eBook: The True Monastic Adventures of A Recovering City Girl

I moved to...

When I moved to a small town in the Pacific Northwest from the San Francisco Bay area, the pace of my daily life came to a screeching halt, but the activity in my mind kept its old furious tempo so that I suffered from a psychological whiplash that left me agitated and depressed. I wanted to get things done, but a list of errands—grocery store, post office, library, etc.—that had taken an entire afternoon in my old life now took precisely 1.5 hours and then I was back at home. I was like Fred Flintstone when his car gets lifted off the ground and it’s just his feet running at a break neck speed.

The silence and stillness were maddening to me, I wanted to turn up the music and run around in circles in my living room—anything to get back to my old comfort zone of hustle and bustle. I won’t blame the city for having kept me so tightly wound, because plenty of individuals cultivate an inner peace in an urban environment, but for me personally, the city’s endless distractions were the perfect companion to my inclination to run from myself. I was alone and quiet only in little bite-sized portions. The kicker is that I had been longing for this dramatic change of pace, and now that it was upon me I couldn’t adjust. Constant activity is a much stronger drug than I had realized. I was desperate.

I looked around...

I looked around for inspiration from others whose lives had similarly shifted from the fast lane to the slow, and I found it in several books by author Kathleen Norris, a poet who moved from New York City to a tiny town in South Dakota in the 1970s. Among other subjects, she writes about the deepening spirituality brought about by her move, helped along by several visits to monasteries. At one point she chronicles her stay of more than a year in a Benedictine monastery.

I did not grow up as a churchgoer and have always regarded spirituality a bit like ghosts—a fascinating phenomenon of which I have no first-hand experience. I understood that if I was to thrive—or just survive—in this new life, I would need to equip myself with an understanding of something greater. I would need to find a way to be comfortable with the silence, to welcome it, even, and to grow from it. Monastics are experts in solitude, so I was hoping time spent among them would provide me with some valuable lessons.

On the internet I found...

On the internet, I found a monastery within a manageable drive of my home. Like the one in which Norris stayed, it is Benedictine, a Roman Catholic order that follows the rule of St. Benedict. However, this one is all female (the “monks” are nuns) and is also a 300-acre farm that operates one of the few raw milk dairies in the state. Our Lady of the Rock is located on Shaw Island, one of the smaller San Juan Islands that sits off the Washington State coast just north of Seattle. It was founded in the 1970s by nuns from the Regina Laudis monastery in Bethlehem, Connecticut. Like most monasteries, they welcome visitors, particularly those willing to lend a hand with chores. Using the “contact us” function, I sent an email with some basic information about myself and asked if I could come for a week-long stay.

Finally, a few weeks before my supposed visit, I sent a meek little message: “I’d still like to come, is that okay?” Her response: “Yes, we have you down.” My reply: “Can I get directions?” I kid you not: she sent me half the directions. She got me on the island and just shy a mile or so of the desired location. I asked for the remainder of the directions, and she sent those—though still no address. Then I asked a bunch of other questions and she responded in brief: “Everything will be provided. Dress in layers. Oh, coffee is a MUST.” (Hallelujah!)

The night before I was to drive across the state to begin my monastic adventure, I was nervous (though, the thing about coffee helped a lot). I was nervous to live without television, cell phone reception, and the internet. I was nervous about whether or not I would find my destination and, if I did find it, if there would in fact be a bed on which to lay my head. I hadn’t specified when I would be arriving. I had so little information. Would someone be waiting for me? I realized that I wanted all the answers in advance, I wanted everything in black and white: an address to Google map, an itinerary to print, and a confirmation number preferably with numerals AND letters. I was so uncomfortable with the uncertainty; I could feel the dis-ease like a knot in my belly. Why is that?

I drove my car...

I drove my car onto the ferry and climbed to an upper deck to watch as we pulled away from the dock. I could see the shore in the distance, though I soon lost track of what was main land and what was island. The water lapped all around. So this was my first lesson: have faith that the answers will be there when you need them. Just as I pulled into the driveway at the monastery, a monastic intern named Barbara, a woman in her early 60s, was exiting the guest house. “Are you Corinna?” she called. I was so thankful she knew who I was, and amazed that I had arrived just in time. Another minute and she would have been gone. She showed me where to park and explained the location of my bedroom. “I’m running to Vespers,” she said, continuing on her way. “Come if you want. The chapel is up the road.”

I bring my things into a house marked with a little wooden plague on the outside that said “St. Joseph’s Guest House,” into a room at the foot the stairs. I am relieved at how homey it was: two perfectly made twin beds. Handmade quilts are folded at the foot of each bed with a towel and washcloth stacked on those. The beds share one small table on top of which sit two lamps and a clock radio. Against the wall is a simple wardrobe to store my things. One large window looks out on an old maple tree and an animal enclosure beyond that. My room is adjacent to the living room that has a sofa and a few chairs, which is next to the dining room with two rectangular tables pushed together to make a large square. Beyond that is the kitchen. On the fridge is a list: names of guests for that week, the days of their arrivals and departures. I am on the list, as are the names of three other individuals. Two other guest rooms and a simple bathroom complete the first floor. There is also an upper floor with two bedrooms. Across the road, a second guest house sleeps another eight or so, and includes an apartment for long-term visitors. Bells ring.

I know about Vespers...

I know about Vespers, the evening prayers, from reading Norris and am eager to see what it is all about. Just the word “Vespers” conjures an image of medieval priests and incense. It sounds otherworldly and romantic. Even though it is not required that I attend any of the daily prayers, I take off up the road, which sits between thick forest and enclosures for llama, alpaca, and sheep, the fenced by wooden slats that are worn and mossy. Magnificent trees canopy the road.

I feel like Little Red Riding Hood on my way to Grandma’s house. I find the chapel easily, up a small hill lined with natural paving stones. It is next to a long wall, on the other side of which is the dwelling where the nuns sleep and eat. As a semi-cloistered order, guests must have permission to go on the other side of that wall, or down the road past the chapel, or even into the animal enclosures. In this way, despite the somewhat public nature of their living situation, the nuns can rely on having certain areas to themselves. This protection of the contemplative life is represented symbolically in the chapel, where a bamboo lattice separates their choir seats from the pews.

As I enter the chapel, I’m enveloped in a golden light. The large windows at the opposite end overlook the pastures, and the setting sun slants through, bouncing off the surfaces of the all-wood interior: pine and fir on the walls and ceiling and cherry wood pews. Wood, I later learn, harvested from trees on the farm. An enormous tree trunk column holds up the vaulted ceiling. A simple altar table in the middle of the chapel, the top of which is a thick slab of marble, offers the only non-wood surface.

The interior is empty except for Barbara, sitting on the other side of the bamboo lattice. As I sit waiting for something to happen, I feel my body and mind relax. The air outside is chilly, but the light is warm and candles on the altar table flicker. Then a door on the side of the chapel opens, and in walks the procession of nuns wearing elaborately gathered black robes with huge sleeves. Each bows as they enter, and then takes her seat, with the head nun in the middle, sitting under a stylized copper crucifix with a green patina. One of the nuns has a little tune whistle, which she blows. The other nuns join in, each lending her voice to the sing song of their Gregorian chants. At first I try to follow along with that date’s entry in the Vespers book, but it is all in Latin. I close the book and let the beauty of those voices lift me. The stress of getting there, the rush of the freeways—all that melts away and I am in this strange new land, a timeless place where I am just a spirit, an essence as ephemeral as the flickering candle light. If only I could have held on to that feeling.

After Vespers I return...

After Vespers, I return to the guest house to find two young women in the living room drinking wine. Some strange force overtook me—I’ll call it the “party demon”—and it wants me to ask lots of questions to get to know these girls. It requires names, identities, objectives, associations, ambitions, aspirations. Among other things, I find out each is a college student doing an agricultural internship at the monastery. They answer my inquiries graciously, though neither seems particularly enthusiastic about talking to me. Hmmm…what is going on here? This is considered polite conversation at a social gathering on the “outside” (I’m interested in getting to know you! Love me!). We eat dinner together, a meal prepared by the nun in charge of cooking, and delivered to the guest house (the nuns eat the same meal together up at the monastery). The food is sturdy fair, mostly items from the farm supplemented with those from a grocery store on the main land. One night is pork chops and apples, another is chicken enchiladas. After dinner, the girls rapidly excuse themselves (off to the dairy to check on the cheese or to tuck the cows in for the night…I am not sure).

Barbara, whose job it is to orient guests, sits with me after dinner. She explains what I can expect the next day: Mass at 8 am if I wanted to go, on our own for breakfast after that, chores from 10 till noon, lunch at 12:30, free time until 2:30, chores again from 2:30 till 4:30, Vespers at 5, dinner at 6, and then the evening is free. The nuns themselves have a few extra prayer sessions throughout the day and night, though those aren’t open to guests.

“Four hours of work?” I ask. That sounds like easy street. I am used to trying to work all day everyday—I may only be productive for four hours on any given day, but I harangue myself endlessly to be more industrious.
“Yes, and that’s very firm. It doesn’t matter if you’ve finished the chore or not. When the time comes, stop. I learned that the hard way.” She explains that one day she had been working past the allotted time and received a sharp reprimand from one of the nuns. “The remainder of the task will be waiting for you when it’s time to work again.”
“What should I do during the free times?”
“Not your chores. Besides that, anything you want. Contemplate, read, take a walk.”
I scratch my head. Time set aside for contemplation? Now that is an interesting concept.

I wake up early...

I wake up early the next morning to the sounds of voices in the living room. I slip from my PJs to my work clothes in minutes and leave my room. The girls from the night before are sitting at the table, drinking tea. I say good morning, and then I pour myself a cup of coffee from the pot that is already made and sit at the table with them. Is it my imagination, or do they scooch away from me as I sit?

Barbara had mentioned something the night before that I couldn’t stop thinking about. She said that getting to know someone is different in a monastic setting. Many of the nuns entered later in life—some had previous marriages, children, PhDs, careers—yet it might take months, years even, for those subjects to come up. What mattered more was the unspoken: love, grace, forgiveness. I thought about what I think of as “my story,” all the stuff I’ve always believed tells others who I am: the jobs I’ve had, the schools I’ve attended, the places I’ve lived.

I sip my coffee. I want to show these girls that I’m not some city monster come to gobble up their serenity. I sit silently. I bring everything I have other than words to the table: my goodness, my sincerity, my desire to learn. I drink my coffee with those intentions sitting with me like silent partners and I’ll be damned if I didn’t feel their defensiveness begin to soften.

I walk alone to mass, past the same trees and animal enclosures as the evening before. It is a cloudy morning, the air is heavy with moisture, all over I can hear drops fall from the leaves, the sound of nature’s xylophone. The llamas raise their heads to watch me pass. “Good morning!” I call to them (because, really, who can pass a llama without offering a greeting?). Whereas the day before walking this path with so many new discoveries before me, I had felt uncertain and unmoored, now I am excited. It reminds me of being a kid in the forest, when I thought I could live in the trees and stay forever.

Unlike Vespers, the majority of Mass is spoken in English. It is something like a medieval rap song with calls and responses (or prayers and antiphons as the Catholics call them). Yet, the words don’t mean much to me. I listen to the rhythm more than anything else. That day’s reading includes this gem: “Now hope that sees for itself is not hope. For who hopes for what one sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait with endurance.” Say what?

I listen intently for some little bit that I will comprehend, that might help shed light on the mysteries of life. Then one of the nuns reads a section of the Gospel According to Luke: “Jesus said, ‘What is the Kingdom of God like?’ It is like a mustard seed that a man took and planted in the garden…It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of wheat flour until the whole batch of dough was leavened.” Finally, something I can relate to. Everything, all of it, boils down to a mustard seed. Can it be that simple?

After Mass...

After Mass, Barbara tells me that two of the nuns will come around to the front of the chapel to give assignments for the day. The night before, Barbara explained that all of the nuns are addressed as “Mother,” especially when spoken to directly. I’ve only ever addressed my actual mother as “Mother,” so I’m not that comfortable using it to address a complete stranger. As I wait for my first face-to-face interaction with real-life nuns, I practice in my mind: “Hello, Mother,” I say but I’m embarrassed at how corny it sounds.

I am joined at the front of the chapel by the interns and another young woman, a newly arrived visitor from a nearby organic farm. Luckily, when the nuns arrive, I don’t call them anything, I just smile and nod. The other visitor and I are given the task of sifting compost. Great, I think, let the newcomers wallow in a trash heap. Way to treat the visitors like Jesus! But then, I have to admit, I am curious about compost.

Ever since relocating to a place where I can actually see the earth around me—as opposed to concrete—I’ve wanted to start composting. Yet, I’ve been intimidated by it because I find it hard to believe that items I identify as garbage could actually transform into soil in my lifetime. It seems like wishful thinking, like it should take years for a banana peel to become earth. Plus, I’m afraid it will be really stinky.

A few minutes before ten, one of the interns leads us into the enclosure with the compost shed. Our job is to sift the soil. My partner shovels the chunky stuff onto a big window frame of sieve and I shake and bang until it’s just the pieces left. Then I stab at those with a hand hoe to see how far I can break them down and then I flip over the sieve box and let the big pieces fall back into the pile from which they came. I recognize apple cores, avocado pits, meat bones.

I spot little bits of paper and scraps of foil that once clung to items that have disappeared. We do this routine over and over again. I feel my arm muscles ache, my stomach muscles tighten, my brow dampen. Still, we keep going, because we are required to stop at noon, so it’s a relatively short time we have left and we want to get as much done as possible.

As I work the compost sieve, I think about the Benedictine saying that “work is prayer,” which seems like the antithesis of how I’ve always approached work. I want washed dishes, so I rush, rush, rush to get them done. I’m all about the result: the stack of folded laundry, dinner on the table, the mopped kitchen floor, my work day finished. I want to move on to the next important task, only to get that one done and move on again. I think a big part of the problem is that I impose no boundaries on chore time, it’s a matter of endurance: how much can I accomplish in a day?

Life is an endless series of tasks and chores and it seems only natural that one grows resentful when there’s no end in sight. Our expectations are so out of whack; it’s no surprise we’re left feeling unhappy and exhausted.

Over the course...

Over the course of the week, in two hour blocks of time, I engage in the following chores: gather a large bushel mustard greens; feed hay to the llamas, alpacas, sheep, and cattle; help wrangle rams to separate them from the ewes; squeeze a big sack of lemons to freeze the juice for winter; peel, core, and slice apples; rake and bag leaves to sprinkle over the garden; plant lots of bulbs. Some chores I do alone, some with a partner, but during all of them I try to practice the happy attitude with which St. Benedict says one should approach work. I also learn that in addition to chores that contribute to the daily operation of the monastery, each nun is encouraged to develop a “passion” job. One teaches music lessons, another works with children who raise and show llamas, another has a kitchen where she concocts herb mixtures, vinegars, and mustards to sell.

At noon, the intern fetches us for lunch. “How long has this been composting?” I ask, expecting her say she doesn’t know because it was there well before she arrived. “Two months,” she answers. That’s all? I study the results of our labor: a sizeable mound of jet black soil. I wonder how different my life would be if I wasn’t always trying to skip ahead to the non-work parts. What if I approached my chores as an opportunity for growth? Looking at our soil pile, I feel inordinately proud. I marvel at how everything I need to know about patience and the transformative power of daily work can be found at my feet. I lift a small heap to my nose and discover that it smells wonderful.

Back at the guesthouse, everyone is sitting down to eat lunch. Communal meals are an integral part of St. Benedictine’s vision of monastic life. The group changes as guests leave and arrive, but the practice of sitting down together at lunch and dinner stays the same. Individuals drawn to monastic life tend to be more introverted, less social, which is why I think this communal time is so important. It’s easy to love thy brother when you hardly ever see him, quite another when day in and day out he’s slurping soup next to you. It helps to think of those living at and visiting the monastery as family and after the first few days when greeting the nuns as “Mother” felt awkward to me, I grow comfortable with the idea. By the end of my stay, the greeting rolls of my tongue and I realize that it feels good to have so many mothers, even metaphorically.

It's these connections...

It’s these connections I find most surprising. I thought monastic life was about being alone, but it’s not. Catholics around the world are working their way through the same daily prayers as those being read here at Mass and Vespers. It is inspiring to know others are thinking about how the Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed on the same Tuesday in October. All over the world, people are literally on the same page. The cycle of readings has been on-going for hundreds of years, which provides a reassuring sense of continuity through generations, linking the nuns to people who have long since died and those who are yet to be born.

The biblical readings refer to an intimacy with nature that is reinforced by the daily life of living on a farm. The haying and milking and tending, the countless hours of caring for the animals and plants, all the work/prayer dedicated to nurturing—in turn, to be nurtured. Days before I arrived, the turkeys and most of the chickens were slaughtered; the nun who minds the coops was still nursing a broken heart. I’ve never thought of farming as a spiritual act, but now I understand how closely the two are tied, particularly when sustainable practices are in use. The milk they consume, the meat they eat, the vegetables and fruit—it is all produced on this land by their own hands. Implicit in the work is respect for all living creatures, and for the earth. In his encouragement for this sustainable way of life, St. Benedict was far ahead of his time. Or perhaps, the rest of us are finally catching up.

After lunch, I walk down to the coast. Just as knowing you have to stop working heightens the appreciation for the work, knowing you’ll have time alone makes the communal activities more palatable. It’s the face-to-face relationships I find most challenging, and the most humbling. My new more mellow approach with the interns seems to be working; I think they are warming up to me despite my flaws. I sit on a big rock and watch as a seal pokes its little head up through the water and looks towards shore. It reminds me of my dogs and I feel a pang of homesickness. In her writing, Kathleen Norris points out that being married, or having a partner with whom you live, offers the same opportunity for spiritual growth as other forms of communal living—you have to learn to tolerate another human being, to work out differences, to stretch emotionally and be better.

The days at the monastery...

The days at the monastery develop a rhythm: Mass, morning chore, lunch, walk, afternoon chore, Vespers, dinner, and then socializing or time alone. One afternoon after lunch, this rhythm is interrupted by a special request. One of the nuns, Mother Mary Grace, who is recovering from back surgery, needs help. Before she left, a thick piece of plywood had been placed under her mattress with the hope that it would provide additional support and improve the condition of her back. It isn’t working. Now she needs a few people to lift her mattress and remove the wood. I am helping to wash up after lunch when she came into the guest house to ask for volunteers. “I’ll help!” I am like a first grader raising my hand: me, take me! I am thrilled with the prospect of going into the monastery, to see a nun’s quarters, to go behind “the wall.” The two interns complete our little brigade and we rode up the road in Mother Mary Grace’s jeep.

What had I been expecting of the enclosure? You step inside and the angels sing? The nuns’ quarters are just a house, built for a regular family before becoming a home to the nuns. A more recent addition provides a suite of bedrooms, or “cells” as they are called here. The hall leading to Mother Mary Grace’s room is like any other house: shelves filled with books and knickknacks, pictures on the walls, a cat scratching post. The room itself is small, with a sink in the corner. Her bed is surprisingly narrow, thinner than a regular twin mattress by several inches. Besides the cross above the bed, it looks like a regular room with personal items (tooth paste, lotion) and keepsakes (stuffed bunny, photographs). She explains that the small television/VCR combo is temporarily for movies (her favorite being SciFi) while she recovers from her surgery. Like many of her things, she found it in the community free box. The nuns take a vow of poverty when they enter the monastery, renouncing the acquisition of material possessions, so it will no doubt return to the free box once she has recovered sufficiently.

After we remove the slab of wood from under her mattress, she whispers, “I’m going to show you the old chapel.” The nuns conducted their daily prayers there before the new chapel was built and it’s a thing of legend—visitors gossip about it, but few have seen it. We’re surprised and delighted because normally this would be vetted by the head nun (the Abbess), but Mother Mary Grace is a bit of a rebel. She leads us to a small door on the side of the original house. Inside, one can see a large portion of the enormous boulder on which the house is built. It’s a cellar, but it looks like a cave and I can only imagine how cool it must have been to hear the chants reverberating off the rock with only light from flickering candles. This is “the rock” in the monastery’s name, the foundation of the house and, symbolically, of the entire community.

The end of my visit...

The end of my visit overlaps with Halloween, and I had assumed the nuns wouldn’t recognize the holiday. Instead, they ask if I would arrange a collection of plastic jack-o-lanterns on the chapel steps. After Vespers, we wait in front of the chapel. Soon children begin to arrive, driven up the long road to the monastery by their parents. Somehow the basket of candy ends up in my hands to pass out. The candies include foil-wrapped chocolates that look like bloody eye balls and severed fingers. My favorites are the ones shaped like detached ears. I act like I’m pulling off my ear and putting it in the kids’ candy baskets. The nuns laugh at my antics and soon I’m tugging out my eyes and breaking off my fingers. “What are you dressed as?” Some of the kids ask the interns and me. We look at each other: at the mud on our jeans and the hay in our hair. “We’re farmers!” we say in unison and laugh.

I want to make a joke about how the nuns all dressed as the same thing, but I think better of it. As I bite my tongue, I overhear one of the nuns shout joyfully to the children, “We’re dressed as nuns!” I am delighted to have overheard this, to realize that the nuns, despite the serious nature of their contemplative lives, can kick up their heels and laugh at themselves.

The next morning I say my goodbyes. I write a check and tuck it into the donation box. Technically, guests are not charged for their stay, but a donation is always appreciated and I consider it a polite gesture considering they’ve fed and sheltered me for a week. I decide on a modest amount, about what it might have cost to stay six nights at an inexpensive hotel.

Back to the freeways, back to cell phone reception, to internet connections, to television and loud music if I want it. Now I am nervous about returning to all these distractions, afraid I will lose touch with the newfound peaceful rhythm of my days. If I want to continue to approach work as prayer, I know it will require introducing a greater degree of balance into my life: time blocked off for activities besides work, time spent with no distractions but my own thoughts. I need to change my mindset, to see how time spent in solitude and quiet is not only legitimate, but a necessity—its own form of prayer. I understand now that it requires faith to suspend expectations of productivity, to believe there doesn’t always need to be a tangible product for time to have been well spent.

I see, too...

I see, too, that I have underestimated the importance, not so much of friends and family, but of my neighbors and community—the folks I rub shoulders with in daily life. I have always wanted to avoid them, to dodge them in the supermarket, to circumvent the hassle of interacting with those would-be strangers, but now I see how wrong-headed that thinking is, how vital it is that we interact, forge some sort of relationship, and have the chance to screw up and forgive each other our foibles.

Going 65 mph with the radio blaring, I feel unsure if or how what I have experienced can be brought into my real life. Even if I practice every day, how long will it take to integrate these lessons into the fabric of who I am? Then I think about the miracle of the compost and how some profound changes don’t take as long as we think.