We repaired to a pretty café in Sanders Yard for tea and cake and sat for a while in a kind of blissful sugar stupor, watching people watching us—it is surprising how many people gawk at the sight of a nun—or turning our attention to young parents helping their tots in and out of strollers and jackets. Oh, how I remember the days of directing squirmy, reluctant arms into stiff coats and snowsuits as chubby legs kicked impatiently to be released. A family with older children came into the café to take a break from goth watching, and suddenly I felt homesick for my own brood. I wondered what they were up to. Would they ever visit unusual places like Whitby? Would they ever feel compelled to make journeys that might help them reconcile themselves with God? A few years earlier, I had taken them to the Bahamas as a sort of “last family holiday.” I had never been able to afford to take them away together before, and now I wished I had been less careful with my money and more reckless about traveling as a family.
( 6:xiii )
EARLY ONE morning in mid-March, after ten hours of solid, blissful sleep, I opened my eyes, and without any sort of prompting or prior knowledge of what I was about to do, I spoke aloud to the ether: “I am not going to be a nun.” Full stop.
I turned my head toward the wall and let my tears fall until they soaked my pillow. The disappointment was crushing.
For more than a year and a half I had pursued this path with all I could offer. I left my family, gave up a steady job, jeopardized a romance, and alienated some friends just so that I could seize the brass ring of my spirituality. I had been so certain of its veracity, so determined to square my life and lay a new foundation for my future, but even the most fanciful side of my personality had to admit that I was forcing myself into something that was unnatural for me. It was one thing to be an elastic monastic and another to be a spiritual contortionist.
Why isn’t it meant to be? I wailed petulantly to God.
But I knew why; I had just been too stubborn to concede defeat.
It had nothing to do with my commitment to God or my failure to adapt to community life. Nor did it have anything to do with my marital status—I had met a few nuns my age who were divorced with grown children and had taken easily to a nun’s life. It was my inability—no, let’s grind that down to more honest terms—my unwillingness to play by the rules. The disciplined routine clashed with my nature, and it was breaking me apart.
There had been small clues that pointed to my reluctance to unequivocally embrace religious life. When I returned from my walks, I had begun to stall at the little wooden gate leading to the back door of the priory and would often then set off on another long walk as a way to delay my return.
I took more and more walks of greater distances and greater endurance. One day I walked all the way to Lythe, a small village above Sandsend. The long, steep road that twisted up to the little church of St. Oswald’s had nearly winded me, but I hadn’t cared; I needed to hear my heart pounding to know that I was wildly alive.
Another litmus test had occurred in the parlor several days earlier at tea time. Two magazines sat on one of the tables; on one magazine cover was a dusty African village overlain with cover lines heralding articles about peace and justice conferences and water treatment projects; the other magazine cover showed a close-up of a disgraced fashion designer overlaid with cover lines promising a juicy exposé. As I restrained myself from grabbing the one with the fashion designer on it, another sister came into the room and grabbed the one with the African village on the cover, gasping as if it were the September issue of Vogue.
And then there was that obedience vow.
The other day, in the kitchen, Sister Heather Francis had pulled me aside to tell me that she had added my name to the rota for meal preparation. I was to do a breakfast and a supper each week. I almost choked, “Are you crazy? For twenty-five women?” Instead, I rhymed off—as patiently as I could without my eyeballs bleeding—the many tasks that were already on my plate. She was nonplussed and repeated the instructions. I could not bow out. I might not like what was assigned, but I did not have the luxury of saying, “No way” or even “No, thank you.”
I had left the kitchen to go to my cell and punch something when I had bumped into Sister Marjorie.
“You’re looking thin and tired, my dear,” she said.
No kidding!
Ironically, my love for Colin, not for religious life, had grown and deepened in the convent. I wanted to be in community with him. I remembered something that a friend, a former nun, had said to me when I told her of my intention to explore a religious vocation: “Whether you choose God or Colin, both are valid; both are good. One is not better than the other. It’s about where you fit, where you feel authentic and comfortable.” I felt most authentic and comfortable with Colin.
I got up, dressed, and went down to chapel. I went about all my duties as usual and did not confide my decision to anyone. I needed to sit with it a bit longer just to be sure, but by evening my mind was still unchanged.
That night I stared up at a magnificent perigee moon, the gullies and mountains of its surface preternaturally clear, forcing a change in the soundtrack of my brain. It still seemed to be on “Nun, Nun, Nun.” I was tired of introspection, tired of thinking this through.
OK, I declared to the moon, I give up. I’m not meant to be a nun.
I sat on the edge of the bed and finally accepted the decision. And then I tried to formulate a plan on how best to leave the convent. There was no good reason to stay any longer at St. Hilda’s, but I felt a sense of responsibility to finish the work the sisters had assigned me. The transcription work on Mother Margaret’s speeches was complete; the historical update could be wrapped up in several hours of solid, uninterrupted work, which meant missing the offices. If I did that I could catch a train to London and be back to Colin within seventy-two hours. I could be wading through throngs of rabid shoppers on Oxford Street or sitting in a cinema with a tub of popcorn on my lap by the weekend.
And yet, the prospect did not excite me; nor did it seem right. I had a sense of unfinished business.
I looked back at the moon. It appeared so close, almost within reach. Its corona pulsated with an almost audible energy, as if it were saying, How much bigger do I have to get, how much closer do I need to be for you to realize what you have to do?
And then, as one issue was laid to rest, another took its place. A flare of understanding settled on me, and I realized that the reason I had been called to St. Hilda’s was not for a religious vocation but to confront once and for all the traumatic residue of the rape. It was time to surrender to it. But still I couldn’t bring myself to face it.
( 6:xiv )
THE WIND returned with a vengeance. Naturally. Whenever I began to deal with the big issues in my life, the wind would show up like an uninvited guest. This one was fierce, the kind that could uproot a home, break windows, fell trees, and kill wicked witches from the East. It even unsettled the Archbishop of York, who stopped mid-Eucharist that day to express alarm at its ferocity.
Sister Patricia had asked me to join her afterwards for a session of lectio divina in the small room above the chapel.
She was there when I arrived, sitting beside a small leaded window as the wind whipped outside. A Bible was on her lap and she had already picked out a passage for us to focus on: John 7:45. In this section a group of temple guards appear chastened before their leaders, the priests and the Pharisees. The guards had been ordered to arrest Jesus but returned to their bosses empty-handed, explaining that it hadn’t seemed right to arrest a guy who hadn’t done anything wrong. The priests and Pharisees were furious and accused the guards of being wimps and of being seduced by Jesus’s teachings.
Sister Patricia and I read the passage aloud together, and then we sat in silence to contemplate the words and imagine the scene. I could see it vividly: the officers breathlessly reporting to their masters, desperate to please them but also trying courageously to reason with them; the gruff and fuming voic
e of the lead Pharisee shouting “Idiots!” before dismissing his subordinates with a flick of his chubby hand, inwardly worried that he was running out of opportunities to arrest Jesus.
After about twenty minutes of pondering this passage, I said to Sister Patricia, “Well, what did that passage say to you?”
She laughed embarrassedly.
“I did not think of the passage at all, I’m afraid. I was thinking of you the whole time! Yes, it was extraordinary! I could see moments of extreme joy in your life and moments of great despair and hurt.”
Oh dear. Where was this conversation going?
“For heaven’s sake, poor Jesus is about to be nailed to a cross and you think of me?”
She chuckled and her hands fluttered.
“I know, but it’s what I saw. Your life appeared to me as a merry-go-round, a carousel. Do you have those in Canada, dear? There was lots of chaos, but happy chaos, but then also frightening chaos...” Her voice trailed off, and she looked at me sadly and then at her hands resting in her lap.
Sister Patricia would make a good psychic.
For several seconds, which felt like minutes, neither of us said anything.
I drew Sister Patricia back to Nicodemus and the Pharisees, suggesting that the Pharisees seemed to be on a crazy carousel, too—Yeah, that was it—and they were desperate to find someone, anyone, to pin the blame on Jesus.
As I managed the mood between Sister Patricia and me, I engaged in a psychological tug-of-war about whether to tell her about the rape or not. How could I lay something so heavy on gentle, serene Sister Patricia? How would she react?
We wrapped up our session, and I immediately went into the chapel and got out the vacuum and the dusters to clean the sanctuary. Sister KT was cleaning, too.
“Hello, Sister Wally,” I said brightly. But she did not reply. Her eyes were red, and she kept snatching a tissue from the pocket of her habit. I asked if she wanted to talk, but she just shook her head. How we love to hold on to our pain. In a sudden flash of insight, it dawned on me that Sister KT would not be a sister much longer.
When Silence Knocks
················
Order of the Holy Paraclete
Whitby, England
I WAS RESENTING LENT. It was making everyone crazy, just like the wind was making me crazy.
In the kitchen, I put on the kettle for tea. As it came to a boil, a plume of steam shot up, loud and seething. It was a metaphor for everything and everyone around me.
I had had it up to here with austerity and misery. It wasn’t the fasts that irked me anymore—in fact I could now stretch out a bun and a tea and make it feel like a four-course meal—it was the constant and oppressive solemnity. I kept checking the calendar and counting the days to the end of Lent.
The divine office that I had loved so much had lost the joy that had initially inspired me. I privately began referring to the “Te Deum” as “the Tedium.” The psalms of David that previously had been moving in their eloquence and sonnet-like lyricism now sounded whiny, and I had to bite back the urge to wish David would “man up.”
The routine and repetition were getting to me, too. If I want repetition, I’ll get a skipping rope. The tyranny of silence was pushing me to the point where I wanted to scream and listen to heavy metal.
But I couldn’t blame this gathering tension entirely on Lent; I intuitively knew—though I would have refused to admit it then—that I was projecting the foreboding nature of Lent onto “that other issue”—the rape. I could sense the showdown approaching. Something had to give.
As if recognizing the early onset of Lent-overload, Sister Dorothy Stella suggested we go for a drive. We talked about lots of things as she steered the car through quaint weather-beaten fishing villages along the craggy North Yorkshire coastline, but soon the conversation returned to “the life” and its demands, stresses, and pressures—the very opposite of a model designed to repel such things.
When we returned to the priory, we remained in the car a long time chatting. Eventually, I mustered my courage, took a deep breath, and delivered my bombshell.
“I’m afraid I’ve come to the conclusion that I am not nun material.”
“You’re kidding,” Sister Dorothy Stella deadpanned. “I could have told you that ages ago.”
“Wh-What? Why?”
“There was a time when people could look at a woman and say, ‘She has a vocation in this,’ but now no one says that, because you just cannot tell. As for you, it’s no surprise. You have so much happening in your life and so much awaiting you.”
Funny, that was one of the reasons for my being there in the first place—too much going on. But in true contradictory fashion, I wanted it all, and I wanted none of it.
At breakfast the next morning, there was a note tucked in my napkin from Sister KT asking if I would help load the dishwasher at dinner. She appeared to be over her sadness because she was more upbeat and had resumed calling me “Wally.”
I couldn’t help feeling a bit sad for her. She was well-liked at St. Hilda’s, but was she truly happy? Then again, maybe a convent saves you from the hurt and disappointment of marriage and from the fear of spending the rest of your days alone. Maybe silence becomes your friend and soul mate. But while silence offers you space, it doesn’t offer you a place to hide.
“That’s why some people hate silence, because they don’t want to own up to their own emptiness and their vulnerabilities,” said Jean. “They keep the noise level up and the activity level going so that they don’t have to deal with their deep problems.”
I had met Jean my first week at St. Hilda’s while she was there as a guest. I gravitate toward unconventional-looking people, and Jean was every bit that with her shoulder-length brown hair streaked with gray, her funky glasses, jeans, and cool earrings. Now she was back in Whitby for the day. We sat on a bench outside a café, and as the sun warmed our faces we talked about the contradiction of silence—its ability to impart both peace and turmoil.
“What the silence does,” said Jean, “is bring the unresolved, the troubling things, to the surface, because eventually the problems rise up within you until they start knocking on your head, as if to say, ‘C’mon. Let’s deal with this.’”
And knock they did.
( 7:ii )
“THE RAPE! Look!”
The next morning, I could hear the commotion before I opened the kitchen door. One of the sisters excitedly grabbed my arm and urged, “Go look!”
I flinched. My muscles tensed and my breathing became shallow. A sick feeling radiated through my stomach. My eyes warily followed her pointed finger beyond the kitchen door, toward the window, and far up into the hills beyond. A cluster of sisters was already at the refectory window. Everyone was staring at the rape.
And there it was, a vivid chartreuse slash that appeared to have been magically shoehorned overnight between two lush dark green fields. Like a bright stain.
In the U.K., it’s called rape; in North America, the plant goes by the less inflammatory name of canola. Regardless of how innocently it is presented—as the name of a plant, in the title of a poem or a work of art, or as the French word for “grated”—those four letters positioned in that order had an effect on me.
I stood there dumb and paralyzed, unable to join in, unable to flee, trying to hold back the emotional squall that was about to smack me. A throb of panic pulsated through my body: Deal with it now.
With all the grace of Frankenstein, I unplanted my feet from the kitchen floor and plodded unsteadily back to my cell. To deal with it.
( 7:iii )
THE JOURNALIST in me was able to articulate the events of the rape—the who, why, what, where, and when—and recite them without falling to pieces. But it was the effect of the rape that undid me. Imagine a tangled garden of emotions—some of them with short roots and thorny stems; others with deeper, more entrenched roots intertwined with other deep roots. Doing spadework in this plot was tri
cky, and in the past thirty years it had been easier to survey what needed to be done and then rest my shovel against the shed of procrastination.
From time to time, I have hauled out my shovel and started digging into the impact and ramifications of the attack, but each attempt brought on a visceral paralysis, physical and emotional. The ugly details would rise to the surface until it made me sick to my stomach. Each retch was a purging of the violation.
The memory of the rape disturbed me so much that a random remark could send me reeling into shame and depression. My normally high-spirited, jokey side would go quiet. Sometimes I would stop eating; other times I would start gorging. On the outside, I would be politely listening to someone or even smiling; on the inside, I would be screaming and kicking away memories of the rape that would replay in my head like the scary part of a film you try to avoid. The rape itself lasted perhaps five minutes; the memory has stalked me for thirty years.
As everyone who has suffered a traumatic event knows, memory can’t be put on pause or erased. It is a bit like locked-in syndrome: you can see the world going about its merry business but you are incapable of fully joining in because the neural switch that triggers a sense of normalcy has been overridden by constant wariness.
Sometimes I have tried to confront the memory of the rape by writing down my thoughts, only to become obsessed with finding a flawless sheaf of white paper or a pen with a specific color of ink. It is all very OCD.
This time there was no pristine paper or colored pens. It was just me and my silent cell.
I lay on the floor and closed my eyes. Warm spring sunlight streamed in through the dormer window. Just be silent. Wait for God to speak. If nothing else, I figured I might get a tan.
“Where do I begin?” I mused aloud.
How about with a question?
“Oh. OK. Here’s my question: How do I get to the root of this overriding sense of shame?”
I allowed the question to play around in my head like a child playing hide-and-seek in a garden, peeking under bushes and around corners. I repeated the question: How do I get to the root of this? In the midst of this gentle meditation the answer arrived:
And Then There Were Nuns Page 23
