The Pink Sisters Part 4

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

Hours

On my first day, my first thought about chanting the psalms (after I get a little better at finding my way through the breviary) is all of the strange beauty of the melodies. We sing a cappella, in unison, in English. But the tunes, called "modes," go up and down the scale in short steps which mean (in the absence of perfect pitch) that we determine each note not so much by the overall line but by its relation to the last--is it up one step or down?

The chants are all pitched too high for me to sing comfortably. I notice, though, that as we go through a psalm there is an inexorable slide downward--there will be a tricky interval and we'll all start going flat, or those of us who can't sing very high don't hit the notes squarely.

In a regular four-week period the Pink Sisters will sing every psalm in the Bible. Two or three are sung at every Office; there are seven Offices through the day; there are one hundred fifty psalms. They are arranged thematically so, for instance, we will chant praise psalms at lauds and psalms imploring refuge at compline. It appears that Tuesday is Dark Night of the Soul Day. We chant uplifting little numbers like Psalm 88 ("You have plunged me into the bottom of the pit, into the dark abyss") and 102 ("I eat ashes like bread, and mingle my drink with tears").

But the same melodies are used on many different psalms with little regard to content. The tones are dispassionate even as the words are harsh, which only adds to their power. When it is a mournful psalm we sing, we never change the dynamic, nor grow louder or softer, nor even exhibit differences in timbre (it's remarkable, but the nuns' accents disappear as they sing, so closely do the voices match each other). It is as if we are survivors of a tragedy, speaking afterward with no affect because the shock has robbed us of emotion. When it is an angry psalm, it is as if we are holding our anger in, which just means it is so huge if we release it things will get out of control.

Before one of the Hours I start to think a strange thought. Maybe it isn't that we pray the Office at certain hours of the day; maybe the hours of the day come around because we pray them into existence. Maybe that's why we pray at quarter till, or ten minutes till, the hour. And then after I formulate this theory we sing a psalm containing the verse "I will awake the dawn." Not so farfetched, is it? We should all be thankful there are monks and nuns spread out across the globe, pushing the day on.

Silence 

The first week I am assigned to work with Kitchen Nun. I'll work with Garden Nun on Saturday and Correspondence Nun the second week. I chat with Garden Nun briefly my second day. "Do you like weeding?" she asks me. Now how does one answer that question, particularly when a nun is asking it? Anyway, I help Kitchen Nun de-fat some chicken thighs, which, apart from the "I'm wielding a large knife and am in danger of knocking all my fingers off" element, is pleasant work. She gives me instructions (all of which begin with "kindly," as in "Kindly put the fat scraps in this plastic bag"), but then we work in silence. I find the silence companionable. I have a friend who is very quiet and is much opposed to small talk. I didn't understand this aversion before, because small talk is a useful way of getting to know someone. I don't mind its absence here. Working on the chicken with a sister whose rule is silence, the sense I get is that we have forgone small talk because we have already accepted each other and we already respect each other. We're not talking because there is no need; it is a gift we give so we can each concentrate on our tasks. She does ask me about my previous experience in a kitchen, and I ask how long she's been cooking here (eight years). But just as the silence feels unforced, so does the speaking.

The silence, then, is not oppressive, and no one is seriously upset when it is broken, as it is one time when I inadvertently slam a door. Everyone just giggles.

From the end of compline to lights out at 9:30 pm is a time known as the Great Silence, when even whispered conversations in doorways are discouraged. During this time I am back in the kitchen getting things ready for breakfast the next morning. I fill the bowls of applesauce and peach slices, make the peanut butter presentable, add more butter to the dish, and fill the milk jugs that will be placed on each table. One night I am working on my tasks in the company of several nuns and everyone is bustling more speedily than usual. I take a white carton out of the refrigerator and pour its contents into one of the half-empty milk jugs. But the white carton isn't filled with milk. I've just blended the milk with orange juice. I let out a reflexive "Ew! Gross!" and the nuns dissolve in laughter, silent convulsions doubling them over.

Yes, they're laughing at me, but there's no malice in it and I take no offense. Our silent situation just lends itself to comedy. It's like nothing so much as the few minutes before a surprise party. The guest of honor is due to arrive any moment, so silence must be maintained--but each progressive accidental noise just gets funnier and funnier.

Food 

"We do not starve ourselves," Formator Nun tells me. "We have a job to do." The founders of the order recognized that nutritious meals were essential if they expected their sisters to maintain 24-hour adoration. "We have to keep our strength up."

Consequently I eat well. The breakfast tray includes the ingredients of an Elvis sandwich--bread, honey, peanut butter, and bananas. Also bagels, butter, apples, grapefruit, two kinds of cereal, two kinds of cream cheese, oatmeal, cottage cheese, peach slices and applesauce. This is standard; on solemnities or other special occasions like Sundays there may be donuts and cake. Dinner at noon is the big meal. There has been (not all at the same time) barbecued pork steaks, chicken rice casserole, egg rolls, and the best corned beef I've ever eaten. Side dishes have included rice (have to have rice at every dinner for the Filipino sisters), various potato dishes ("Germans love potatoes," one of the German sisters sidles up to me to say), asparagus, cabbage, fried fish, dried anchovies, carrots, green beans, and salad. Supper is lighter fare, with ham slices, cheese and tomatoes arranged for sandwiches.

Most of the food is bought but a lot of it comes from donations. One fellow regularly sends a quantity of food to the convent. I am in the kitchen the day one such shipment arrives--hot dogs, steaks with portobello mushrooms, a party platter of shrimp cocktail, salmon steaks.

I know that Kitchen Nun works very hard to plan meals, so I ask her, "Do the people who make food donations ask what the nuns need, or do they just send something randomly?"

"They just send something."

"So you really have to think on your feet."

Kitchen Nun's habitual expression is calm and happy, but when I mention this a look of anguish crosses her face. I've hit the nail on the head.

But they continually praise the goodness of God in giving them good things to eat. I can tell Kitchen Nun thinks His is overwhelming generosity at times, as when she buys sausages and then a big box of sausages arrives as a donation. I hear several nuns quote the verse in the gospel of Luke where Jesus talks about what will be given to those who are generous--a measure pressed down and flowing over--and Kitchen Nun is fond of saying "God will not be outdone in generosity."

In my book on the history of the Pink Sisters it is mentioned the nuns make up little poems or songs in honor of special occasions. There should be a song the next time God is generous to Kitchen Nun and two big vats of frozen treats arrive. As I scoop the contents into smaller containers I think I should be singing:

"I thank Jesus, I say 'Yay!' 
Jesus gives raspberry sorbet!"

Some of the most interesting food choices appear at the 3:15 coffee break, because the relatives and friends of the Filipino sisters are often sending them treats to reming them of home. I had a Filipino classmate in grade school so I recognize Pocky when it shows up one day--chocolate- or strawberry-coated pretzels. I share my Pocky knowledge with the elderly German nuns ("It's a chocolate covered stick. See the package? It's 'The Super Snack.'") and watch later as one shakes the strawberry Pocky package under various nuns' noses until they consent to try it. In return, the Filipino sisters convince me to eat some cashew candy with edible paper. It's the eating-paper bit I'm unsure of. "It melts in your mouth," one tells me. "It's a little like the host."

Apparently, willingness to eat the edible paper on cashew candy is part of my spiritual journey. "You have to live a life of faith!" she says. Put that way, I see I have no choice. It's delicious.

There are certain foods that exist only in a convent, because a cardinal rule of convent cooking is that you make efficient use of leftovers. For instance, faced with leftover chocolate pudding and angel-food cake, Kitchen Nun combines the two into a nice if disconcertingly lumpy dessert. At one dinner, strips of spicy chicken are arranged on pita bread with a bowl of salsa on the side. Formator Nun examines my plate when I come back to the table. "What's that?"

"A 'Fajita Pita,'" I tell her. She raises an eyebrow. I shrug. "Only in the convent, Sister."

Every once in a while at dinner Formator Nun comes back to the table with some more fruit or something, and she says, "Sister sold this to me."

At first this doesn't sound odd, but finally I ask, "If you just bought that, how did you pay for it?"

"I promised prayers."

"Oh."

She explains the nuns in the kitchen don't want an excess of leftovers so they "shop" the remains of a meal to anyone willing to take another serving. It is an act of charity, then, to eat more. If one makes the sacrifice to eat or drink a little more, graces are won and souls are saved.

The nuns discover I am fond of chocolate milk when some appears on the dinner cart as a feast day treat. So after several days, when there is just one more serving left, Kitchen Nun appears at our table with carton in hand. I think she says, "Do you want to save sauce?" She has a heavy accent and with her other hand she's adjusting the strap on her apron, which helps the confusion. I look blankly at the apron. Did she spill something and does she want me to clean it up? She's smiling at me and holding out the chocolate milk, so I just nod and smile and offer my glass. As she walks away she says "I wonder how many souls you just saved?"

Oh. I just "bought" chocolate milk. Who would have suspected souls could be saved by drinking chocolate milk? I'm starting to really like this place.

Adoration 

So how does perpetual adoration work? I ask Formator Nun after she assigns me my hour of adoration at 1:30 in the morning. What is one supposed to pray for, and more importantly, how is one supposed to pray?

"The whole idea of maintaining this perpetual adoration is for the people who can't," she tells me. "Our reason for doing it is for those on the outside who don't."

By kneeling for an hour in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament, the nuns believe they are obtaining graces, that blessings come down on the earth through their prayer. I am asked to intend my prayers--to ask God to "redirect" the graces I'm getting, as it were-in several different directions. "Pray first for the Divine Word Missionaries, the SVDs," Formator Nun says. "We are the contemplative branch of their missionary order, so our first task is to pray for them. Pray for those who are at the hour of their death right then, 1:30 to 2:30 in the morning,; for the people who are facing temptation to sin right then, also people who are sinning right then. And of course pray for all of the people who are asking for prayers." Prayer requests that come in during the day are posted on a sheet that I see right as I go in to the chapel--and they are heartbreaking. "My husband has leukemia." "My son has bone cancer." "Pray for me to get back together with my girlfriend." "Pray for me; I'm contemplating suicide."

And before you object that surely there aren't enough nuns to go around, that not everybody could possibly get prayed for--Who knows if God is taking these prayers on a one-to-one basis? Is God there with an accounting book, saying "Okay, this sister prayed for one hour, that checks off, uh, let's see, Jeff Smith in Palo Alto, California"? I don't think so.

I've also heard the objection, "Why do we need other people to do the job for us? Are the Pink Sisters like spiritual plumbers, getting the praying job done for you?"

In the convent, the difference between the responsibilities of an individual and the responsibilities of a community is made clear to me. Like the nun who holds the walker and the nun who puts her hand on the elderly sister's back-the elderly sister has to do the walking herself, but others are around to assist. That's how I came to picture the hour of adoration--stepping into the breach for some other person or a whole group of people, asking God to gift them with the grace one earns by spending time in prayer. It helps. Whether it's enough, who knows? But it's better than nothing. My favorite quote on the subject is something I saw online at a site called beliefnet.com that has information on spiritual resources. Beliefnet had an interview with one of the nuns on Mt. Carmel. There is a contemplative order on Mt. Carmel whose mission is to pray that Jews stay good Jews; they are a Catholic order whose whole reason for existence is to pray for Jews to remain faithful to the covenant, which can only be a good thing. But people come up to this sister and say, "How do you feel when you pray and there is no peace?" She says "Imagine what it would be like if no one were praying."

You could say that perhaps we're all not totally down the tube just because the Pink Sisters are doing it what they do. They're the ones that are holding it up. It is a responsibility Formator Nun takes seriously. "If I read about a priest who has turned away from his calling, I should say 'mea culpa.' Forgive me. Because perhaps the reason he has left the priesthood is that I did not pray hard enough for him. We are all responsible for each other."

Butterflies 

One morning at meditation time I walk in the garden and happen upon two newly born monarch butterflies resting on bouquets in the carport. The professed sister who sits at our table at dinner had explained how it takes a couple of days for a butterfly's wings to dry after it's out of its cocoon. She gave them a spot in this sheltered carport because it looks like it might rain, and it won't help them to get more wet. They sit perfectly still on their flowers, wings together. I nudge one with my finger until it crawls onto my hand. Then it keeps opening its wings and closing them again, slowly, as though surprised to find it is able to do so.

Later I'm in the portress' office typing up library cards. It is frustrating work for a child of the computer age because I keep forgetting that on a typewriter, if you press the "caps lock" and try to hit a number, you won't get 2, 3, or 4, you'll get @, #, $. My library cards look like they're filled with comic strip cussing.

A nun appears in the doorway, her face bright as a child's on Christmas morning. "Do you want to see the butterflies?"

Correspondence Nun had placed the terrarium with three still-unhatched cocoons in the hallway so the sisters could watch their progress. The little hanging teardrop shapes, no larger than my thumb, were sea-green earlier in the week but now they are black. (Actually, the cocoons themselves have no color. The green was liquid, the black is the butterfly's body and wings.) Several nuns are grouped around the terrarium now, all watching as a cocoon is ripped open and tentative antennae poke through.

"It's coming out head first, just like us!" one nun exclaims. Then she points to the wings, which seem a lot smaller than monarch's wings should be, and the body, which seems a lot bigger. "It has to pump all that liquid which is making its body so big into its wings." The butterfly is fully grown; the wings just look small because they're folded and slack, like the silk on a closed and compact umbrella.

The nun fixes her attention on the little creature. She's pushing her breath out in bursts. It takes me a moment, but then I realize what she's doing is acting as the monarch's Lamaze coach, encouraging it with her breathing. "Push! Push!" she commands.

Later two new butterflies are sitting on a bouquet in the hall. I see a sister convince one to step on her hand, and its wings strain open and shut as it tries to maintain its balance. "I better take it outside," she says. "It's ready to fly." So I coax the other one onto my hand just as one of the German sisters walks toward us. Recently she'd said at dinner she didn't dare hold a butterfly--she seemed to think it was slimy or would bite or something--but now she's game. I let mine walk onto her finger. "It is a miracle" is written on her face. We guide her hands as she gently returns it to the flower, and both butterflies and bouquet are taken outside.

I tell Aspirant Nun about the bursting cocoon at dinner. (She had dearly wanted to see a hatching, but the butterfly came out during her hour of adoration.) Formator Nun tells us the story of a scientist who tried to help a struggling butterfly out of its cocoon by tearing a hole in it (the cocoon, not the butterfly). "But that was no good. The energy the butterfly develops to break the cocoon is what makes its wings strong enough to fly.

"So that's what formation's for. The struggling you do now will make you strong."

"So--after 2, 3 years of formation--nothing but flying from then on?"

"No...we're all in cocoons. We fly in eternity, hopefully."

Now, maybe you think Formator Nun links everything to religion because that's her job, talking to "the young ones." But they all talk like this. One day we hear the gospel about entering the kingdom of heaven through "the narrow gate." When one sister coaxes her neighbor at dinner that day to take a big piece of strawberry cake, she complains, "But Sister, if I eat too much more, how will I fit through the narrow gate?" And on the Feast of St. John the Baptist, at breakfast, we have lemon cake. One sister takes the cake server, but instead of slicing and serving herself a piece she suddenly brandishes it like a weapon, assuming the stance of a wild-eyed prophet and crying "Repent! Repent!"

I've been here now about a week. Sister Mary Gemma stops me in the hall as I come out of chapel. Sounding concerned, she asks, "Are you finding things to write about?"

I nod and put on a serious face to match hers. "We had butterflies this week, Sister."

"Oh, that's right," she says with a soft laugh. "Butterflies."

Solemnity 

At the end of my first week we begin the Sacred Heart Novena. It begins with a vigil, an evening Mass on Thursday, the day before the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart. Afterward as I work at my night position, Kitchen Nun shows me somewhat more decorative bowls I am to use for the peaches and applesauce. "And don't get out the creamy peanut butter," she says with a serious expression. "We use the crunchy peanut butter tomorrow. It's a solemnity."

At breakfast the next morning the good china is on the tables. A sign saying "Happy Feast Day" is in the dining room, and a little electric keyboard is wheeled in. After we finish prayers we all sing "Happy Feast Day To You" to the tune of "Happy Birthday" (and including an extra verse--"May the Lord ever bless you, may the Lord ever keep you...") to four sisters. Someone has also snuck in a triangle and is playing it with great enthusiasm. Afterward we all cheer and everyone shakes hands with the four, offering congratulations. We get to talk during all meals today--it's a solemnity.

Formator Nun explains Happy Feast Day to me. "When we profess, we pick a feast to celebrate every year as our Feast Day. It's not the anniversary of our profession, it's just whatever day has special significance to you. Sacred Heart is very popular."

Aspirant Nun explains further. "You can either celebrate your Feast Day or your birthday."

"Not both?" I ask, but she laughs at my greed.

Of course I am asked what my Feast Day will be when I become a Pink Sister. No pressure here.

Formator Nun's Feast Day is Visitation. She plays the organ sometimes. Once she played an uptempo postlude at Mass on that day, and she says the other nuns told her it sounded "like the theme music for the Blessed Mother's joyride."

Later in the morning I help Kitchen Nun cube apples for a fruit salad which also includes oranges, grapes, cherries and whipped cream. As I work, something is triggered in her memory. "Ah!" she says, hurrying to the pantry and returning with a container of chopped almonds. "I almost forgot nuts. We have to put nuts in the fruit salad. It's a solemnity."

Along with the good china and nuts in the fruit salad, a solemnity apparently also means scrambled eggs and blueberry muffins at breakfast, ice cream and raspberry sorbet for dessert at dinner, Trappistine caramels and assorted chocolates and cashew candies in edible paper at coffee--but my greatest surprise comes at supper.

"Soda!" I exclaim as I walk through the door. I can't keep my delight to myself--after all, we talk at meals for a solemnity, right?--but we haven't prayed yet, so I've broken the silence. The cans of A&W Root Beer look so alien on the supper cart.

"We get soda because it's a special occasion," Aspirant Nun tells me after prayer.

"It's a solemnity," I answer.

I would have thought the simple life would make one feel deprived, but I have to think again. What simple living has actually done to me is make A&W Root Beer seem like an abundant blessing, the extravagant privilege of soda something to be spoken of in reverent tones. Rarely have I felt so rich--Happy Feast Day, indeed.

Mass 

While at Mount Grace I will attend Mass 23 times in fourteen days. This is because of the Sacred Heart Novena which features an additional Mass for nine consecutive evenings. The solemnity itself is the Iron Nun Eucharist Marathon with a Mass at 7 am, noon, and 7:30 pm. The same reading and gospel is used all three times. (Thankfully, there are different celebrants, and thus different homilies.) What's worse, though, is that the reading is from Ezekiel, who has the distinction of being perhaps the most repetitious prophet ever:

"For thus says the Lord God: I myself will look after and tend my sheep. As a shepherd tends his flock when he finds himself among his scattered sheep, so I will tend my sheep. In good pastures will I pasture them, and on the mountain heights of Israel shall be their grazing ground. There they shall lie down on good grazing ground, and in rich pastures shall they be pastured on the mountains of Israel."

Three times of hearing that would make anyone punchy.

Every night we have a different priest celebrating the novena Mass, each from different parishes around St. Louis. It gives us a glimpse into different worship styles. For instance, one night Fr. Stephan comes from St. Nicholas, which is on Washington Avenue downtown.He is a member of the SVDs, the order of priests founded by the founder of the Pink Sisters, Blessed Arnold Janssen. Fr. Stephan uses so much incense at Mass that afterwards I notice my habit has started smelling holy. He is an imposing figure with intricate geometric patterns in gold and white covering the front of his chasuble, his outer vestments. He looks like an African chieftain. He carries himself with that dignity. There is a lightness to him too. At the start of his homily he leads the congregation in a rousing rendition of "What the World Needs Now Is Love" until we collectively lose our nerve to continue, or we forget the words. And in the middle of the homily he stops and smiles. "I know you're not used to this, but could I ask you all to do something for me? Could I get an 'Amen'?" We oblige him. "Thank you," he says, sounding relieved. "I was once told the sermon's no good if you don't get at least one 'Amen.'" He introduces another novelty to Mount Grace at the "Our Father" when he asks everyone to join hands--"The sisters too." The little boxes which are our choir stalls do create a sense of separation. It takes his prodding for us to overcome it. But we hold hands, afterwards bowing to each other at the Sign of Peace, as we always do.

The Consecration at this Mass is what will stick in my memory most. When he sings "This is My Body which will be given up for you," he raises the host high above his head, as far as his arms will stretch. From where I stand his arm obscures his face. He is, in that moment, just two muscular arms in African-chieftain sleeves and large hands holding aloft this white disk like the sun. It is the ultimate picture of surrender, tenderness, reverence.

And, can I just say--thank you Marty Haugen. He's the fellow who wrote the "Mass of Creation" musical settings for parts of the liturgy. It's a popular choice in many parishes, so I'm familiar with his interpretations of the "Gloria," "Sanctus (Holy, Holy, Holy)," etc. But at one Mass I hear the way the whole Eucharistic Prayer, the extended monologue by the priest that surrounds the Consecration, sounds when set to Marty Haugen's melodies. Oh my word. By the time we get to the Great Amen I'm wishing there were lions around to be thrown to so I can be martyred for the Faith. It's that good.

The final Mass of the novena is celebrated by Bishop Sheridan, another imposing figure, especially when he wears his mitre. At the end of the Mass the sisters sing the Hallelujah Chorus. (When we practiced it earlier in the week sitting in the Marian Hall one sister coaxed us into following tradition-"Oh, stand up! Stand up!") I don't know if life could possibly get better than singing the Hallelujah Chorus in the chapel with the Pink Sisters, in the company of a bishop, wearing a white dress still smelling faintly of incense. I know that if I think about it too much afterward I will start to cry because it's over.

Chair Dancing 

After the Sacred Heart Novena, the sisters' schedule is back to normal, so he have an hour of recreation every evening. Mostly I spend this in the company of my partners at the lunch table. We sit in the room called the novitiate, where the not-quite-nuns hang out, and we play board games. These tend to get loud, as any opportunity for boisterousness after long stretches of silence will. (I hear a story that the sisters were playing some game out in the garden--foosball I think--and were shouting and carrying on so much that the neighbors became concerned. For the sake of neighborhood harmony, the game was brought inside.) Today, recreation is Chair Dancing Time, as it is every Tuesday and Thursday. I have a choice--I can go to Chair Dancing or watch a documentary on the end of the Inquisition. Actually what Sister says is, "Do you want to go the Inquisition?" which, when put that way, has no appeal. Besides, she's been talking up Chair Dancing so much, I want to find out what the fuss is.

So five of us are in Marian Hall, the basement meeting room, doing aerobics while sitting in plastic chairs. These aerobics are done to the exhortations of a perky videotaped instructor. I've been given paper plates--Perky Instructor has us wave these around, pretending they're cymbals, top hats, paddles, etc. as we kick our legs and flail our arms.

At some point I realize, I'm sitting in a plastic chair hoisting paper plates over my head pretending they're a top hat and doing can-can kicks. Everyone around me is a nun dressed in pink and they're hoisting make-believe top hats over their heads and doing can-can kicks too. And I'm having a wonderful time!

Maybe you'd disagree, but I think these women are about the coolest I've ever met, because they can dance the can-can in their plastic chairs wearing pink habits and be utterly unselfconscious about it. (You might ask, "Why would they be self-conscious? Nobody can see them." That doesn't matter. I know people who can be self-conscious looking in a mirror.) Some of the exercise class on the videotape are going at it with less enthusiasm than these nuns, and a.) presumably they're being paid to act perky and b.) they don't have to wear habits, which aren't ideal aerobics gear.

So mine is a fabulous evening. Chair dancing is serious exercise, too--I'm well worn out before compline. I'm imagining the Pink Sisters recruitment poster: "They work hard. They pray hard. They play hard."

Grace 

One day when I go down to work, Kitchen Nun is marinating chicken in wine. She sees me watching and laughs. "We get so many gifts from people, we get so much wine, I decided to use it in the kitchen. The sisters don't drink wine! Maybe people outside think we do, and that's why they give it to us. So the cooler was full of wine. Sister Mary Gemma gave away most of it, but I kept a little to use in the kitchen."

"What would be a more useful gift for people to give you?"

She answers without hesitating. "Money. So we can send it to the priests at the missions. We can never figure out how they survive. They're supposed to get a stipend to live on, but are their people are supporting them? Maybe where they are is so poor, they are giving everything they get to the people. Our apostolate is to support the priest with our prayers, but money helps too. So we are glad when we have something to give them. 'Cause without priests, there would be no Eucharist--they're the important ones!

"We never go hungry here. God always provides. If we could give the food we get to the priests, we would, but we can't. And we get so much here. We give it away very often, but God always gives more. That's what happens when you give things away. Sometimes we get more of whatever it was we just gave to someone else. I say, 'Lord, I just gave this away--and here you are returning it!' I always know there will be more."

She is done with her marinating and she starts putting things away in the big stainless steel refrigerators. "It's grace--it's all grace. Our life is full of grace. It is a great gift to be here. It has to be grace or we would not survive. Who knows what could have happened to me if I had not found my calling here. I could have done evil things in the world--I am lucky God picked me up and put me in the convent! He saved the world from me!" She laughs.

"And it's all prayer. Prayer is number one to me. Even when I feel like God is absent, then I say, 'Lord, it's all right. I can accept feeling you're absent if that's Your will for me right now. I accept this dryness because You give me everything. After all, if You were really not here, I would not have any strength--my arms would not move--and I would not have even my breath--there would be no air for me to breathe--I would not even exist if it weren't for You. My prayer, my being here, is what I give back to You."

I think of the yummy chicken-broccoli shepherd's pie we had for supper. "Also what you do here? Is that your prayer too?" I ask, waving my hand to indicate the whole kitchen.

She slaps the immaculate stainless steel counter. "This is my altar of sacrifice. That's why I always want to keep it so clean. There are times, you know, that because of my work, I can't be at prayer with the other sisters--when I have to pick up a delivery, for example. For times like that we have the 'Communion of Saints'--the other sisters will pray in my stead, and I will pray with them in spirit if I can't be there in person. At those times I just think, 'The present moment is my offering. God's will for me right now is to do this task. That will be what I offer Him.'"

"How did you come to join the Pink Sisters?"

"I had gotten a Master's Degree in Business Administration, and was working on my thesis--I had done all my research, everything was about finished--when it occurred to me: "When I die, God isn't going to ask, 'So what level of higher education did you reach?' So I dropped all the work on the thesis just like that." She snaps her fingers. "And I stopped going to parties with my friends--I had a very active social life, we would go to party after party--but I lost interest in that. It had no appeal to me anymore. What I wanted to do more than anything was pray."

She has classic Filipino features--a broad, flat nose, a wide, round face, skin the color of Trappistine caramels. Her whole face is lit up now. "Our life is so wonderful! It is a gift! I have had such experiences, I wish I could tell the whole world! That is the one difficulty, not being able to speak of these things to the whole world."

Leaving 

I find a window on the third floor that looks out at the highway. Most of the windows here show nothing but the garden, or else trees. I see cars for the first time in days. I am not seized by a violent longing to be in one.

I don't find it easy to remember I am still in St. Louis. I am startled by the sight of the Mississippi River beyond the highway. This convent is not part of any St. Louis I know. This impression is helped along by the questions the sisters ask me at dinner: "Is Gravois a major street? What sort of store is Dierbergs?"

It is also a place out of time. What is still valued here is no longer valued out there. This is brought home to me when I am walking in the garden, where there is a little pond with goldfish, and I come across a bucket. The bucket has a sign on it hand-lettered in calligraphy style, what I call "monk script" because it is associated with illuminated manuscripts. The sign says "Fish Food."

What is so old-fashioned is this idea of taking care with everything. The sign doesn't matter; it's just a sign that can get thrown away--but someone put her best script on it. The same principle is used on the habits. The habits are of such good quality fabric and good quality sewing that they last for twenty years. What other clothing does that? And the furniture and the furnishings of the place are wooden and well-made, sturdy, and the pots and pans are solid iron pots and pans that can last a century. I am used to the culture of built-in obsolescence; that's what makes Mount Grace feel out of time.

It occurs to me suddenly that I'm going to miss the sisters when I go. A lot. I made the mistake of getting to know them and liking them. This is something I haven't always done, even with the people I would like to like, possibly because there are people I've liked who've died. I should have known better than to get to know the sisters, knowing full well I would have to say goodbye to them so soon. Now it's going to hurt.

"Five years," an auxiliary Kitchen Nun says off-handedly on one of my last days. "You'll be back."

"I'll be thirty then."

"Ideal age."

"When did you enter the convent, Sister?"

"After I worked two years. I did accounting. Two years was enough." She grabs my arm and adds in a conspiratorial whisper, "I also did a lot of night clubbing."

"You should have some idea of what you're giving up," I say.

I tell her I have to work in radio, and she gives me a bemused look. "Uh-huh. God's ways are not our ways. Three to five years."

Our gospel that morning was the one where various people say they'll follow Jesus but make excuses for why they won't come right away. Auxiliary Nun throws their words at me in a singsong voice. "'Let me bury my father!' 'Let me say goodbye to my parents!' I was thinking about you at Mass today."

When I say my goodbye to Kitchen Nun--today is my last day of working in the kitchen--Auxiliary Kitchen Nun winks at me. "Three to five years."

At least she's not as bad as the German nun who mimes tears running down her face at supper the night before I leave, calling across the tables to me "You'll leave a hole in my heart."

"Not as big as the hole all of you will leave in mine," I answer.

And in the breakfast line my last day she just stares at me reproachfully, finally saying "How could you?"

No pressure.