And Then There Were Nuns (28 page)

From my cell window I observed with a bemused detachment the cars zipping along Guisborough Road. Cars had become an alien species now. I walked everywhere, and on the few occasions when I was a passenger in a car, the experience was akin to boarding a spaceship.

In Lidl, as I stood in line waiting to pay for a couple of packages of chocolate digestive biscuits (a full-blown addiction that I felt obligated to pay for out of my own pocket), I watched people as if they were part of a stage play. Their frenzied conversations were a curiosity, even though I had been part of that crazy world not that long ago.
Rushing off to fetch the kids from school? Have fun with that! Fretting about what to cook for dinner? Good luck!
That world was but a hazy memory now.

All my needs were met at St. Hilda's, but the loss of human contact affected me the most, like a sharp, deep stab. I missed the touch of another human being—a pat on the arm, a friendly hug, a kiss. But more than that, I longed for meaningful social interaction, both light and in-depth conversations. I appreciated that silence was paramount in a convent, but the balance was so heavily weighted toward it that it engendered a form of isolation.

I thought it was me, that I was defective or somehow inferior because I felt this need, but when I looked around me it seemed that there were more than a few sisters who could have benefited from more social interactions and physical contact. You can never overstate the healing power of human touch. Some struggled emotionally, and their problems were manifested by ultrasensitive personalities, chronic stomach problems, and eating disorders. One sister confided that she felt left out, that everyone seemed to have a buddy except her. I wondered whether the same type of social isolation would befall me if I joined a religious order. Social connections are vital whether you live inside or outside the cloister, and breaking into a new social circle works the same way in a religious community as it does in a secular community. Today's “new kid in the convent” is tomorrow's “test of my patience.”

The loneliness was most acute on Saturdays.

Saturday morning in a convent was business as usual. There was no lazy breakfast, no steaming mug of coffee while sitting in your pajamas poring over the weekend newspaper. No random comments to lob at someone such as, “Well, did you see this story on...?” or “I can't believe the government thinks it can revamp the health service by slashing jobs! Insanity! What do you think?” or “Look at that fabulous hotel in Spain. Wouldn't it be great to go there?” No, there are no conversations like that at a convent. In fact, there are rarely conversations, period.

Long ago, when I was living off the fumes of a consumer lifestyle fueled by fashion and home-decorating trends and multiple trips to big-box stores located in vast asphalted wastelands of suburbia, I never appreciated the little freedoms inherent in a Saturday. Saturday was a day of sundry domestic responsibilities, but it was also a day that was your own to design.

Here, Saturday morning was about silence, just like the other six days of the week. There was a vague sense, an intuitive whiff, if you will, that the world was operating on weekend mode, but that was the extent of it. A million creature comforts I had taken for granted in a secular Saturday morning began to assemble into a chorus line of longing: the smell of coffee, the ring of the phone, the crackle of a fire, the rustle of a newspaper, the homey discussion about the day's errands and chores, the hum of the washing machine, music from the radio, and mostly, companionship. Without these, I felt very poor indeed.

I left the refectory after breakfast, and when I passed the newspaper rack stocked with the weekend editions—the
Times,
the
Daily Telegraph,
the
Independent,
the
Guardian,
the
Yorkshire Post,
and periodicals such as the
Church Times
and the
Tablet
—I was overcome with a greedy desire to have a newspaper of my own. Especially a complete, untouched newspaper.

The newspapers—“intercession material,” as Sister Marjorie called them—never made it to the cloister rack intact. They were disassembled by one of the sisters, who felt that the sports sections from all the newspapers should be lumped together, as should the real estate, business, travel, commentary, and arts sections. The glossy weekend magazines disappeared completely, only to materialize days later in the parlor.

The slap on the wrist that first day from Sister Marjorie about hogging the newspaper had made me more circumspect. I would take a section of one of the papers to my cell or the library and read it, then return it immediately and take another section. But now I craved a newspaper to peruse at my leisure. On my way to post a letter that morning, I went into a shop and bought one. As I walked back to the priory clutching it to my body, it felt as if I had scored dope.

I smuggled it into my cell, then stretched out on the floor, the newspaper in front of me, and read and lingered over it while the sun poured in through the dormer window. It was close to heavenly.

That night, I sat in my prie-dieu awaiting the start of compline, and a different longing returned. This time I thought about all the people who were out on a date or channel-surfing at home or uncorking a bottle of wine with friends or making last-minute plans to see a movie or curled up in their
PJ
s with a book in front of a blazing fire. Ah, Saturdays.

( 6:vi )

A DUSTING
of frost had coated the ground, but by midmorning, the sun had melted the evidence and was beaming its heart out.

A small stone patio and rockery behind the priory proved to be an excellent suntrap, and in good weather the sisters often took their tea or said their prayers and meditations there.

Passing through the main corridor, I spied Sister Patricia sitting on one of the wooden benches on the patio. Her eyes were closed, and her white hair shone like an aura. Her face was inclined toward the late morning sun, welcoming its warmth, and I could tell that she was in that zone of listening to God. Occasionally her face broke out in a smile, as if God were telling her a joke. Perhaps it was this one: A Sunday school teacher was leading her young class into church when she turned to them and asked softly: “Now class, why do we need to be quiet in church?” In a loud whisper a little girl piped up, “Because people are sleeping.”

I opened the patio door and tiptoed past Sister Patricia toward the gardens.

The cold of the previous weeks had been replaced by sun and warmer air. Spring was never my favorite season; I always wanted it to hurry up and get to the hot days of summer. Now I saw the gentle beauty of it, the reawakening of life.

I walked around the rockery and admired the new growth. The garden was tended by Sister Heather Francis, under whose diligent care flowers had begun poking up—purple and yellow crocuses, periwinkle, and a raft of other species that she would know by their Latin names. A few pigeons were strutting around. This particular species always made me smile, because its plumage—grayish brown with a white band at the throat—was identical to the nuns' habits.

Scattered around the gardens were stone troughs, some containing plants, others heaped with shells, fossils, and stones that the sisters had found on their excursions.

Many of the fossils were ammonites. Depictions of St. Hilda almost always show her with ammonites at her feet—a nod to the welcome legend in which she battled a plague of snakes and turned them all to stone.

I picked up an ammonite and rolled it around in my hand, feeling its weight and running my thumb along its hard, ridged surface. Its coiled spine conjured many images—a spiral staircase, a labyrinth, the starting point of Dorothy's yellow brick road—and the images splintered into word association: the reversing of life, the rewinding of memory, the unraveling of trauma.
Uh oh.

( 6:vii )

WE WERE
deep in Lent now. Fog had stealthily crept in and coiled itself around the convent, and it did not look like it had plans to move on any time soon. The cloister corridors were dark and empty, and the wind—the unforgiving, swirling, ever-present, abrasively loud wind—was a bitter reminder that we were still in the throes of winter. A winter desert.

Lent had turned everything into a metaphorical desert: the food in the refectory looked the same from one meal to the next; the silence was oppressive and brought a sense of foreboding. Grayish brown was the dominant hue: it was in the stone walls and floors of the priory, in the sisters' habits, in the weather, in everyone's mood. It was like living in a sepia-toned photograph.

The sisters themselves were as drained of color as a March day. They moved like a whisper through the corridors, enveloped in a cloud of constant prayer and without offering the barest nod of acknowledgement to those they passed. Their brows were etched with worry, and for good reason.

A catastrophic earthquake and tsunami had hit the eastern coast of Japan, causing a massive loss of life; an explosion at the region's nuclear reactor was imminent. When it seemed things could not get worse, heavy snow had begun to fall, adding to the confusion and rescue efforts.

The disaster was on everyone's mind and on everyone's lips; it was heart-crushing. You do not know where to begin with your prayers with something like that.

The deadly riots in Libya and Syria had also become constant themes in our prayers, as had the state of the world's nose-diving economy. With so much heaviness and so many world crises, an extra half-hour of silent intercessions was added to the evening schedule.

You couldn't avoid the pain of the world. From inside the convent, the blunt terror of the world was more horrifying, especially when viewed under the lens of Lent. There were no little distractions to save you from tumbling into despair: you had to absorb it and deal with it.

I had come across a story about a doctor in Misrata who had hustled his wife and four kids into the car to escape the bullets raining down on his neighborhood. He had hoped they could find safer shelter at his in-laws' home. The family had driven into the street but had to stop the car because the gunfire was so fierce. When the doctor looked over his shoulder to check on his children in the backseat, he saw that two of his older children had had half their heads shot off; the younger two no longer had heads at all.

I had read the story with my hand over my mouth. In a world of such unremitting horror, how do people keep their faith? How do you pray when something like that happens to you? I had been whining about the deprivations of Lent while parents were coping with their headless children.

I arrived in the chapel with the barest of light as guidance and groped my way to my prie-dieu. As my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, I made out silhouettes of the nuns sitting still and silent in their stalls like apparitions shrouded in mourning and praying their souls out for the dead, the living, and those who wonder if there is a God.

( 6:viii )

THE TWISTED
branch of a vine slapped against the window of my office, its scrawny, dry tendrils scratching the glass pane like a clawing rodent. The screams of the wind were unbearable. My office was located at the inside corner of the building, a wind trap, and the wind seemed to take this as a personal affront, tearing and raging like a caged animal and threatening to shatter the windows completely.

Its fury mystified and terrified me. I had never been affected by the wind before, but now I could not escape it in my office, in chapel, or in the library. I was safe from it in my cell until I went to sleep, and then it invaded my dreams, in which every scene featured the wind at its most furious.

In the daytime, it was so voluble that my only escape was to go outside and face it. Then it would become more playful, blowing me toward Whitby Beach and the rugged, ancient North Yorkshire coastline.

I was helpless against the wild landscape: the disheveled grass, the shivering trees, the swelling, tempestuous sea beneath smoky puffs of clouds that sailed swiftly through the blue and white sky like a flotilla setting off for the New World. It was alive and unpredictable. One minute the sea would dazzle with sapphire clarity; the next, it would be smothered in dense fog. The week before, I had watched a rainbow materialize, one of its ends dissolving into the shimmer and sparkle of the sea.

I frequently took the steep asphalt footpaths that switchbacked precipitously down the cliffs to the beach and waded through uneven drifts of sand to the water's edge. I would stand there feeling the drumbeat of the waves, letting them permeate my senses and push my anxiety to the side. This was where my Aquarian nature felt most at home.

When I exposed myself to the elements, especially to the sea, I could come clean with myself and admit—as much as I did not have the courage to admit at other times—that I was forcing myself into religious life. A square peg trying to fit into a round hole: I was manipulating that square peg to plug the hole of my pain.

My faith wasn't flagging, but my struggle against my willful and possessive nature was.

Even my vocabulary had a possessive quality. Colin's weekly letters carried references to “our garden” and “our flat,” when in reality it was
his
garden,
his
flat. All my references were to “your place” and to “my place.” In a monastic culture, where all things are held in common, there is no “I” and “mine.” Perhaps I wasn't fit for marriage or a monastery.

As for the other part of my nature—the one that likes to talk, question, and probe—was it realistic to drive it underground and take on a new personality? Was that even honest?

My thoughts returned to Thomas Merton and his natural proclivity to communicate, the tension he felt between wanting to be a monk for God and a man of the world. He could not stop himself from writing letters or spending long afternoons in conversation with visiting friends. I hate to think how he would have coped with email.