in a classroom.  These were lessons in faith, not religion, a distinction I am finally appreciating.

Except on Saturdays and Sundays, Dad’s alarm clock would go off very early in the morning.  The alarm would often wake me up, too, and often I would get up to go to the bathroom and, on the way, peek into my parents’ bedroom.  No closed bedroom doors in our household!  In darkness, Dad would be sitting on the edge of the bed.  His feet flat on the floor, the palms of his hands resting on the mattress, his slightly bent arms supporting him, his chin tucked in a bit.  He would sit slouched like that for quite some time.  Then he would stand up.  At that point, I would melt away back to my bedroom, because we all knew that Dad had a get-ready-for-work choreography that no one disturbed.

The lesson?  That Dad was praying.  Which didn’t dawn on me until many years later, when I began to understand Matthew 6:6.  But I always knew I was witnessing something very personal.

(continued below)

(cotiunued)

My apprehension of another faith lesson was immediate.  It has shaped how I use language to this day.

I attended a local kids’ art-and-crafts camp for a couple of weeks the summer I was eight or nine.  On the last day of camp, there was a little show of our work.  As Dad and I strolled through the simple display, he was silent, as he often was.  Trying to fill the silence, I was chattering, as I often was.  “Isn’t that adorable?” I asked about something or another.

Dad stopped stock-still.  He looked deep into my eyes.  My chatter died away.  Then he spoke. “Nothing is adorable except God.  Only God is to be adored.”  

After all these many years, I can still feel my face burning with shame.  This was no patient lesson about Noah and the flood.  Nor was it a gentle lesson about worship or a secret lesson that he didn’t even know he was giving about how to pray.  This was serious as could be.  This was a flat-out correction of something very wrong.  I only had to be told once.

In fact, except in prayer, I have never since uttered the word “adorable” or any of its variations.  I cringe when I hear them used casually in conversation, when “cute” or “pretty” or “special” are what’s needed.  I have never even written them until now.  

During the 2012 presidential campaign, Mitt Romney, visiting his home state of Michigan for the first time in a long time, said how glad he was to be back “where the trees are the right height”.  

Hilarity ensued, in the media, the punditry and most everywhere else.  How can trees have a right or wrong height?  Such a ridiculous notion from, by extension, a ridiculous candidate.  Let’s see what else is ridiculous about him!  The reaction pretended to be insightful analysis of a potential national leader.  (Though neither the comment nor the “analysis” did not prevent Romney from gaining the Republican nomination.) 

But I knew just what he was talking about.  This narrow affinity with Romney didn’t mean I wanted to vote for him.  But I appreciated his nuanced view.  Living in San Francisco at that time but keenly missing my own home state of Connecticut, I knew the difference between the trees in those two places and about so much else that mattered to me about where I lived. 

For now, I’ll stick to the trees.

In Connecticut, which is a small but “heavily forested state” (that’s what the internet says!), the trees are not very tall. Certainly, they are no match for the eucalyptus and the redwoods and the sequoias of San Francisco and the entire Bay Area.  Yet they are the “right height” for a state where there are no mountains, only hills and higher hills.  

Connecticut’s trees blanket its gentle contours, making for a cozy environment.  When I would travel back to Connecticut during the years I lived in San Francisco, I would feel coddled and safe.  Can’t say that for being under the eucalyptus in Golden Gate Park or the redwoods in Muir Woods.  Those trees seemed to thrust themselves away from the ground, far up into the sky.  I experienced emotion from them, sure, but it was different.  Aggression, maybe?

Now that I live in Oregon, I can appreciate that the Pacific Northwest (also “heavily forested”) offers a new metric for proper tree height.  Doug firs and the other mighty evergreens will do that!  At the same time, there are plenty of maples, oaks, birches and other tree species that offer me the same kind of cozy comfort that I felt in Connecticut — including the two dogwoods in my front yard.  Amazingly enough, these are Eastern dogwoods, the kind I grew up with, rather than their cousins the Western dogwoods.  Here, I am rooted.  That gives me the freedom to reach up and out.  And leads me to wonder if, maybe, feeling safe in Connecticut also meant that I was muffled and constrained, held down by an arboreal force.

***

This next observation has nothing to do with the height of trees in Connecticut or anywhere else.  But it does say something about how I experience “place” and geography. 

Take as a given that my physical orientation works like the needle of a compass: it always points towards the North.  That means that my head faces N, my right arm reaches to the E and my left arm to the W.  My rear end, I guess, points S.  Well, on the East Coast, the big body of water — the Atlantic Ocean — was always off to my right.  Very reassuring.  When I got to San Francisco, I had to re-orient myself to the fact that the nearest relevant big body of water — the Pacific Ocean — was off to the left.  How disconcerting this was for me!  It threw off my whole sense of cardinal directions.  Do you know how long it took me to adjust?  How many times I drove off in the wrong direction?  

In Oregon, I had to adjust again.  We live about 90 miles from the coast, nestled into a huge valley between two mountain ranges (yes, mountains, not tall hills).  There is no big body of water nearby, to my right nor my left.  But there are a lot of rivers …

***

My observations may seem light-hearted.  But they are designed to disguise the fact that “place” is a delicate concept for me.  Yes, I have successfully made my home in three very different places.  But I consume myself with questions whose answers change every time I ask.  

Where, in fact, are my roots if I am estranged from what remains of my family of origin back East?  What does it say that I chose to live for so many years, constantly on edge, in a deceptively beautiful city that, at any moment, might crack apart in an earthquake?  And now, am I hiding in the woods of the PNW, seeking safety and covering up deep sadness? Or is that what thriving looks like?

Maybe the answer is just this simple: I can bloom where I’m planted.

Writing class assignment for the prompt “$100”.

Some years ago, standing in the checkout lane at the supermarket, I glanced down on the floor and caught sight of the tell-tale green of … a bill … a folded-up piece of paper money.  There is no mistaking that color.

Aha!  I thought.  Lucky me!  I’ve found a dollar!   Good for me!   

As I bent to pick it up, intending to slip it into my pocket — finders keepers, right? — I saw that there was another number next to the “1”.  A zero.  Oh my, I thought.  It’s a $10 dollar bill.  My excitement ebbed.  Keeping a random  $1 bill is one thing, but $10 …?  How could I rationalize keeping the money?  My conscience began to prick at me, and I tried to ignore it.

And then when I actually picked up the money, guess what it was — a $100 bill.  

I’m happy to report that my conscience didn’t need to prick at me.  The message was loud and clear; I knew what to do.  I gave the $100 bill to the clerk, who summoned the manager, who said, “Someone will be back looking for this!” and took it safely away to the office. 

Dad taught us refinements in the proper usage of electric wall outlets.  We already knew not to stick fingers or other foreign objects into them.  But we didn’t know how to take real advantage of their design.  Turns out that it’s easier to plug anything being used temporarily — a vacuum cleaner, say — into the top socket, then unplug it after use.  The lower socket would be reserved for anything that was going to be plugged in all the time — a lamp, say.  Test it for yourself!  Every time I plug or unplug anything, I think of Dad and this lesson about the need for flexibility and stability. 

One day Dad gave all three of us kids a bed-making lesson.  Not about how to pull up the bedspread and neaten the bed after you’d gotten up in the morning.  We already knew that, and were supposed to do it every day.  No, the real deal — stripping the bed down to the bare mattress and then putting on fresh sheets and making the bed up anew.  

Dad told us that we were lucky that there was now such a thing as a fitted sheet, whose elastic corners slipped under the mattress corners to keep itself in place.  Before the invention of the fitted version, the bottom sheet would have been flat, just like the top sheet.  To make up a neat bed back in those old days, he told us, it was essential to know how to make really tight folds at the four corners of the bottom sheet.  Such tight folds were called “hospital corners” for reasons that Dad did not know but that can now be found on the internet.  He also told us that, when he was in the Navy, the quality of one’s hospital corners was assessed by whether a superior officer could bounce a quarter off the bottom sheet; if so, one could continue making up the bed; if not, well …

Lest we think that hospital corners were mere relics of the past, Dad also told us that the two folds of the top sheet at the foot of the bed — our beds — needed to be tight as well.   And so, he taught us what to do.

Every time I’ve changed the sheets on a bed, this lesson has come back to me as I’ve attended to those two folds.  What doesn’t come back is whether we demanded — and Dad provided — a demonstration of a bouncing quarter.