The Pink Sisters Part 2

Note: This series of essays first appeared on Thunderstruck in 2003, recounting my experiences of 2001.

To give me some background on the Pink Sisters, Johnny Rabbitt gives me a pile of books. Most are slim volumes, meditations on the Holy Spirit or the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, but one is 400-odd pages with notes in German in the back: "Contemplation and Mission: Sister-Servants of the Holy Spirit of Perpetual Adoration, 1896-1996." It is a history book on the founding of the order in Steyl, Holland, and the establishing of all the convents around the world. I flip through it idly at first, unsure of where to start. That is how I discover the obituaries. Every Sister of the order who has died is given at least a paragraph in this book.

For example: "Sr. M. Bartholamaa, Elisabeth Beckfeld, b. 25.2.1906 in Bottrop (Munster). She entered in Steyl in November 1927. She was one of the pioneers of the convent in Tsingtao. At first she worked in the kitchen and then became a candle-maker. It was hard for her to leave China. In 1949 she went to St. Louis, 1972 to Austin and 1976 to Corpus Christi. In St. Louis she was in charge of the host bakery. Her health began to fail, but she was never idle. Filled with gratitude she celebrated her golden jubilee in 1980. She died unexpectedly 19.5.1981. Her ardent wish to be buried in China was not fulfilled."

The pages and pages of obituaries astound me, although I suppose they shouldn't. To eulogize every member of a religious order is comparable to writing a history of England by saying a few words about every person who lived there. A religious order is like a nation, especially a cloistered order--or not even a nation, more like a world. Nations at least engage in trade or war with each other. A cloistered order is almost entirely self-sufficient. So it seems monumental that each person who'd lived in this cloister-world would end up in a book. On the other hand, it's a young order. When the book was written, only 227 sisters had died. After getting over the shock of being given the chance to meet 227 people, I start reading the obituaries, which are unsuprisingly uniform. The name each sister took when she professed is given first (almost always an "M." followed by another name, for the majority are first named "Mary"), then her birth name, birthdate and birthplace. A few words sometimes follow about her family ("second of five") and then the date and place where she joined the order--also whether she was ever transferred to another house (as there are convents in the States, Holland, the Phillipines, India, Brazil, Argentina, and Togo) The main portion of the obituary is a report on her character, particularly her attitude to work and her prayer life, and the illness she suffered and then succumbed to, and of course the year of her death.

Two things I must say about this: few nuns die young. I keep computing their ages: 72, 83, 92, 101. And so many of them sound like wonderful people. I understand the function of these little paragraphs is not to say rude things about the deceased, but even so a high proportion of these women sound downright saintly: "On her deathbed, when the nurse asked her, 'Would you like anything?', she replied firmly: 'Jesus.'" "She could make all sacrifices for the glory of God." "A zealous, conscientious religious with love for solitude, silence, holy poverty, faithfulness to her obligations, sacrifice, and endowed with a genuine apostolic spirit."

After a few obituaries like this I find myself doing the cynical thing, searching for hints that a Sister was unpleasant. Surely some of them were! But in the vast majority of these records the same praises are sung again and again: faithful in prayer. Cheerful in nature. Humble, unpretentious.

Ironic, isn't it? Out here, it's not easy to get your death noticed. You have to be famous--and often that means ambitious, egotistical; at the very least something extraordinary had to happen to you. Yet here are 227 women who spent their lives praying, baking hosts, writing letters, walking in gardens. And each one of them gets a paragraph in a book.

I give myself permission to imagine going inside the cloister to write about it. I have to do more than imagine going in and coming back out again, though. The observer program is designed to sniff out vocations to this brand of religious life. If I am to participate, I must give serious consideration to the question of whether I might belong there for good.

What would I give up?

They've given everything. They have four walls, a garden, pink and white habits that can last them twenty years.

Think about what tangibles are truly precious to me. A certain piece of glass in cabochon shape which looks black when held in the hand but reveals deep red when held to the light. A blue plastic cocktail sword which once figured prominently in childhood adventures as my Weapon of Power. Two bits of glazed tile excavated from my back yard, detritus from a mansion which once stood on my property. And a stuffed animal I've had since I was five. It's strange to think about, but these are my greatest treasures--each of them irreplaceable and prized. If any of them were gone I would mourn their loss, and I can't say that about anything else I own; not really.

But we're not talking about loss--a fire, say, or a burglary (as though anyone would care to rob me of these bits of glass, plastic, ceramic, or plush). I would be surrendering them to live in their absence. I could give them away--I know someone who knows the value of these things and could keep them safe. This calms my mind. The same solution presents itself for my multiple file cabinets of notebooks, stories, poems. I don't need them anymore--they are already written. But I would not like to think they'd get dumped in the trash. I parcel them into bundles in my mind and assign them to different friends.

CDs and tapes--now here is a larger problem. Do the Pink Sisters ever listen to music? I have lots of nice meditative pieces. Will they let me keep my music? I could donate it to the communal library; I would not have to claim it as personal property. Ah, I'm looking for loopholes. In the tangibles department, this would be my biggest renunciation; I don't know if I'm strong enough to make it. For years piled on years I've compulsively collected songs; I hear a chord sequence unlike any other or a startling melody line and I track it any way I can. I listen to the radio for days until I hear it again and can set my recorder on it; I go to the station (lucky I work in radio) and grab the CD out of the DJ's hands (that stretches the truth, but just a little). One way or another the song becomes mine. I have thousands of them now. I listen to them to hear them for the first time and the last time and every time in between--because every song carries memories of itself, you know. They stay the same while you change, so you can return to them again and again and hear what you heard the first time, as well as what you are hearing now. And as I have spent such a very long time listening to songs, a lot of myself is wrapped up in these songs. Little pieces of me wound onto magnetic tape or written in light on silver discs.

Perhaps I could do without my music. My sound-memory is excellent; songs I know well I can hear near-complete in my head anytime I like. And I must think that anything I renounce is a gain, not a loss. Perhaps every little piece of me I have locked away into those songs will come flooding back into me once I give them up. Like the Sandman in those Neil Gaiman books (and thinking of this I am reminded I will be without my books too--but this ache is dull, not piercing)--he invested a portion of his power in an amulet, a ruby, and when the ruby was destroyed the power came back. Now on the other hand the Lord of the Rings didn't fare so well. It could go either way. What does it say in the Scriptures about what you give up you gain back a hundredfold--with persecutions besides?

So after a few days of thinking about it and talking about it I pick up the phone, and when I hang it back up again I have done the irrevocable. I have called Sister Mary Gemma and asked her if I could join the observer program for two weeks at Mount Grace Convent. Whether or not they invite me to participate, I have at last admitted a desire to examine the religious life. People will look at me differently now. Some of my friends are already upset, or nervous. What if I go away?

I am nervous too. I feel caught between asserting a course for my life and surrendering control. I am approaching this as honestly as I can. Maybe I have a vocation to this place. If so, I will not deny it. The thought sends flutters through my stomach the way nothing ever has. If I do not have a vocation here, am I just getting those sweet sisters' hopes up for nothing?

I had it wrong at first. I thought what scared me was that I'd either discover a frightening vocation or I would discover I was a failure at a frightening vocation. The sisters would not spare my feelings, after all, if they sensed I wasn't cut out for this life. And it's always depressing to hear a rejection. But that isn't it. It's that my feet are on a solid path now, with only two ways ahead. As long as a vocation to the religious life was only a vague idea, never acted upon, I thought myriad paths extended in front of me.

But in fact they weren't there. The path only appears when you put your foot onto it--imagining it or talking about it can't create it--and then it branches in but two directions--"yes" and "no." And I was the only one who could take that step. I called Sister Mary Gemma, and there the path was under my feet. What does the poet say about the man who took one step of his own? "Onlookers froze to the bone."

I'm as scared they'll accept me as I am they'll turn me down.

"It'll be the shortest two weeks of your life," Mom tells me. She was in the convent two years--it had been her dream to be a School Sister of Notre Dame and teach. She's been talking about those days a lot lately in many different contexts. I think this my-going-into-the-convent thing has kickstarted her nostalgia. As it turned out she wasn't destined to be a nun; they kicked her out and she got married and had six kids. But I think a part of her feels like she's going back in now that I'm going in. She told me once she had many, many ambitions as a child--to be a teacher, a musician, a singer, a writer, a nun. And now among her children there is a teacher, a musician, a singer, a writer. When she told me this I had a sudden frightening vision of her as Livia from I, Claudius, subtly shaping the ambitions of everyone around her, but I know that's taking things a bit far.

I need Mom's help filling out parts of the application to the observer program. It is a comprehensive form. The Holy Spirit Adoration Sisters ask for copies of my birth certificate, baptism certificate, and confirmation certificate. They want a recent picture of me ("similar to a passport photo"), a transcript of grades from the last school I attended, and a "sealed character recommendation from your pastor or from a priest well acquainted with you." I pester Mom with the questions on the Family Relations page: "How old was your mother when she died?"

"93."

"And what did she die from?"

"Put 'Infirmities of Age.'"

I flip through the application. "It says I should write up an autobiography and I should include the following: 'Whether you have savings of your own or can hope to receive financial help from your family toward a dowry. Any difficulty in this regard will not be a hindrance, provided that a candidate can meet all the other requirements.' A 'dowry'?"

"Many orders ask for a dowry. That's one of the ways they support themselves, through donations from the women who enter. The School Sisters of Notre Dame were one of the few who didn't ask for a dowry, back when I was a candidate."

There is a page called "A Brief Medical History." I am to list any problems I have ever had with my heart, lungs, thyroid, skin, eyes, ears, nose, throat or nerves. Have I had diabetes, epilepsy, depression, chemical dependency? Did I ever have surgery? An abortion?

There are essay questions. "Have you ever been married? Every been engaged or lived as married? What are your views on the married state? If you did not feel attracted to the religious life, would you like to marry? If your answer is no, explain the reasons." Twenty-one essay questions in all, and because I am perfectly willing to write about myself at great length this is my favorite part of the application. I begin to wish job applications asked questions like these, instead of about irrelevancies like the dates I started or ended previous jobs and what sort of salary I received. I think it be far more useful, and interesting for them to ask these sorts of questions: "What trait do you admire most in people?" "What trait do you admire least?" "What do you feel to be the source of your greatest unhappiness?"

I'd like it if someone came up to me every five years or so with this list, and I had to think about it often, and compare my answers then to my answers now: "What are your hobbies and favorite recreation?" "Do you have many friends?" "In what ways are you like your father?" "In what ways are you like your mother?"

I get the news in a letter from Sister Mary Gemma a few days after I have mailed in my forms. I've been accepted. I'll go into the observer program in a month's time. I get a list of items to bring ("A comfortable pair of shoes [need not be black], robe, nightgown or pajamas, night slippers..."). The list is very short. I am chagrined to discover I'll be expected to wear pantyhose, or "stockings" as they are called on the list. I hate wearing pantyhose. What's the point of going into a convent if you still have to wear pantyhose? It reminds me of my classmates at my all-girls high school who'd spend an hour applying makeup every morning. Who were they trying to impress?

The list reminds me of just how much I'll be doing without--not the life-altering renunciations, the petty ones. The telephone: no spur-of-the-moment chats with my friends Reiko and Jamie. The Internet: I'd better expect bucketloads of spam in my email inbox on my return. All-hours access to the refrigerator. Mountain Dew. Watching "The Simpsons." Renting Johnny Depp movies. Lingering over the daily paper.

It's noise, most of it, honestly. An inability to sit still. There must always be something to distract me from--what? I've never stayed in one place long enough to find out. And the prospect of not having all these distractions frightens me perhaps most of all. That, and the way I imagine my identity will be stripped away. I've been doing a weekly radio show for seven years. This last week I was informed my show had been cancelled. I had never realized, until the moment I didn't have it anymore, how much of my identity I had bound up in it, in the ability to say "I'm the host of The Eclectic Mix." And while I'm in the convent, so many other self-markers, while they won't leave me, will become irrelevant: Daughter. Sister. Aunt. College graduate. Writer.

No one's actually asked me, "So what made you decide to go into the convent?" which I find a little strange. Maybe everyone's just scared of what I might say.

Here's the answer to the unasked question: Two years ago I was at a dinner party in Ireland with a small group of people from three different countries. By what I can only call a miracle, the evening was joyous, exuberant, even silly; everyone was gracious, companiable, generous, as friends of long acquaintance are, though we'd just met a week before. This is what heaven's like, I thought. I know people who think heaven will be dull, but I don't understand this point of view at all. Heaven was eating homemade Mexican food and squealing at European MTV and having intense heart-to-heart discussions with near strangers. It was not dull.

I've thought a lot about what made that experience as rapturous as it was. When something like it comes along, as I told a friend recently, it's like there's this seam that starts to split, a rent in what you were thinking was the real world, and light from the real Real World comes flooding in. It happened to me again with a different group of friends in a long car ride. There had been tension and hurt feelings, but as we talked through them a giant peace descended; I felt the tearing and the flood of too-bright light, and I laughed and cried at the extravagance of it all. It's tough to put into words, obviously. "Joyful" fits both experiences well.

And "joyful" is a word Johnny Rabbitt uses a lot in regard to the Pink Sisters. I've met a few of them now. He's right. They don't just smile--they beam.

Heaven is what I'm after. I've come to know you can get a little taste of it; you can learn to look. You have to be with those who trust--not neccessarily in heaven, but in each other. The dinner party happened because a girl in Dublin trusted enough to open her home to new friends from three countries. The car ride revelation happened because when my friend was hurt, she trusted me enough to unburden her soul. I think about the convent and I see a tribe of women trusting in each other and in God. That's why I want to be in there.