The road to Bethlehem was a familiar one by now, but this was the last trip I would be making on the bus. Mom seemed content and quickly settled down to enjoy the New England countryside whizzing past us. She didn’t know she would be returning alone.
—How about you? As D-day grew closer, were you at all fearful? Did you experience any angst?
I did not fear the completely different life I was heading into, nor did I feel a sense of loss for the life I was leaving. I simply didn’t have the feeling of pain that might surround the kind of step I was taking. I felt quite excited, in fact, not unlike what I felt on opening night of the play. It was a time full of love. So no, Dick, there was no angst. I was surprisingly lighthearted. As I understand it now, where there is a true sign of the Spirit, there is peace and joy. There may have been an underlying sense of anxiety about entering into a new cycle. I didn’t know exactly what the feeling was, but it wasn’t bad or ugly—it didn’t have those qualities about it. There was a fundamental happiness.
One of the nuns met us at the new bus depot—in Southbury. It wasn’t actually a depot—we were deposited in a vacant lot near a gas station. The short drive took us up Flanders Road toward Bethlehem. I couldn’t help but remember—“If you get to Bethlehem, you’ve gone too far.”
Mother Mary Aline directed us to Saint Gregory’s, where Mom and I would spend the night. I was grateful there were other guests. I hoped they might serve to inhibit an outburst from Mom.
There was a box waiting in our room. It held my postulant’s tunic. Made of the most expensive-looking material I had ever seen, it had a sheen that almost sparkled. I could have worn it to any Hollywood party. The problem was that I had to wear it as a lowly postulant in a cloister. I had been so careful about the movie-star bit, and now I was going to look as if I were flaunting it. I was embarrassed to wear it.
Mom looked at the garment and said, in a very matter-of-fact tone, “When are you going in?”
“Tomorrow,” I answered, “before Vespers.”
She took my hands in hers and said, “That doesn’t give us much time.”
This was the moment I had been dreading. “Mom, you mustn’t refuse me the freedom of pursuing life on my own terms. We’re all searching in this life to fill the void in us. That void is the absence of love, and I’ve found it in God.”
“It’s my fault, isn’t it?” she asked.
“There’s no fault in this. I am not running away from anything. I am running toward something—with all my heart. I’m counting on you to understand. I have given myself up to all kinds of pursuits, and they have led to only a glimpse of the happiness I now feel. I can find no substitute for the love that has brought me to this place. So please don’t be sad. Be glad that I have found my true home.”
I don’t know what I expected—an argument, tears, hysterics? But she simply said, “Dolores, I can’t take back what I’ve always told you. You have to do what you know in your heart is right and true.”
As I unpacked I discovered an opened envelope in the pocket of a jacket I hadn’t worn for a long time. I recognized Reverend Mother’s unmistakable script and realized it was the note I had stuffed into my pocket back in December of 1959—and had neglected to read.
Reverend Mother had written: “Dear Dolores: I know you are knocking, but you have a lot to do before you’ll be ready. You’ll have to wait.”
The entrance ceremony took place at three o’clock in front of the Great Gate—the lower entrance to the monastery. Harriett, sad but composed—after all, nuns do sometimes leave orders—stood beside Dolores, as did Maria.
I wore the shiny, showy new tunic, and I felt as if there were a spotlight on me. I was close to tears. Mother Anselm, recognizing my discomfort, told me not to worry, that the tunic would not be noticed or commented upon.
Father Paul Callens, then the monastery chaplain, escorted Dolores to the gate and gave her his blessing. Dolores knocked at the gate. Reverend Mother Benedict opened the small grille and asked, “What do you seek?” Dolores spoke from her heart.
“I seek the face of God through the Lord Jesus Christ in your Community, Reverend Mother.”
Reverend Mother opened the gate. I knelt on the ground before her and received her prayer and blessing. Then she invited me inside, and I walked into the enclosure alone. The Great Gate closed behind me.
Inside, the members of the council were lined up on either side of the road to the monastery building. I walked with the nuns in procession to the chapel, where the entire Community was waiting. I was shown my place in the choir and knelt again while the Community sang Psalm 47: “Receive me, O Lord, in the midst of Your temple according to Your name.” Then I was escorted from the choir to Reverend Mother’s office, where I was officially greeted by the members of the council. I signed a formal paper requesting acceptance as a postulant, which was then affirmed by each member as she introduced herself. I was sure I would never remember all the names.
“We live by the Rule of Saint Benedict”, Reverend Mother said to me. “Do you respond to the Rule?”
“Oh yes,” I replied, “I greatly respond to the Rule. Saint Benedict thinks like I do.”
The silence in the room was deafening, broken only when one of the nuns berated me: “Saint Benedict, young lady, does not think the way you do. Don’t you think you should have said you think like Saint Benedict?”
Reverend Mother Benedict stepped up. “Wait a minute”, she said. “This is a new era, and we should listen to what the new generation is saying. I think Dolores said it right. Saint Benedict thinks like she does.”
In the Rule of Saint Benedict, the abbot hears the counsel and opinions of all of the brothers and then follows what he judges to be the wisest course. The reason he calls on all, from the oldest to the youngest, according to the Rule, is that “the Lord often reveals what is better to the younger.”
Mother Miriam then took me to the refectory where I was assigned my stool, at the rear. Nuns move up nearer the prioress with seniority. Mother Miriam showed me how I was to sit on the stool, how to place my napkin, where to wash my dishes and silverware and where they were kept.
The napkin placement was unusual. One corner of the napkin is pinned to your tunic collar, and the opposite corner is placed on the table. Your plate then sits on the napkin, which conveniently catches the crumbs. How functional, I thought. After the meal, the napkin is unpinned and folded—first in thirds and then in half—and then the plate is removed.
Finally I got my first look at my new home. Saint Anthony’s, which was formerly a barn, housed the three parlors in which the nuns met with guests, including myself when I had been a visitor. Above the parlors, on the second floor, were the cells for the novitiate.
My cell was tiny—about eight-by-five feet—and wasn’t painted. It contained a cot-size wooden bed—no bedsprings, just a three-inch mattress on a wood platform—with drawers beneath for blankets and personal items. There was one table with a small lamp and one chair, a shelf with a wash bowl and towel rack, no closet but three hooks on the door to hang clothing. The cell had a window, very small, from which I could see the top of a tree. I would soon discover, to my dismay, that the tree was home to a noisy frog.
The door to my cell had a number—47—coincidentally the same number as the psalm sung at my greeting. I would be expected to embroider that number on all my clothing and mark or scratch it on everything else, such as buckets and garden tools and the like.
—I can’t tell you how happy I was when felt-tip pens were invented.
June in Connecticut was already hot and humid, and there was no air conditioning—there still isn’t—but there was a fan in the corridor. The cells had no running water. I had to fetch water from the sink in the bathroom to fill my washbowl. The first time I walked into the bathroom, I almost cried at the barrenness of it.
Vespers was the first Office I attended as a postulant. After Vespers, there is a half hour put aside for personal pursuits—medi
tation or perhaps a walk. Mother Miriam shepherded me back to the novitiate quarters, where I was finally able to meet the five women I would be living with—Mary Misrahi, whom I had met during an early visit and who was now Sister Rachel; the novices Sister Mary Peter, Sister Patricia and Sister Gratia; and Julia, the other postulant. Of the six women in the novitiate, I would be the only one to remain.
We went back to the common room, where I was once more assigned a place that would be mine. This was the time that the Community heard the news of the day, mostly about monastery events. Some world news was included, courtesy of Mother Ida Hurkins, a tiny Dutch woman in her seventies, who was the Community’s bell ringer and the only nun with access to the single monastery radio. The news was the news that Mother Ida judged was news.
—I remember that evening we were saddened to learn that human rights activist Medgar Evers had been murdered in Mississippi.
Supper was my first meal with the Community. We eat our food in silence, although we are usually read to at mealtime from books selected by Mother Benedict. The day I entered was the feast of Corpus Christi, when recorded music takes the place of the reading. On feast days, a small amount of wine is served. It might as well have been Old Taylor on my nervous, empty and sleep-deprived stomach. At the end of the meal, I rose too quickly, forgetting I was still pinned to my napkin. The plate flipped onto the table. In a frantic attempt to keep it from falling to the floor, I kicked over my stool. The quiet of the refectory was shattered. I stood there, mortified, waiting for a harsh reaction to my clumsiness. But all I heard were a few barely audible giggles from those who, I guessed, had been there and done that.
—Postulants still fall prey to the treachery of the pinned napkin, and we all can’t help but wait for that moment to happen.
Somewhere along the line, I received the books I would study, four in all: Antiphonal, Psalter, Gradual and Breviary. These would guide my way through the chants of the Divine Office.
Because I was not expected to attend Matins at 1:50 A.M., the last Office of the day for me was Compline at 7:40 P.M. Compline is sung in the chapel in the dark. It is the only Office that can be sung with eyes closed because it is the same every day, and you don’t have to refer to your book.
Mother Miriam escorted me to my cell and said good night. I was finally alone. For the first time since I walked through the Great Gate, I thought about Mom and the deep pain she must be feeling, and I couldn’t pick up a phone and comfort her.
I undressed and got into bed. Suddenly I was consumed with overwhelming loneliness.
All through the hectic months of preparation, I was being held to my decision by a life source far beyond my own self. My experience of God ever since my conversion to the Church had always been intensely personal. From the moment I accepted, as a child on my “death bed”, that I had God’s favor to speak directly to Him, I came to depend on His abiding presence.
That presence disappeared when I walked through the gate.
I knew absolutely that everything that had ever happened to me had not been the result of luck or coincidence or my own doing. Everything had resulted from the presence of God in my life. When I told the sister at school that I wanted to have bread with the other children, and she mistook my request for a desire to receive the Eucharist, that was God’s will. When I stood, unmoving, on that Manhattan corner and felt compelled to go to Regina Laudis, that was His will. And when I stopped Mother Placid in the refectory that evening, that too was His will.
But God, who had nurtured me all along the way to this very moment, was no longer there. I could not feel His presence. Had I been childish in my awareness of God’s omnipotence and fatherly protection?
I lay awake on the cot for a long time. I reached out my arm in the darkness. I could touch the opposite wall with my hand. I lay there, terrified by the enormity of the step I had taken. I began praying as hard as I could that, in spite of the isolation engulfing me, the love in my heart was God Himself trying to strike, if not lightning, at least a match.
I cried myself to sleep that night. I would cry myself to sleep every night for the next three years.
In the Open
Twenty
It was hard to believe that I was going to be in one place for the rest of my life. I would come to know that being in the monastery is never being in the same place—not ever in the same place in the same way.
When you live in the center, you find that everything around you changes with amazing reliability. If there is one thing you can be sure of, it is change. That is the lesson of real stability.
Stability, however, was not a condition that related to me that first morning. My night’s rest had hardly been uninterrupted. The cells, I discovered, have such thin walls between them that you can hear a zipper being zipped; it’s impossible to ignore your neighbor getting up at 1:30 for Matins. That kind of intimacy can make for stressful moments. But even if I had slept in the Plaza’s most luxurious accommodations, that night’s slumber would have been fitful and troubled.
I thought I was experiencing that same queasy feeling—those butterflies in my stomach—that I always had before a performance, intensified because I had had no rehearsal for what lay ahead that day. But those weren’t butterflies. I was in a real panic. All the fears of the previous day were still with me, but the feeling of God’s presence was not with me. I felt abandoned and utterly alone.
In this state I stumbled through the first day, as if I were in the middle of a jigsaw puzzle with no idea how the pieces could possibly fit together.
At the beginning, I didn’t fully comprehend what it would be like to have the Divine Office as part and parcel of my life in the monastery. When I walked in, I was walking to God—to find communion with Him. I had no inkling what the matter and substance of that experience would be—what it takes to become a cloistered nun. I hadn’t asked commonplace questions about the day-to-day routine because my drive—to find that spiritual union with God—was, I thought, of a higher order.
The Divine Office is the name of the hours of communal prayer observed by monastic communities, which are rooted in the Jewish tradition of prayer at regular times of the day. The prime mission for contemplative Benedictines is to pray the Divine Office, keeping the words of the psalms resonating through the day and night, every day of the year.
Because I didn’t have to get up in the middle of the night for Matins—postulants are eased into Matins over a period of time—I was awakened at 5:45 A.M. by a bell I would learn to call the Rising Bell. I had little time to bathe and dress because the next bell, announcing Lauds, would ring at 6:10. There was only one shower stall in the bathroom, but I noticed no one stood in line at the door. Some of the women showered in the evening before bedtime. Eventually I learned to keep one eye out for the moment the bathroom was unoccupied and then make a dash for it.
My cell contained no mirror. The only available mirror was on the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. I used to be so annoyed at having constantly to check my appearance in a mirror, but doing without one was a difficult adjustment. In all my years at Regina Laudis, I have never seen myself full length in a mirror. Fortunately, a mirror wasn’t crucial. Although my hair was long, it could be pulled back and held by a rubber band for easy maintenance, and the postulant headdress covered it like a kerchief. And there was, of course, no need to apply makeup.
When I walked into the choir for Lauds and took my place, I realized I did not know the first thing about the Office. I did not participate in the Latin chant, but I listened to and tried to follow in my breviary what the nuns were singing. I was appalled by the discovery that I was now required to sing prayers eight times every day. It was a blow, one I didn’t get used to for a long time. Or rather, one that I didn’t submit to for a long time.
Lauds is followed by Prime. As with Lauds, I understood not one word. After Prime most of the Community takes breakfast at 6:45. At 7:25, the bell rings for Terce. There is no need for a bell to announce
Mass because it immediately follows Terce. Mass was familiar territory for me—and the readings and the homily were in English.
After Mass, the Community begins its first work period at nine o’clock. Benedictine work is twofold—Lectio Divina, which means “sacred reading” or study, and manual labor.
At first, with the other novices and postulants, I met with Mother Anselm for a variety of reading and study programs in a small novitiate common room adjacent to our cells. Afterward, we younger members reported for our manual work assignment—known as an obedience. Mine was in the vegetable garden or the orchard or, from time to time, the flower garden. The nun in charge was Mother Stephen Prokes, who was responsible for the maintenance of all the monastery land. Mother Stephen was tall and fit—and very much in charge.
Fruits and vegetables are raised for the Community’s needs. The flower garden was Reverend Mother’s domain; she would arrange flowers daily in the chapel. When I was assigned garden duty, I had a variety of tasks. One day I would harvest string beans, the next pick apples or cherries, the next shovel manure—and weed, weed, weed.
—Was the work assigned in a communal or democratic way?
It was “Do as Mother Stephen says.” And she was unchallenged.
Was any particular area of gardening your favorite?
No, I hated it all. I have always hated getting dirt under my fingernails. I was such a ninny that I believed the sisters when they said that each bean had to be planted with a specific side up or it would not grow out of the soil, but down to China. It took me ages to plant the damn things.
The bell for Sext rings at 11:50. I was getting a little tired of the bells. As with the other Offices, I listened to the nuns sing the prayers while I stared at, but didn’t connect with, the Latin in the book. Sext is followed by the midday meal. This time there was a reading. The Community had just begun Gone with the Wind.
The Ear of the Heart: An Actress' Journey From Hollywood to Holy Vows Page 23
