by Mark Salzman
Sister Anne squinted and leaned, as if hoping to straighten out the hem with body English, then signaled that the right side needed to be higher. Sister John raised it a quarter of an inch, then began pinning in the corrections, but the headache intensified and made it difficult to concentrate.
How many to go? Don’t look.
One breath, pierce.
Second breath, out the other side.
Third breath, new pin.
The left side of her vision got blurry, and her fingers felt stiff. The doctor had assured her that these were common migraine symptoms, and that the best thing to do when the headaches struck was not to struggle against them. “Just try to relax,” he said, “breathe deeply and let it happen. Surrender to it. You’re a contemplative; think of it as a spiritual exercise.”
Remember what Christ endured.
Hang on.
One of the pins slipped out of her hand, ringing like a miniature triangle as it bounced on the floor. All of a sudden, her pain disappeared. This was new; the headaches usually took hours to run their course. She looked down toward the floor and saw that it looked impossibly distant, like an image in a funhouse mirror. Instead of frightening her, the sight filled her with an irresistible, dreamy curiosity. When she reached down toward the pin, her hand looked strangest of all, as if it belonged to someone else. She willed herself to move it, one finger at a time.
But where is the willing coming from?
Her mind felt like a mirror; everything in it came from somewhere else. The silence in the room came alive, like the positive space in a Chinese landscape painting, or the words left out of a poem. Something buried so deep inside her that she had forgotten it was there rose to the surface.
How long, O Lord, will you forget me?
How long will you hide your face?
Loneliness, the hole in the center of her being.
Look at me, answer me, Lord my God!
The response came in the form of understanding, and it came all at once, as if a dam had burst in her soul. Her search for God had been like a hand trying to grasp itself. God, who is infinite, cannot become present because He can never be absent.
You were here all along
“Sister? Are you not feeling well?” God was present in Sister Anne’s voice, He was present in her face.
Nothing was changed, yet everything was changed. Compared to this, she felt as if she had been sleepwalking all her life. “God is here,” she answered. She picked up the pin and guided it through the fabric.
I pierce the universe.
God pierces me.
I do not think; I am thought.
I do not know; I am known.
Every movement, every breath was poetry. She had passed through her dark night of the soul, and understood now how the light in one’s heart—the light of faith—could shine brighter than the midday sun. When the bell rang for private prayer, she went to the scriptorium to get a notebook. She brought it back to her cell, closed the door, and watched in amazement and joy as light poured out of her onto the pages.
1997
Darkness
SEPTEMBER 9
Peter Claver, Priest
Two squirrels raced down the trunk of the sycamore tree and halted on a branch. They twitched their tails without looking directly at each other, then spiraled back up into the canopy.
I made a commitment to live by faith, not by reason.
The ever-changing pattern of jet trails overhead was the only visible reminder that the cloister occupied a specific place and time in the world.
Leaves against sky. Green for Ordinary time, blue for the Marian feasts. The Blessed Virgin’s mantle of compassion embracing the world. Sister John had promised to announce the results of her medical tests to the community following the Mass of Our Lady of Sorrows. She had several days until then to meditate and pray on the news in private, and to decide what to do.
I felt so empty for so long, Lord, but I did not turn my back on you. I gave up everything to search for you, and when I had lost everything, you found me. How could I ever doubt you?
From the materials the doctor had given her, she learned that temporal-lobe epilepsy sometimes caused changes in behavior and thinking even when the patient was not having seizures. These changes included hypergraphia (voluminous writing), an intensification but also a narrowing of emotional response, and an obsessive interest in religion and philosophy. The novelist Dostoevsky, who was epileptic, followed this model so closely that the syndrome was eventually named after him.
“There are moments,” Dostoevsky wrote, “and it is only a matter of five or six seconds, when you feel the presence of the eternal harmony . . . a terrible thing is the frightful clearness with which it manifests itself and the rapture with which it fills you. If this state were to last more than five seconds, the soul could not endure it and would have to disappear. During these five seconds I live a whole human existence, and for that I would give my whole life and not think that I was paying too dearly…”
The similarity to her own experiences was unmistakable. If Dostoevsky had been given the option of treatment, she wondered, would he have taken it? Should he have?
The article went on to speculate that other gifted artists and writers may have suffered from the disorder. Van Gogh, Tennyson, and Proust were mentioned as likely candidates, along with Socrates, Saint Paul, and Saint Teresa of Avila.
Saint Teresa’s seizures—along with her heart attacks, chronic nausea, and even a three-day coma—were a matter of Church record. No one agonized more than she over the question of how to tell the difference between genuine spiritual experiences and false ones. At one point she even feared for her own sanity, but after being assured by Saint Peter of Alcantara that her spiritual favors were from God, she never again lost confidence in her visions, even after being denounced to the Inquisition.
Teresa called illness her greatest teacher, but she also warned against seeking illness as a means of cultivating holiness. She saw doctors for her maladies; when she wrote about turning suffering into opportunities for grace, she was almost certainly talking about incurable illness. She exhorted her readers to stay as healthy as possible so that they could all serve God to the best of their abilities.
But if looking after the body was so important, Sister John wondered, why hadn’t Christ answered Pilate’s questions and spared himself execution? Wasn’t the point of his sacrifice to inspire the rest of us to place faith before self-concern?
If what you have shown me these past three years has all been a mirage, then I am worse off now than I ever was. If I lose my sense of you, I lose everything.
SEPTEMBER 12
Thirteenth Friday
in Ordinary Time
Father Aaron was the parish priest assigned to administer sacraments to the nuns. He celebrated Mass every morning in the small chapel, delivering the Eucharist to each Sister through a window in the screen, but otherwise had little contact with them. He was a large man with eyebrows that patrolled his forehead like gray battleships, ready to meet any threat to his parishioners’ souls. Heart trouble sapped much of his strength, but whenever he led Mass, it seemed as if the Holy Spirit itself rushed into him and gave him vitality.
Father Aaron toed the line when it came to Vatican policy, and some of the Sisters complained of a patronizing attitude toward female religious. He believed in grace and the power of contemplative prayer, but was also fond of quoting Solomon’s warning against too strong a desire for miracles: “What need has a man to desire and seek what is above his natural capacity?” He was not someone whom Sister John would normally consult for spiritual advice, but these were not normal circumstances. She’d heard her doctor’s opinion; now she wanted to hear from a professional religious, someone far enough from the situation to be objective. Also, she knew that a nun’s preferences with regard to spiritual direction could some
times reflect where she wanted to be led rather than where God was trying to lead her. Deciding to keep an open mind, and thinking that Solomon’s warning might, after all, be relevant to her situation, she sent Father Aaron a note asking for a meeting.
The moment he took his place across the grille from her in the parlor, his nose began whistling as he breathed through it.
“God bless you, Sister. Your prayers sustain us. How can I be of assistance?”
“God bless you, Father. I seek the grace of your counsel.”
A long, thoughtful whistle. “What troubles you?”
She confided her diagnosis and her struggle to sort out God’s will from her own in the matter of how to deal with the illness. “I want to make the right decision,” she said, “but I feel confused. Should I automatically assume that my mystical experiences have been false, or should I stand behind what my heart tells me? Is God asking me to let go of concerns for my health, or is he asking me to let go of my desire for his presence?”
Father Aaron’s chin rested against his chest, and the whistling had ceased. She couldn’t see whether his eyes were open or closed.
“Father?”
He raised his head slowly and began to swell in his chair, like a balloon receiving an infusion of helium. “Take heart, Sister!” he boomed. “You may feel separated from grace right now, but in reality you are probably closer to it now than you ever were before.”
She hadn’t expected to hear this. “How could that be?”
“Because we’re all better off having doubts about the state of our souls than presuming ourselves to be holy.” His eyebrows moved ominously, as if they had sighted the enemy at last. “You allowed yourself to think that loving God meant enjoying His company, having ecstasies. It was all about you, wasn’t it? But loving God is supposed to be all about Him. About trusting Him, putting yourself in His hands completely.” He sank back into the chair, folding his arms over his stomach. He had almost as much hair on the backs of his fingers as above his eyes. “The problem is, you’re still looking out for number one. What comes before the number one, Sister?”
This, she realized, was the patronizing manner the other Sisters complained about. “Zero.”
He nodded. “That’s right. Which is the same as infinity. If we subtract ourselves from the equation, we find that God is left.” His eyebrows drifted apart, the dangerous part of their mission accomplished.
She wanted a direct answer, not more metaphors. She had too many of those already. “You’re recommending the surgery, then?”
Whistle, whistle. “The decision has to come from you, otherwise it won’t mean anything. I’m recommending an attitude, which I’ll sum up like this: God first, others second, me last. As long as you stick to that, you can be assured you’ll make the right decision.”
SEPTEMBER 13
John Chrysostom,
Bishop and Doctor
What if I have it all upside down? What if I am the one who knows nothing of God, and the people in the world are actually interceding on my behalf with their ordinary, daily struggles?
In spite of his condescending manner, Father Aaron had raised a question that Sister John could not ignore. What if her whole approach to spirituality was, indeed, selfish? What if it was true that her idea of loving God meant “enjoying His company"? That would explain her resistance to the idea of giving up her seizures, and it might even explain the surprising popularity of her book. Most people want to be told they can have what they want, and wasn’t that what Sister John was telling them? That direct experiences of God are available to everyone?
If every path led to you, there would be no need for redemption, no need to choose love over self-love, no possibility of being mistaken. Have I been worshiping projections of my own neediness?
Of the two hermitages at the far end of the enclosure, Sister John preferred the one at the southwest corner. Bamboo surrounded it so that, looking out the window, one felt transported to a mountain retreat in Asia. No one was scheduled to use it that month, so Sister John, hoping a change of surroundings might freshen her perspective, decided to spend the hour of private prayer there.
The hermitage was smaller than her cell, and even more sparsely furnished. She pushed the door open, felt along the wall for the light switch, then cried out involuntarily. Someone was already lying on the cot, with her back to the door.
A white veil covered her head.
“I’m so sorry, I didn’t—” A second shock passed through her. “Sister? Are you all right?”
Nothing moved under the brown and white fabric.
“Sister!”
“Praised be Jesus Christ,” Sister Miriam mumbled into the pillow.
Sister John’s relief was short-lived. When a novice so close to taking vows looked this upset, something was wrong.
“May He be forever praised … what’s wrong?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Would you like to talk with someone?”
No response. Remembering their conversation in the scriptorium, Sister John asked, “Is it about your parents?”
Sister Miriam started to shake her head, then burst into tears. Sister John sat down in the chair at the foot of the bed and waited. Outside the window, a pair of cedar waxwings feasted on pyracantha berries.
Sister Miriam cried herself out, then took a tissue out of her pocket and blew her nose.
“I can see that you’re struggling,” Sister John said. “I’ve had my share of bad days here, too.”
Sister Miriam sat up slowly, hugging her arms across her chest. “They were just here,” she said, speaking so quietly that Sister John could barely hear her. “They think this is a cult.”
“Do they think we’re keeping you here against your will?”
She nodded. “I tried to explain that I could leave anytime, but my father pointed at the grille and asked what the bars were for.”
“Did you explain to him?”
She nodded again. “I told him they were just symbolic, and he said, ’They’re symbolic, all right. Where else do you see bars on windows, and people living in cells?’”
“Does your mother feel the same way?”
“I don’t know. In our family, my father tells everybody else how to think.”
Sister John thought of how conscientious Sister Miriam was, yet how tentative, and it began to make sense. Sister Miriam threw the tissue into the wastebasket. “The problem is, there’s always some truth to what my father says.”
“You feel pressured to stay here?”
“No, that’s not it.” She stared out the window. “He thinks that I’m being selfish. That I want to become holy so that people will have to pay attention to me.”
“That’s ridiculous—you never draw attention to yourself. You’re the most self-effacing person here.”
Sister Miriam shook her head. “It explains why I’m so jealous.”
“Who are you jealous of?”
The novice looked stricken. “Isn’t it obvious? I’m jealous of you. How could I not be? How could anybody here not be? We’re searching, but you’re finding. ”
Embarrassed silence. “God loves each of us as if there were no one else on earth,” Sister John said. “Believing that is the most perfect act of faith of all.” Even as she said it, however, she realized it sounded like a platitude.
“Easy for you to say,” the novice snapped, then she looked stricken again. “I didn’t mean that. I’m upset, that’s all. Please forgive me.”
Sister John wanted to comfort her, but feared that anything she said would only make matters worse. “Have you spoken with Mother Emmanuel about this?”
Sister Miriam looked too exhausted to go on with the conversation. “I suppose I’ll have to. I think, right now, I’d just like to be alone for a while.”
“Isn’t there anything I can d
o? I feel terrible that I wasn’t aware of this earlier.”
“It’s my problem, not yours. I shouldn’t have troubled you with it—I’m very sorry.” She was sounding more like her usual self, which Sister John didn’t think was a good sign. Sister Miriam adjusted her veil and stood up. “I promised Sister Bernadette I would help her spread the tarps over the eaves today. She thinks it might rain soon.”
“If you knew me better, you wouldn’t feel jealous,” Sister John said.
Sister Miriam genuflected before the cross, then held her head evenly as she walked out of the hermitage.
SEPTEMBER 14
Triumph of the Cross
First rain of the season.
Sister John’s habit felt damp to the touch as she put it on. She listened to the drops falling on the banana palm outside her window. It was a tropical sound, reminding her that the desert is what you bring to it, a landscape of the heart. She jotted her first entry for the day in her journal:
Our twenty-eighth anniversary. I will not turn my back on You.
Water gushed out of downspouts and fanned out over paving stones. Raindrops hung from bare branches like tears on eyelashes, only to be obliterated by collisions from above. The eucalyptus trees looked as if they were being throttled by giant hands.
Angry beauty.
The liturgy of morning prayer blurred into a collage of hope and fear. Tomorrow was Our Lady of Sorrows; Sister John had one more day to reflect on her condition before sharing it with the community. She prayed for clarity through Lauds, and afterwards she skipped breakfast to remain in her stall until Terce.
