On the Move, Part Two

Most of my moving experiences in California were predictable. With no money after leaving the convent and finishing my Master’s at the University of St. Louis, I stayed with my youngest sister and her family in the East San Fernando Valley to get my bearings and my first teaching pay checks. I then moved my meager belongings to inexpensive apartments near her, also in the East Valley. After meeting my husband in 1968 and our marriage early the next year, we lived in apartments in Los Feliz and Hollywood until we knew we were to have a child. Our first house in the West Valley cost $18,000 and our first car about $1800. But we needed more room when we were surprised by the arrival of twins. The house we purchased in North Hollywood stretched our budget since I had stopped working, but it had a nice yard, good neighbors and the potential for add-ons, which we made in 1980.

We lived in that house for 22 years before hearing the call of duty. Steve’s sister, living in Wilmington, North Carolina was dying of cancer with two children aged 9 and 13. Their father Jock’s work in the movie business often took him far from home and their grandmother, Kay Taylor, could not care for them adequately at her age. We decided to leave Los Angeles and our teaching and legal work to assist Jock with the children. I was quickly hired to teach at the local community college for a semester and then moved to the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. Steve became a member of the North Carolina Bar and ended up securing an appointment as a magistrate instead of practicing law. Kay helped us pay for a large home in Wilmington’s downtown historic district with two spacious bedrooms for Darwin and Maaike. But Fate stepped in once again, as Jock decided to limit his film work to what could be done locally and keep the children with him, just asking our assistance as needed. The Dock Street house became the extended family party and celebration site as well as a center for book club and political meetings. We lived there for fourteen years during which time our son moved to Wilmington (in 2005) and our daughter lived in nearby Chapel Hill to finish her Surgical ENT residency at UNC.

It was the next move – to Philadelphia and to Walnut Creek, California – that was unique. If I wanted to be dramatic, I could say it was a story of suspense, betrayal, greed and the kindness of strangers.

Since we were moving some of our furniture across country, we thought we would play it smart and put our necessary belongings in a “pod,” a large container that would be trucked to a depot in California near where we hoped to settle. How simple, how convenient: just throw the essentials into a pod placed next to our house, take what other things we could in a small trailer up to our half-year home in Philadelphia and give away or sell the rest.

Enter the Municipal Bureaucrat: “Sorry, sir, you cannot leave that pod by your house there, against our rules, slows down traffic, irritates the neighbors, and worst of all, doesn’t give me a chance to flaunt my authority.” Cough up an additional $400 to hire Two Men and a Truck to twice load their smaller truck, haul it down to the local pod depot, reload there. But wait, first there’s the sale – we need to shrink the contents of a 3000 square foot home to make them fit into a 900 square foot California condo. Piece, albeit a fairly large piece, of cake.

Through a series of missed communications and family-related brouhahas, we find we have only six days to rid ourselves of what seemed like 1000 items. We advertise our sale and of the forty or so items we put on Craigslist, we find we are able to sell exactly one of them – a seventies-style Scandinavian chair which seven people inexplicably coveted – for $20. Advice learned too late: keep reposting items on Craigslist every day since each sinks to the bottom of its respective list. But, by happenstance, we were able to sell items not posted.

A friend from my book club came to help us pack and brought her daughter who made a clever for sale signs to hang over our realtor’s For Sale sign. We rented tables and made tiny price stickers for all the goods accumulated (not only during our last 16 years but also those bequeathed to us by others). We quickly find out that our sale hours, Sunday, 2-6, are not buying hours for our potential customers (those buying hours would be early on a Saturday, but we weren’t home Saturday: a shirt-tale family wedding had taken priority over the things which are Caesar’s).
Yet various friends, neighbors and panhandlers do wander through. And by chance they needed– cheap – a nearly new set of suitcases, an antique desk, a unique 1920’s full length mirror, our pots and pans, a Queen Anne chair, a rose marble-topped coffee table, our beds and dressers and a few pieces of original art. Also, maybe not by chance, they did not need 29 lovely picture frames; jewelry unless it was free; cd’s; dvd’s; hundreds of classic vinyl recordings, and a multitude of household items unless they were free. We offered free books to all who entered – we had given thousands to libraries and the university but had retained some 300. One dear stranger almost wept when I offered him, free of charge, a leather-bound illustrated Complete Works of Shakespeare for his poetry-loving daughter. After receiving an original Harry Davis painting for a favor he did us, one young black teenager delightedly offered $2 for a work by another local artist, Ivy Hayes.

At that point, we realized giving away was more fun than selling, so we started an outdoor street corner sort of “sale.” We put outside near the street a sewing machine, an espresso machine, a juicer and a food processor, all relatively unused with a large sign reading “Guaranteed – all appliances work, or your money back.” Of course, one guy knocked on our door to ask if the juicer worked. In any case, each appliance disappeared in about 20 minutes. When we put out a relatively unused (naturally) ironing board, the cover of it disappeared, but the skeleton remained, leaning against the fire hydrant. For some reason no one wanted the silk tree. Room on the corner and immediately in front of the house being limited, we kept replacing our giveaways. Almost all our Christmas decorations, games, random bowls and other dishes, and knick-knacks disappeared. Steve’s mother had left a modern style tall transparent blue vase which glass stores did not want. Several young visitors liked it and started a bidding war for it. After the rivals for it left, the winner had to go to the bank to get the $40 to pay for it. He never returned, and the vase now sits near our daughter’s fireplace, just as her grandmother had placed it near hers.

As we wondered how to get rid of our cupboards of food quickly, in walks a 6′ 11″ handsome stranger who looked around, offered to help and told us of a book on Tennessee Williams he had written and expected to make a killing on. But in the meantime he subsisted on food from Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard, a local soup kitchens.  Serendipity in action: he brought several boxes from his newly acquired (somehow) digs nearby and loaded every can, box and bottle from our pantry cupboards and freezer, making several trips back and forth, constantly regaling us with stories of a past of betrayal and a future of extreme wealth.

Now our remaining earthly goods were down to a reasonable load. We called Goodwill to pick them up. They needed 10 days notice. We called Salvation Army, which needed seven. Next we tried Habitat for Humanity. They were closed for remodeling, as was another charity. Our deadline for being out of the house nearing, we had only our dumpster for sympathy and recourse. Then a bed, some cleaners and a dinner for the new owner moved in. Panic. Throw faster. Wrap and box more efficiently. Luckily the new owner came and said we should leave usable stuff. We thus left a year’s supply of Costco-acquired paper goods in the back storage room as well as the ten-pound bottle of dishwasher liquid. We also left a giant green plastic tub which had on top several black winter boots and who-knows-what underneath, probably woolies we once fantasized would be worn for Lake Tahoe skiing.

Completely brain dead after all this, we climbed in our Buick, lashed up the trailer and pointed it north.

From the New World to the Old — and Back

Walking through one of many stunningly beautiful Budapest churches we saw in our recent tour of the Danube cities, I saw a sign directing me to the Chapel of the Right Hand. Whose right hand? Why? A lot of cameras were flashing as I approached the front of the chapel and saw on the altar a small gold filigreed vessel with something in it. A relic, a hand? I stopped one of the many strangers milling about and asked, whose right hand? She smiled and said “I haven’t a clue.” I asked a few others, pointing to my right hand and then to the altar.  No one spoke English. I wandered about, reading any scrap of English I could. Finally someone came up to me and said she had heard my earlier question and found a tour guide who explained that the right hand had belonged to the second St. Stephen (the first Stephen was the first martyr). He had been king of the area and thus the church was named after him. But why take his hand. No answers.

It was at this point that it dawned on me that I was truly in the Old World, a Catholic world, one in which the last 2000 years have left remnants of themselves everywhere, in abbeys, cathedrals, bridges, and public squares. For some Hungarians, relics were still important; statues of saints and crucifixes abounded, unlike here in the young United States where every creche and cross must be kept from the public arena. I stopped questioning and simply enjoyed the exquisite stained glass windows with spring light streaming through. The meaning of this trip would be the journey itself.

On impulse and spurred by the offer of bargain prices, Steve and I had signed up last September for a Viking trip entitled “Romantic Danube” offered for ten days: April 20-30, 2014. We had previously traveled to Rome, Paris, Helsinki, and Barcelona and taken two Caribbean cruises, but this would be the first river cruise with all the amenities of a first-class hotel, without the need to lug suitcases around even as we visited a dozen cities in five countries: Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, Germany, and the Czech Republic. Many of the place names were ones I had only known through history books and documentaries: Bratislava, Durnstein, the Wachau Valley, Linz, Melk, Passau. Others I looked forward to, especially Vienna and Salzburg because of Mozart. I was also eager to visit Budapest, and, of course, Prague because my relatives through marriage had lived there and loved it.

Off and on for ten nights we cruised up the historic Danube, where even before the Romans used it to move their legions and supply their settlements, ancient tribes rafted to trade furs and the all-important salt. The lower edge of our cabin windows was just above the level of the river’s gentle flow of water. I pictured my champion swimmer daughter stepping out the window and gliding alongside the 100-meter-long ship. Three meals each day were available with varied menus and buffets to choose from, and with truly caring and charming servers at our beck and call. The days were spent touring specially chosen sites; the nights were for music and, if we wanted, dancing. Peter, truly a master of the electronic piano and all its bells and whistles, at Steve’s request, said that although he had never played Irving Taylor’s most popular song, he would figure it out, and figure it out he did. Two nights in a row, he played “Everybody Loves Somebody” for the sixty or so other guests, getting the bridge between verses just right. Music was a bridge between our family and this stranger.

A total of some 180 passengers, mainly from the United States and the United Kingdom accompanied us, most middle aged and up, often retired and like us, looking for new sights, sites, insights and discoveries. Three interesting contacts stand out in memory. The evening of our arrival, Steve was too exhausted from being up for 36 hours straight and went right to bed. I was too hungry, and wandered into the large restaurant. Near the doorway was an empty seat. After introductions to the five women and one man at the table, I searched around for topics beyond the inevitable openings: where are you from, how was your flight etc. They were a silent group until something about not ordering wine or coffee came up – since I ordered both. Oh, are you Mormons, I asked. They all smiled, nodded, but volunteered nothing. So I explained that I had a lifelong interest in various religions and would they share with me what they liked most about their religion. All perked up. The woman sitting next to me, said she liked the Mormon idea of being with ones entire family, ancestors and descendants forever. Would that go back to Adam and Eve, I asked. They smiled. A woman named Mary said she loved having an authentic prophet in their midst – and she gave his name which I have forgotten. Joseph, the somewhat shy and rosy middle aged man, started explaining the connections between the New Testament and Mormonism. His wife Judith said she had studied many other religions and became certain that the Mormons have the true one, absolutely. The other two enlarged on these points. I looked forward to other meals where we could continue this discussion but a few friends joined them and Mormons filled their table for every meal. We never sat together again.

Eighty-three year old Angie, a warm and wild character, dancing with the best of them, had brought her entire family on the trip. As she introduced her niece Charlotte and Charlotte’s fiancee Danny, she summed up their love story. Danny was older, balding, mid-thirties perhaps. For years the family had teased and prodded him into thinking about marriage. He traveled a lot, met many women but none seemed right. He determined to stay a bachelor. Then last year he returned to his home town and met Charlotte once again a girl he had known since grade school. Raven haired, with a stunning smile, a sweet manner and a beautiful figure, she seemed quite a catch. As soon as he saw her again he realized she was the one. On board they were still celebrating their engagement. I saw them often and delighted in their affection for each other, although she was much more expressive. For them this was fittingly the “Romantic Danube.”

During one of the few lunches not aboard ship, wandering the squares of Salzburg (“city of salt,” a hugely important product for much of history) we found an empty table at a sidewalk café behind the cathedral and ordered a pris-fixe luncheon for two. The waiter brought an enormous tray with enough food for six people. Meanwhile, a young couple, frustrated with the few seats available, wandered back and forth, so we invited them to sit with us. They were students on holiday from Lucerne, Switzerland. The charming young man, Rainer, a music major, looked like a young Brad Pitt, and Fiona, who was studying to become a French teacher, reminded me of Cate Blanchett. Rainer became quite enthusiastic when told Steve’s father was a lyricist. Their interest in all topics and the easy flow of conversation was such that we didn’t want it to end.

My closest companion throughout the trip though – besides my husband – turned out to be John Updike. I had loaded onto my Nook Adam Begley’s just-published biography of him written these five years after his death, which brings him back to life just as his works bring him a sort of immortality. Of his hundred or so literary works, I enjoyed several novels through the years, beginning with his best known – the four volume series on Rabbit Angstrom. I also had read many of his delightful short stories and even taught a few poems, but in this book I was able to get a view of his entire oeuvre. Begley emphasized the way Updike deliberately focused on the minutiae of ordinary life – its relationships, surprises, events, scenes, but through his almost magical stylistic gifts transmuted and transfigured even the tiniest observations. His own life, values and obsession were at the heart of his stories. He has been criticized for writing so much about adultery, but he was a son of the suburbs and the sixties. During his second marriage, he came to regret his behavior, especially the harm done to his own children.

The highlight of the trip was our extended visit to Prague where we were housed in one of the city’s finest hotels, The Prague Hilton. Superb rooms, service and meals and plenty of time to explore our surroundings allowed us a view of this wonderful city of spires, castles, palaces, and, for Steve, a moving visit to the Terezín village and concentration camp. My favorite site was the pedestrian-only Charles Bridge, built in the 14th Century by Emperor Charles IV, lined with 30 statues. As we walked across the long arc of the bridge in the evening, music streamed up from the many nightclubs below and the waters of the Moldau reflected hundreds of lights. Lovers, families with baby carriages, gaggles of teenagers and old people arm-in-arm strolled with us, with all those ancient statues of saints and martyrs gazing down on the pleasantries.

The cities had all been full of surprises and the same was true of the airline flights. Our red-eye flight from Philadelphia to Heathrow, then connecting to Budapest, was exhausting with few distractions and the on-board entertainment system for the entire plane on the blink. But expecting the worst for our return trip, we found that the nine hours spent with British Airways from Prague back to Philadelphia went quickly and serenely. With abundant onboard entertainment available, I had access to movies and audio and enjoyed for a second time both “Sleepless in Seattle” and “August: Osage County.” Arriving home, it seemed we had been away much longer than ten days – we had really covered many centuries.

On the Move, Part One

“I wake to sleep and take my waking slow . . .I learn by going where I have to go.”  Theodore Roethke (1908-1963), The Waking

I stared at the contents of my little trunk: denim underslips – ankle-length pinafore-style; baggy mid-thigh underpants; long thick black stockings and for long lonely nights, a pretty modest pair of pajamas covered with small violets. They would replace these, I supposed, with plain white gowns. The mix of dread, anxiety and excitement I felt at age 17 as I prepared to leave for the convent was deeper than at any time since. Leaving my childhood home in 1953 for a future unknown and unpredictable, to go to live “forever” with an institution full of strangers and a strict lifestyle, seemed quite different from that experienced by my classmates preparing for college, freedom and, dreamily, new boyfriends. My eyes fell on my high school scrapbook. It was the hardest thing for me to leave behind. In it I had tried to build, at least in my imagination, a credible love life. There between the pages were the dried corsages from two proms, both attended with convenient, not beloved, young men (gardenias still fragrant in one and tiny rosebuds in the other); and a corsage from a stranger. He had accompanied me to a Michigan Tech Fraternity Ball at the request of my brother, and here I could no longer remember his name.

The real crush of my young life was represented in my scrapbook only by a torn picture of Jimmy H.  I loved him with that innocent abandon that rests on no experience, no knowledge of young men and no realism about life in general and romantic love in particular. What I felt was a certain purity of sheer attraction. When I was with him, I was too shy to string together three sentences, but while discussing him with a girlfriend from his small farming town who knew both of us, I could render whole books of words. Jimmy and I had worked out a meager relationship built on his occasionally following me home, shouting from a car driven by one of his friends, his carrying me once over a puddle, Sir Walter Raleigh style, our ice skating together, and sharing a many kisses, new and exquisite. I was convinced he was the best kisser I would ever know and I wasn’t far from right. He had, indeed, asked me for a date once. He said he would pick me up at 7:00. But on the designated evening when the clock said 7:20 I nervously assumed he would not come and went downtown with my sister Kate. When he arrived at 7:30, told I had gone, he assumed I had jilted him. We never spoke again.

Also left behind in my scrapbook – the convent was to discourage feasting on past memories – were small things I doted on: pictures from Copper Falls where we had our “mature” senior class picnic; letters I’d received from a marine and a soldier during the Korean War. I took up the small bouquet of flowers that the soldier, Rudy T., had given me. They were picked by his mother from her little garden, he said, and were accompanied by a note that explained a gift I was later to receive when he was overseas: satin pajamas with golden dragons accompanied by slippers decorated with delicate fur. I remember how my no-nonsense father stared at me as I danced around our living room wearing this, my first genuine token of affection from someone. When he learned of my joining the convent, Rudy told a mutual friend he would live as single life since he could not have me. As it turned out he waited for eight years before marrying. Finally, toward the back of the scrapbook was a letter awarding me a small scholarship and a copy of a talk I gave to the whole school when I would be honored as a salutatorian for the four-dozen-strong St. Ambrose class of ‘53, a modest honor when, years later, I saw my daughter named valedictorian of a class of thousands of gifted kids.

A second major move to life on “mission” was quite different. Life at the Motherhouse had become completely comfortable. After four years there, I had become the convent equivalent of a big-shot, knowledgeable about rules and customs, nooks and crannies, fun, feast days and games. As an older young nun, age 21 as opposed to the 15-18 year olds arriving each fall, I was feeling authoritative, bossy really, possessive the way one feels as a senior in high school. I was now a bona fide teacher. Assigned to teach seventh grade at St. Boniface School in downtown Manitowoc, Wisconsin, I took with me only my clothing and an old fashioned typewriter bequeathed to me at the death of my closest childhood friend, Rita K.  I was trained; I had no fear. I should have felt fear, for the class was wild and at first I practiced the opposite of correct discipline. I was kind to the class as a group and harsh to each miscreant – the class thought me weak and the individuals hated me. I gradually realized why I must change: the class had to see me as tough and its members be able to say, “I can’t do that; Sister Marta will kill me.” Individuals, on the other hand, should find me compassionate though firm, and privately come to respect and perhaps even love or admire me.

Several more moves defined my convent experience. During five summers so sweaty that some nuns slept in their bath tubs, I studied for a Master’s Degree under the Jesuits at the University of St. Louis. During these school years, I entered three new subcultures: the small farming community of Hollandtown, Wisconsin; the southern style small city of Cambridge, Ohio; and the big, bustling, noisy city of Chicago. During these years, I found a sense of place and home in each place, mainly through the love I felt for my religious Sisters and my students. I learned that teaching, especially teaching literature, provides a unique kind of love where sometimes mind enters mind and heart enters heart. Intellects and emotions blend because of shared poetry, stories, Shakespeare’s plays and Emerson’s essays. My own joy in these and the eagerness of young adolescent minds made the hard work of teaching writing worthwhile. In Ohio, where I taught the same students for four years, I found they came to seem like young brothers and sisters.

But there were a few, with the natural ardor of youth, who seemed uneasily like potential sweethearts, a phenomenon I was scarcely prepared for. A priest too, whom I met in Cambridge, became affectionate and after I had left the community, asked me to wait for him until the Pope, surely soon, removed the ban on married priests.

After thirteen increasingly depressing years, I prepared to leave my community. I was given a few hundred dollars with which to buy clothes and start a new life (my dowry to the convent on entering had been only twenty-five dollars). I quickly latched on to a job with a Great Society-funded anti-poverty program in Chicago, and earned enough for tuition for my last summer in St. Louis. Offered invitations by all four of my siblings, I chose to go to Los Angeles where I secured a teaching position exactly one day before classes were to begin at Birmingham High School, in the San Fernando Valley.

What I was learning from these experiences was to trust life and to practice detachment from mere material things and places. But from many people I never truly felt detached. They have inhabited my mind – and still do – like bright jewels washed to a gleam by the tides of years. One of my intellectual heroes, mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, envisions a God who salvages human temporal experiences into his eternity. Preserved and gathered together are our highest, best experiences: a look, a smile, a touch, a sense of the beauty and warmth and love surrounding us at times. God, both Whitehead and Teilhard said, takes our most precious “jewels” and carries them where they will again greet us, as it were, in the next life.

TO BE CONTINUED . . . .

 

 

An Address to the Lord

“You have enriched us with / fear and contrariety / providing the searcher / confusion for his search.” –A. R. Ammons (1926-2001) from “Hymn IV”

Lord of the hinterlands, Creator of Shakespeare,
Matchless improviser,
Infinite Seeder of an infinite cosmos,
astride the Hubble’s constant.
My pride in You is boundless.

For 13 years, I stood at attention, as Berryman phrased it,
“for any your least instruction or enlightenment.”1

You instructed me to love them all and each,
but once I loved too much
and watched the Vows give way to gentler vows.

My group of Sisters, though embarrassed, named themselves
“Petals of the Mystical Rose.”
I watched my Sisters leaving here for other shores.
They fell like Petals:

One by fire (Marlene)
One by addiction (Melany)
Two by heart (Mary Henry, Janelle)
One by vehicle accident (Mary Elizabeth)
One by obesity (Mary Alice)
Two by Alzheimer’s (Jovita, Frederick Marie)

These are the prayers I say incessantly:
“Lord, I believe, help Thou my unbelief.”
“Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts. . .enkindle in them
the fire of Thy love. . . and Thou shalt renew the face
of the earth.”

I learned from childhood to address you four ways–
Adore, Thank, Ask, Make Reparation.
How I hated the Sacrament of Penance, even as a nun,
mumbling tiny sins of unkind thoughts, and later,
when I had more serious business, hearing the Franciscan priest,
misunderstanding, not listening, condemn my “arrogance.”

I do thank you that in a preparation taking 14 billion years,
You brought some of us to this existence. Trillions of others failed.
Now the cosmos is known and speaks through us.

But who are you? Not a Being amidst other beings.
Kazantzakis said to the almond tree, “Speak to us of God.”
And the almond tree blossomed.

Jacob Boehme for seven days was surrounded
by divine light, full of joy.
He and Blake were called “God-intoxicated” men.
You appeared to Doubting Thomas and to the murderer Paul,
Why not to any of us? Even these, the least of thy brethren?

Hopkins saw the world “charged with the grandeur of God”
flaming out like foil.
Blake saw the world in a grain of sand
as Tennyson did in a crannied flower,
and Browning in a stone or star.

In part my faith in you comes from the mystics.
Evelyn Underhill, studying them, timeless through the centuries,
wrote of one who said, “only the transcendental life is worth living.”
Others, hundreds, said they saw through the illusions
that form most human lives, saw the underlying Reality.

Underhill adds, “The ‘blinding insights
of the mystical experience has occurred too many times
to too many reputable thinkers
in all cultures for us to doubt its worth.”
What can we make of that, my Lord?

We know atomic energy, destructive beyond measure.
Powerful is its opposite, spiritual energy. It underpins
lives, shapes morality, colors culture throughout recorded time.

Yet unanswerable problems exist.
My old problem was Hell. I wished to not believe in it, or if I must,
(my subconscious still echoing “pray for us sinners now
and at the hour of our death,”)
to say with Aquinas, there is no human being there.

Another problem is with those who say only their religious beliefs are right.
Father John Capellaro said last Sunday: “A religion reduced to belief is useless.”
Yes, Lord, I believe You are the sea
and we draw Love’s cures while on different shores.

A third lament I have: we are ruining your handiwork, the earth.
Byron said famously, “Man’s ruin stops with the shore.”
Not so. Not so.

But worst of all, the problem of suffering.
Mankind is red in sword and gun.
“Nature is red in tooth and claw,” Tennyson noted.
Your servant Kingsolver summed it up, “The earth stays alive
by eating itself.”2

So who devised the hurricane, the earthquake, the many floods?
You are called both all-powerful and all-loving. How can this be?
“I don’t try to reconcile anything” said the poet at eighty,
“This is a damned strange world.”3

St. Augustine called you the Great
Incomprehensible and added, there is no darkness of evil, only places
where the Light has not shone.

I pray you stay with me during night’s wild hours,
when doubts and demons come.
Or when I fail as all flesh fails,
come with your chosen souls and make it right.

Give me the patience and humility to grow old gracefully.
And a strong mind, if not body, to the end.

---

1. A phrase from John Berryman’s “Eleven Addresses to the Lord” which inspired my address.         The poem is found in his Love and Fame (1970)

2. Barbara Kingsolver in The Poisonwood Bible

3. from Berryman, Eleven Addresses to the Lord, section 2.

Who Are These People?

“ So God created humankind in his image,/ in the image of God he created them. . . God saw everything he had made, and indeed, it was very good.” –Genesis 1:27

At a conference for high school teachers and administrators during my halcyon days with the California Literature Project, I approached the reception table for my name tag and was asked to choose a tag that best described me. My choices were:

Activity makes my world go round,
Ideas make my world go round,
Love makes my world go round, or
Security makes my world go round.

Easy choice – ideas excited and delighted me, but after that as first choice, of course, it would be love. But what was the point of this exercise for all these 200 or so school personnel? During a keynote speech, the speaker pointed out he had done some research asking students and teachers to make this choice of their preferred interests. He said he had found that most teachers chose ideas and most students chose activity. This information is important for schools. Elementary teachers know the importance of hands-on learning, concrete examples and assigning work that engages all the senses. But secondary teachers often assume their students were, like them, fascinated by the big picture, the long view and influential ideas. Some are, of course, and such students usually get the best grades. But all students can learn when given the right approaches.

The question English teachers always ask is how can we make reading literature more engaging? When the Literature Project was putting together a Sourcebook for teachers, we found that the two most popular and successful methods of teaching literature both involved students in interpersonal and multi-sense activities.

One method was called “Into, Through, and Beyond,” in which our students were motivated to read and remember important works by first discussing events and attitudes related to both their own lives and the piece of literature they were reading (going “into”). Then they went carefully and intensely through the reading, discussing it in class as they went along (“through”). Finally they created some meaningful, concrete expression of the work (“beyond”) which they would present to the group.

A major approach the Project directors took with teachers was to have them try to do what they were asking of their students, but at a higher level of course. For example, when they wrote short essays and had their peers respond them, they realized the last thing a writer needs is to have someone pick at commas or word choices. They wanted reactions to the substance of their work; the other responses could wait until the final phase after they invested in the essays. I asked the teachers (from various parts of the state, about 30 in each seminar) who attended our UCLA institutes to get in groups and practice this “into, through, beyond” progression themselves. I can still see one faculty group’s handling of a poem they had chosen, Theodore Roethke’s “I knew a woman, lovely in her bones.” Their creative presentation going “beyond” their reading brought engagement, fun, memorability and color to the class. A sampling from the poem and how this group went “beyond” it in personal ways follows. Roethke’s poem in part said

“I knew a woman, lovely in her bones, when small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one
The shape a bright container can contain
Of her choice virtues only gods should speak.
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I’d have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek.)
. . . I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand
. . . What’s freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she casts a shadow white as stone
. . . I measure time by how a body sways.

One teacher brought up an easel and water colors and painted a collage of the images in the poem. As a chorus of three chanted the words rhythmically, another teacher, dressed in an ballet outfit “moved more ways than one” and a sixth member wrote a “creative imitation” of the poem, a method we had been trying out, one that Roethke himself preferred. At the end of the institute, teachers voted for this method as one of those they wanted to go into our book: “Literature for All Students: A Sourcebook for Teachers.”

Another reminder of how differently we and our students learn came from Harvard professor Howard Gardner whose 1983 book Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (Basic Books, New York) suggested the many ways various people learn. He named seven: Logical-mathematical, musical-rhythmic, visual-spatial, verbal-linguistic, kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal and later added two more: naturalistic-existential and moral. Most of us have all these kinds of intelligence or faculties but we prefer certain ones: thus, the use of small group work (interpersonal) and various projects (visual-spatial).

Once when I was asked to give a talk at my St. Ambrose High School alumni reunion, I took Gardner’s schema and applied it to the kind of learnings we had found in our Catholic school classrooms. Despite tiny budgets our school always had some exposure to arts (visual-spatial), moral, and musical-rhythmic methods as well as the universal emphasis on logical-mathematical and verbal-linguistic work. Demonstrating the use of music at St. Ambrose, on the spur of the moment, I referenced some songs the whole school knew by heart. Despite my mediocre voice, I began singing Mother Beloved: “Join your hands, loyal bands, while we pledge one another; unity and fealty to our queen and our mother.”

To my surprise, the whole crowd joined in. One of my sisters said she began crying to see her extremely shy older sister leading such a group, musically–even the half drunk ones joined in.

In any case, the idea of how different we all are and why we are so was one that had long interested me. While at the all-state conference I firsst mentioned above, I mentally placed those tags on people I knew. My mother-in-law, I thought, would to choose, “Security makes my world go round,” My most romantic sister, I saw wearing the “Love makes my world go round” tag, and any number of my young friends and students, of course, would wear “Activity makes my world go round.” Yes, my teacher friends, like me, enjoyed ideas most and then would choose love.

I began to recall other explanations for our differences. We are all temperamentally somewhat alike and somewhat different. The first time I learned of the categories in to which one could divide people came while studying Latin. In ancient times, the temperaments were described through their theory of bodily humors. There were four basic temperaments: sanguine, choleric, melancholic and phlegmatic (also called “leisurely” in modern parlance), so named because of a predominance of one bodily fluid or “humor.” Sanguine types, who were generally cheerful, sociable and pleasant, were so called because of the preponderance of blood, the ancients said. Choleric people, usually ambitious and gifted in leadership, had much yellow bile; melancholic folks were analytical, literal, and serious and the fourth type, with an excess of phlegm were called phlegmatic and presented a relaxed and thoughtful persona. The survival of this schema in the culture can be seen in George Balanchine’s 1946 ballet The Four Temperaments.

Modern medics and psychologists often reject such divisions and assert we all have each “humor” as needed. But they give wider credence to the analysis of temperaments extrapolated from the work of Carl Jung and known as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator assessment.  The personality traits designated are described in words with slightly different interpretations than are in general use. But the pairs of contraries used are interesting and seem intuitively meaningful. How do we experience the world? What underlies our divergent values, needs and motivations? Why are our learning styles so different. The best known of the Indicator pairs is that of introvert and extrovert. I remember agreeing wholeheartedly when I first heard that as an introvert, I shouldn’t be judged as liking people the less, but only that too much society drained my energies. The most extrovertive of my sisters, however, still finds herself energized by people, the more the merrier. A second pairing relates to our predominant mode of learning: through our senses or through intuition. Thinking versus feeling predominates in how we more strongly react to our lives conditions and events. And finally there are differences called judging, a reaction preferring definite closure, versus perceiving, meaning keeping your mind open. After choosing the one of each pair best describing you, you combine four initials to sum up your dominant traits. I found I had a rather rare combination of pairs, a set belong to only about 2% of human beings: INTJ–introvert, intuitive, thinking, perceiving.

Our interest in and understanding of differences has serious origins. The early Hindu thinkers worked out their sense of the several major paths individuals follow during life. The branch of Hinduism called Vedanta specifies certain paths that seem to grow from temperamental differences. Each path directs the devotee to higher spirituality. The Path of Action called Karma Yoga refers to a life lived in selfless service to others. The Path of Knowledge called Jnana Yoga suggests a life focused on learning and thinking. Practitioners of Bhakti Yoga, the Path of Devotion, choose a life of loving kindness, including a preference for a personal rather that an abstract God. A fourth path, called Raja Yoga, leads to the godhead or bliss through meditation. All of these paths assume a common preparation practicing truthfulness, cleanliness, self-discipline, contentment and other virtues. Originally, Hatha yoga served as preliminary to the other yogas, but in American culture today it has become mainly a form of gymnastics whereas the bodily control originally was meant to enhance a person’s path to meditation.

When I asked my World Religions professor Diana Eck what religion she would chose if she had had a choice at birth, she said she thinks it would have been Hinduism. Strictly speaking, Hinduism is many things and we use the term to refer to religious beliefs begun in India. I should also point out that none of this categorizing can be empirically proved; these are just helpful metaphors that help our understanding. They prevent the expectations we have that others will think and behave exactly as we ourselves do, and minimize the repetition in our lives of “I just don’t understand him” or “How can she behave that way?”

At the University of St. Louis, one of my fellow students copied down a plaque she saw on the desk of one of our favorite professors, Father Walter J. Ong. It was written in German, a language she knew and translated: “Few people know how much they must know in order to know how little they know.” This from the most brilliant man I have ever known. During one of his classes once (called “Existentialism and Personalism in Modern Literature”), he used this metaphor. We dip our minds, our nets, into the watery sea of knowledge. We draw up all we can. What our minds can absorb can be found in the wetness of the net’s cords. In other words, our intellects are limited and we remain relatively ignorant of all there is to know in this vast mysterious universe. I think that, for most of us, other people are the most mysterious of all. And so we create little nets, like the temperaments, the kinds of intelligence and the paths of yoga to have something to grasp.

The Stages of Life: An Alternate View

“The unwise life is one long struggle with death the intruder–an uneven contest in which age is obsessively delayed through artifice and the denial of time’s erosions.”    Huston Smith, The World’s Religions

Recent conversations with our children have revealed how differently they view the lives of their parents, not only as contrasted with their own lives, but with our earlier lives. This has led me to revisit a concept of great interest to me during my year as a Fellow at the Harvard Divinity School’s Center for the Study of World Religions.

Shakespeare took an age-old concept (one that goes at least back to Aristotle) and turned it into much-quoted humor. He describes seven stages of life: we grow from “puking infant” to “whining schoolboy” to lover “sighing like a furnace with a woeful ballad/ made to his mistress’ eyebrow.” Then comes the heroic stage of soldier, “seeking the bubble reputation/ Even in the cannon’s mouth.” Next comes prosperity and social status perhaps, represented by the justice or judge, “full of wise saws.” But during the sixth and seventh stages, diminishment begins with loss of manly voice and appearance of the second childhood, until finally we appear “sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”

Not so, say our brothers and sisters to the East. According to Huston Smith’s The World’s Religions, perhaps the most comprehensive, and surely the most accessible, guide to the lay reader on comparative religion, long before Shakespeare, and perhaps even before Aristotle, Hindu thinkers had described not seven but four stages. The first stage is that of learner or student, about ages 8 to 24 when she or he not only learns facts and gains knowledge generally but also develops good character, good habits and personal skills. One’s duty at this stage is to learn, to “offer a receptive mind to all that the teacher, standing, as it were, on the pinnacle of the past, could transmit.”

During the second stage of everyone’s life, which Hindus call that of the “householder,” one marries, finds suitable work and joins a community. Here the basic human desires are usually satisfied: pleasure, through one’s family and marriage; success through whatever vocation one has adopted, and a sense of duty fulfilled through civic participation. Hinduism says all this is fine, fulfill these desires but do not be so attached to them that you cannot let go. Sex and other sense pleasures, success at whatever game of life you have joined, responsible fulfillment of your vocation or duties, all will eventually begin to grow stale, to lose their novelty and ability to surprise. Each person is somewhat different, of course, not only in the years he takes to complete each stage, but also in the way he responds to his life’s goals based on his temperament and vision. Typically, in the Indian culture, this begins to happen around age 50. In our culture, the householder stage probably ends closer to age 70.

Smith notes that like seasons yielding, each in their turn, to the next, so too, do human beings naturally accept each successive season. But, he cautions,

“some never do. Their spectacle is not a pretty one, for pursuits appropriate in their day become grotesque when unduly prolonged. A playboy of twenty-five may have considerable appeal, but spare us the playboys of fifty.”

Similarly those who hold on to positions at work or in politics must, at some point, yield to the younger generation with its new ideas and vastly greater energy. Yet there is a problem. What else can they do? There is often not a role for them in the West. Some travel, some play golf, some take up causes. Many turn to fulfill their lifelong yearning to learn another language or pursue a favorite research topic. Often there are great rewards in becoming close to family members and discovering the uniqueness of each grandchild. But eventually most ask, “Is that all there is?” When and if that happens, they are ready for a third stage and the Hindus have a different kind of answer to what happens after middle age.

If one’s supreme values are those of the senses, of the table and the bed, of body image and luxury, the one ought to resign oneself to the fact that life after youth must be downhill. Similarly, if it is success and power we value, middle age, the stage of the householder, will be the peak of life. But Hinduism says there is more: the Upanishads, the source of ancient wisdom say, “Leave all and follow Him! Enjoy his inexpressible riches”–sounding much like the Christian gospels. The “He” referred to here is not Christ, of course, for he was unknown when those words were written. The reference is instead to finding and following one’s true Self. Lower-case self refers to the ego which must diminish; capitalized Self refers to the Divine and that part of us that connects with the Divine. With confidence and eagerness for this next challenge, the devout Hindu enters the stage of retirement.

At this time, any time that is, after the arrival of the first grandchild, says Smith,

“the individual may take advantage of the license of age and withdraw from the social obligations that were thus far shouldered with a will. For twenty to thirty years society has exacted its dues; now relief is in order, lest life conclude before it has been understood.”

One’s true adult education can now begin. To find meaning in life’s mystery becomes the final fascinating goal. The practice of religious Hindus who respond to the “lure of spiritual adventure” seems extreme to the Western mind: foresaking the comforts of home and family, leaving business and economic concerns behind along with “the beauties and hopes of youth and the successes of maturity.” To work out one’s own personal philosophy and to integrate that philosophy into a way of life, to find the reality that lies beneath the natural world is the next charge.

Westerners, if so motivated, may turn to Zen or other forms of meditation. They might investigate that often misinterpreted field called mysticism: that is to say, an inquiry into the deeper side of the spiritual life, and a recognition of the relative superficiality of daily life. It is an attempt to reach the depth of other levels of life that must be individually proved to exist and to experience how these deeper levels can be reached, however arduously. Hinduism calls this stage of life “going into the forest”, leaving secular life behind during retirement.

After several years “in the forest,” comes the final stage beyond retirement. Having abandoned earthly cares and learned the discipline the forest has provided, the pilgrim can now freely return to the world as a different person. He or she no longer seeks wealth, success or even “to be somebody.” On the contrary, one’s wish is to “remain a complete nonentity on the surface in order to be joined to all at the root.” According to Smith, a Hindu would ask why we would wish to take up again all the “posturing and costumes of a limiting self-identity” when there is a newly recognized intrinsic self. The strictest Hindu here takes up a begging bowl, has no obligations, is completely detached and neither loves nor hates anything. He cares not about the body nor if it falls or remains, for “the faculties of his mind are now at rest in the Holy Power, the essence of bliss.”

I have received several letters from friends who have retired (yes, there are a few out there who prefer paper to screen and completely private messages to social media). Many of them exhaust me with their busyness – admirable causes and book clubs, travel experiences and crafts. But I also hear the message of the Hindus. There is another level of reality and I want to spend time there.

On the other hand, there are other ways of approaching later life. Shakespeare expressed a view that was close to my own mother’s attitude. Although she became a more devout Catholic as she aged, she also would approve of what the Bard wrote in The Merchant of Venice:

“With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come
And rather let my liver heat with wine than my heart cool with mortifying groans.”

Homecoming, 1988

I did not leave you. Even now I can‘t keep from composing you.   Mary Szybist, “Hail”

It wasn’t until later that I learned that some of the nuns didn’t want us to return to visit. After all, they could say, we had left them, rejected them, turned our backs on the beauties, the peace, the kindnesses of religious life. My aunt Sister M. P. had revealed this attitude more indirectly. In writing to me, she often referred to this or that nun as being faithful, the word always underlined. To be unfaithful was not on any of the minds of the 250 of us who left, disillusioned, tired, empty, wanting life more abundantly or, as was my case, wanting desperately for the new life that is a child. Indeed, many of us felt we had completed one journey, however naively begun and vowed. We were ready for another.

Mother Superior Rita Rose (newly titled Director, but always Mother Superior to us) had polled community members and found that many of them had wanted this reunion for years, and others did not want it at all. When I left the community in 1967, it was unspoken but clear that I was to do it quietly and secretly. I was supposed to talk only with my superior on mission. The fear seemed to be that community morale would weaken and perhaps some would question their own vocations. But during the last year of her leadership Mother decided to go ahead with the reunion on her own. She had all 600 remaining nuns brought home, even those from Hawaii and South America, for a three day celebration and renewal. On the third day, they and we (“the black sheep” as we dubbed ourselves) could renew old ties, old friendships and unreplaceable memories.

It was all more intense than we imagined. As six of us (Vicki, Barbara, Jean, Tonya, Mary and I) drove together down Alverno Road, we saw lining the road, many holding “Welcome” pennants, dozens of the nuns, smiling and cheering. It hit us that those of us who had been through a dozen or more years of similar training and experience had a unique kind of bonding and orientation toward life. We were again greeted at the massive convent door, backgrounded by our favorite statue, St. Francis and the wolf, and each given a hostess. Mine was my own aunt (who just recently died at age 92). With lots of hugs and jokes, everyone seemed genuinely glad to see us–the level and kindness and healing was palpable. Memories flooded back.

The evening before, we had dined with Mary Raasch, a Wisconsin farm girl, and Tonya Zmuda, born and raised in Chicago and with the sass and style to prove it. Both seventh-grade teachers, they had been together as a couple now for 18 years. Some 22 years earlier, I had been walking meditatively through the convent farm area that summer and accidentally overheard them talking under the corn sheaves. They were discussing the possibility of leaving; I had wished I could join the conversation but it would be another year before I was certain of what I would do.

This day in August was full of surprises. There was Sister St. John Francis, who had taught my siblings in high school years; much later I was to serve with her on mission. As a teacher, she had been a powerful and insistent presence but was now tiny and frail, over 100 years old. Yet her memory was sound enough to remind me of our swimming together in Zanesville, Ohio. There was Sister Marie Isabel who apologized a dozen times for not thanking me for some material I had sent her – the Framework for California Standards and a Sourcebook for teachers. These two texts were now being used, she said, by Sister Renita (a colleague from my Chicago days) in her current teacher preparation classes. There was Sister Marina, my philosophy teacher, who would wax as eloquently about a bird that appeared on her bedroom windowsill as she did about St. Thomas Aquinas, Augustine and Aristotle. Unfortunately she was now quite senile and had no memory of anything.

Above all there was Sister Justinian, quietly taking a seat beside me during the welcoming talks, whispering to me that she would soon turn 80. The convent was good to her, she said, let her take vacations and stay active, but her home and heritage she felt was the convent, school and parish called St. Philips in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Sister Maxine, my former art teacher, was a joy. She was back to being an artist–both painter and sculptor again after a long hiatus. She at times felt her work was unappreciated by the community. For example, a life-sized statue of the Blessed Virgin that she had carved for our main chapel, St. Mary’s, was criticized by many of the nuns, apparently because her Mother of Jesus was depicted as having very large hands. We, her erstwhile students, knew the reason was to express symbolically the motherly power, love, and care we could identify with Mary.

I was delighted to meet the Genesis Rebels. About thirty nuns had formed a new religious order reporting directly to the diocesan bishop. That group included Sister Georgella, once Mary Barbieure, a very funny lady from the crowd above mine, who was the group’s leader. Sisters Mary Barbara and Marita – mail for Marta and Marita was inevitably misdelivered – came from our crowd and told me some details. Each individual in the group finds her own work, often social work, has her own mission statement, not rules, has sponsors to re-train her, and takes vows for only a year at a time. Genesis nuns also eschew the religious habit, and were dressed that day in secular garb. Many young girls, few in number, sadly, who enter communities prefer not to teach and nurse whereas almost all in our Franciscan community chose one or the other vocation.

There was some flattery from our large-hearted nuns and ex-nuns. Tonya had told my son, then 17, that she hopes he realizes what a classy mother he has. Sr. Laura, a former housekeeper we had in Cambridge, Ohio, told me I looked younger now than I did in 1963. A small group opined that I was Barbara Walters with a camera around my neck. Seeing again Carol Bearss, once Sister Mary Pius, also from Michigan, reminded me of the extraordinary card and loving poem she had once written for me. Sister Clare, with whom I taught at Hollandtown, recalled our long walks down the country roads and intense talks which she claimed saved her sanity.

There were too many friends to mention here, but I hoped this reunion would cause many of those who had left to help support financially this institution that had done so much for us all. My husband and I have certainly done so. The Franciscans paid for my education up to my Master’s degree orals and gave me guidance in understanding good teaching and sincere spirituality.  They also gave me a lifetime cadre of dear friends, whom, now, many years later, I count among my life’s greatest blessings.

Remembering Past Penguins, Part 2

“When this transitory housing we inhabit is dissolved, we know another housing is prepared for us by God, a lasting casement in the heavens not made by hand.”      -II Corinthians 5:1

Sister Mary Lauren – now returned to being Edith Melum – recently sent me this photo of our convent “crowd,” that is, the original group of nuns who entered the postulancy in the fall of 1953 and stayed. The picture was taken on the day we all took final vows in 1960.

Front row, L-R: Sisters Winifred, Marlene, Mary Barbara, Francis George, Dominica, Victor Marie, Paulinda.  Second Row: Thaddine, Stjephen Marie, Patrice Marie, Melany, Mary elizabeth, Nunciata, Mary Alice, Mary Carol; Third Row: Marcelyn, Marta, Marita, Edward Marie, Alexandra, Mary Edith, Janelle, Mary Pius, Frederick Marie.  Top Row: Laurent, Francis Helen, Jovita, Mary Lauren, Henrietta, Charletta, Judane, Mary Henry, Marla and Mary Wilma.

Strangers looking at this photograph might not see much difference between each of the nuns. In the old religious garb, until one got to know them, all nuns seemed to look alike. But I, Edie and the other crowd members, all saw totally different personalities. Now I find it fascinating to see in the full flower of youth (most of us were in our early Twenties) the fellow travelers I have been fond of for some fifty-odd years. There, in smiling rows are thirty-three faces bound in wimples, coifs and collars, dressed utterly alike with tiny crowns of thorns on our heads to symbolize our connection to Christ.

I recalled that the crown was also to remind us of the suffering each could expect at times in taking this step. In our training, the taking of vows of poverty, chastity and obedience had been compared theologically to a martyrdom which had the same spiritual effect as baptism: our pure souls would go immediately to God should we die soon after.

One of our number, Sister Mary Elizabeth, did die soon after. One summer night, taking a walk near her mission in a small town in Wisconsin, she was struck by a car. She had been walking along the right side (which my mother Martha had always reminded her children was the wrong side) of a country road. The driver was used to traveling that road but not used to seeing a pedestrian on it, especially one wearing all black. She died instantly.

Through the years, several others of my crowd, too, have died in ways I couldn’t have imagined. One of the wittiest, most glamorous and extroverted, Sister Frederick Marie, died much too young. I remember her arriving at the convent in 1953, coming down to where our group had all gathered near the apple tree and gardens. She looked like Betty Grable, I thought, dressed in that summery green, black and gold threaded dress, her blond curls and dimples lit up by her piercing blue eyes. Several years after I left the convent, she too was released from her vows, became Jane Hoffman again (much to her mother’s delight) and married into a comfortable life style. We wrote occasionally and she seemed fine. But she stopped writing. Then I heard from her husband that she had died from Alzheimer’s Disease.

Sister Marlene, one of the youngest in the group, a brilliant mathematician, suffered an appalling death. Stationed in a rectory with two other nuns, she failed to awaken when a fire started in the house. Three bodies were found stretched out, trying to reach the door and safety, just inches away.

One death, that of Sister Mary Alice, could have been predicted – she was morbidly obese and died fairly young. I did not know her well, but I knew that those who did loved her very much. I thought of her again when her close friend, Sister Henrietta, always healthy, hard-working, and cheerful, recently contracted cancer of the pancreas and died quickly.

Sister Janelle had returned to secular life and, indeed, had married the brother of the oldest member of our crowd. I had not heard anything of the circumstances surrounding her death and have only a few memories of Janelle. I knew she was a free spirit. We sat together during choir in St. Mary’s Chapel, but Janelle always refused to sing, no matter how persuasive Sister Francis Henry, our choir director, tried to be.

Within the last few years, the two oldest members of the class had passed, Sister Jovita from Alzheimers, and Sister Mary Henry of natural causes; both were in their eighties. Mary Henry, although a cook and “homemaker” and thus by profession a stay-at-home, was nevertheless known and loved by so many outsiders that her funeral was attended by hundreds. Sister Jovita entered the convent after years spent serving her local priest. She played tennis and made “holy hours” with me and had a wicked sense of humor. During one of my latest visits to the Mother House, she was allowed to leave St. Rita’s Infirmary for a short time, but seemed perfectly lucid during that time.

My crowd lived through times of exceptional change. The year most of them had entered the postulancy, 1953, was a flowering of religious vocations in dozens of convents all over the United States, with some of the highest numbers of entrants ever recorded. But about 15 years later these same convents started “bleeding” vocations. I myself had left in 1967 and many others soon followed.

One of my very best friends who had left shortly before I did, Sister Melany, told me years later that though she found religious life extremely difficult, especially the vow of obedience, she had always been ambivalent about leaving. So when it came time to sign the papers formally asking permission to leave, she hesitated. But the highest convent superior, analogous to an Abbess, placed the pen in her hands and indicated she should indeed sign. Melany was of a feisty temperament with a cynical wit, too honest at times for the velvet manners and guarded tongues so necessary for convent peace. That she didn’t get along with a few of her superiors on mission could have been predicted. She did love many other elements of religious life – prayer, her fellow sisters and a few of her more liberal superiors. She also much appreciated the meticulousness of the life style: neat habits, clean rooms, precise explanations and predictable activities. But after she left the community and met the temptations – mainly alcohol – that she had once told me had almost destroyed her father – she sorely regretted leaving. She told me that it gradually became clear to her that she needed convent discipline to keep order in her life.

Although she and I had kept in touch through letters and phone calls for several years after we both had left the community, we abruptly ended our friendship. I had suspected she was developing a drinking problem when she visited me in California. We had gone to visit one of my sisters and while there we were amazed to see how much she drank, beers with chasers having little effect. After she returned to her native New Jersey, she would call me late at night, often drunk, and make racist remarks about the students she taught in a Philadelphia primary school. She would also relate stories of beer-fueled fights she had been involved in with other bar patrons. When my husband and I went to visit her one summer in Camden, I scarcely recognized her. She wore a pink halter top and pants that had once fit a trimmer figure, and looked all bloated. Her refrigerator held nothing but beer and wine; she said she never cooked. I was so upset by the change in her and embarrassed by the tenor of our phone calls that I asked a long-sober AA friend how to handle the problem. She told me to show tough love, to confront her with what she was doing. I wrote a long letter explaining what I heard and felt. The response came after several weeks. Evelyn said she had written and then threw out many drafts of her reply. The phrase that stuck with me was Evelyn calling me a sunshine friend, not reliable when things became stormy. Insulted, she ended the friendship. I later realized that I should have been a better friend and shown compassion.

Afterwards, both of us now being seculars, Evenly wrote to me at UCLA. I had begun working in UCLA’s Center for Academic Interinstitutional Programs (CAIP) and producing materials for teachers and Evelyn wrote to request certain teaching aides. So maybe she had forgiven me. For years, I had kept an eye out for her whenever I was in Philadelphia or in New Jersey. Since she had taught for many years in Philadelphia, I figured she may have spent time there during off hours. Once in the Broadway Diner in Baltimore, I saw a woman that resembled Evelyn. She looked the stereotypical way I had come to think of New Jersey women of a certain age: puffy hair, lots of makeup, cigarette in hand. She was speaking loudly and perhaps sarcastically; she and her group of five laughed lustily. But when she turned full-faced to me, I could see that the resemblance was illusory. At some point after she retired from teaching, she visited the Motherhouse. She told our mutual friends there that her visit with them and the day she retired were the happiest days of her life. They sent a picture of her to me; I could not recognize a single feature, so heavy had she become.

Still occasionally bothered by the way our close friendship was no more, I decided to send to Evelyn a copy of the photo that accompanies this writing. I wrote a note and included my email, phone numbers and of course, return address. To my shock, two weeks later I received the same envelope back. My first thought was that Evelyn was really still angry with me and was refusing to have anything to do with me. I looked closer at the scribbling on the package and made out the letter d-e-c-e-a-s-e-d. I couldn’t move at first. When I entered the house, I sat for a long while and stared at the envelope. How could this be. When did she die? Who could I talk to about all this. I went online, put in Evelyn’s name and the latest address I had for her. To my deepening pain, I found out that Evelyn had died three years previous. No one of her religious Sisters seemed to know about this. I wrote to the Mother House and could only imagine how the word was spreading throughout my crowd. I could almost hear the stories they were exchanging, since Evelyn had been the most colorful person in the crowd. Sister Winifred, who had recently been appointed head of the Motherhouse itself (as opposed to the Convent Director, Sister Louise, who was in charge of all facets, schools, college) thanked me and reminded me that they all had loved Sister Melany and were also grieving.

Although a list of those who died may sound morbid, within the religious orders, death was seen as a cause of celebration. The one who died would now have reached her life’s goal: union with God. Any mourning was mourning for oneself and for those who remained because they were now deprived of the presence of a loved one.

As I searched the faces in the photo row by row, too many memories arose, memories likely boring to the outsider but warm, rich, human and humorous to me. There, in the first row were two of my dearest friends throughout the 50 years: Sister Paulinda, who remained in the community and Sister Victor Marie, now become Vicky Tiber. Vicky had visited me in North Carolina, and I had driven through Wisconsin several times and stayed overnight with the Tibers. Like me, Vicky had a daughter and a son, her daughter also having trained in medicine. I had lived with Victor Marie in Chicago and we often recalled the momentous night before we took our vows. Both of us were hesitant about going through with the ceremony and stayed up most of the night weighing our options and consequences. We decided finally to talk to our confessor the next morning. When I, trembling, entered the confessional I was dismayed to find the confessor was the young priest whose parish I had served my first year on mission. Nevertheless I described my doubts about my vocation. The priest simply said to treat it like a temptation, the kind St. Paul called a thorn in the side, and go ahead with taking my vows. Vicki had received a similar message.

I also had several chances to visit Sr. Paulinda, who (like many in the order) had opted to change back to her given name, Colleen. She was definitely one of the sweetest of the crowd. On our trips to my home town in Upper Michigan, I occasionally stop to visit her and another dear friend, Sister Marcelyn, who together help run a parish in Marquette, Michigan. My husband and I also return occasionally to the Motherhouse in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, where my aunt, Sister Mary Priscilla, now age 94, welcomes us and broadcasts our presence over the PA to make sure we get to visit with whoever is around. It always feels as if I had never left. And in some ways, through memory, I haven’t.

Remembering Past Penguins, Part 1

Walking home from Mass early one dark winter morning in Cambridge, Ohio, a group of us nuns heard a little boy in the distance repeatedly saying, “Look, mommy, look.” As we grew closer he identified us, “Look, mommy, Penguins.” Dressed in our black and white, everything but our faces covered, we must have reminded him of his last visit to the zoo. In any case, from that day on, we would often refer to ourselves as penguins. I would like to pay tribute to a few of the unforgettables from the zoo of my own past.

Justinian and Francis Aloysius, two who had loved me and now are gone. The earth is now a less friendly, less personal place for me. How pleasant it would be to think, as the nuns once said, they are watching now, taking better care of those they loved.

Sister Justinian died first, at age 89, diabetic, weak of heart, her feet full of gangrene. I had traveled half way across the country to attend the final closing of St. Ambrose School, in my home town of Ironwood, Michigan, in August of 1998. I thought I would then drive down to Manitowoc for a brief visit. When I arrived at Holy Family Convent, a mutual friend, Sister Mary Richard, grabbed my arm and took me over to the convent infirmary. She told me Justinian was near death, seeing angels and the Lord himself – probably from the drugs the convent nurses were giving her. She laughed as she recalled Justinian’s answer when she asked what Jesus looked like. “Like any ordinary man” she had replied matter-of-factly. The angels, however, she had said, were brilliant with light.

I arrived in Manitowoc on a Tuesday; she died on Wednesday. She squeezed my hand as I said my final farewell to this woman who had so long inspired me with her practical saintliness and her wry sense of humor . She was not pretty, but as soon as you got to know her, her lantern jaw, shapeless body, long thin nose and sharp blue eyes turned lovely and loving. She was a mother figure, yet a best friend, a teacher and a leader. She was not above acting extremely silly in order to break through any barriers between her and others. The priests from schools where she had been principal, some of them formal of manner and stiff-necked, loved her and filled the convent pews during her funeral mass.

I remember visiting her 8th grade classroom in Cambridge, where she was also the Superior of our convent. She was adjusting the blinds on her classroom windows and pointed out to me the local pastor Father Tuttle, making his way to the high school next door. No doubt he’d be meeting with the three priests whose parishes fed into our St. Benedict High. Also without a doubt there would be friction, even quarrels between them.

“Male egos, strong, protective, ambitious and useful at times,” she muttered, “ugly and destructive shadows of baboons at others.” As principal of the elementary school and known to be a good listener, she would have to be the ear to several sides of these priestly conflicts; she would have to bring peace. Today she just wanted to go back to the convent, put on her slippers and visit the small house chapel where no one could bother her. But as she left the building to return home, I remember seeing her slip a piece of lemon pie onto the passenger seat of the car driven by one of the priests whom she had recently smilingly told not to be such a mule.

Other memories came flooding back. One of my best friends, Sr. Melany, who taught in a neighboring city, loved beer – something we never drank in those far-off days. Knowing Justinian had a reputation for breaking minor rules for charity’s sake, Melany asked her if she would let her have a beer if they were together at the same school. Justinian, always loath to say no, answered, “if you really need one, dear.”

I visited her as often as I could after I left the community; she always left me feeling light-hearted and serene; my whole family loved her, including my sister Corinne who had visited Cambridge with three of her little ones. Justinian remarked that she wished I could develop a little more of the outgoing personality she saw in Corinne and in my mother. It was easy to take correction from such a humble person and I tried to do what she recommended – but introverts cannot will themselves to become extroverts.

At a later visit I made to her, after I had left the convent, she asked me what would have kept me in the convent – maybe if they had offered me the Presidency of the new college, Silver Lake College, run by the nuns? I assured her nothing would have kept me there once I realized I had to leave. I brought my children to see her and once, in Green Bay, she visited the motel where we all were staying, sat on my bed, and talked to me as if I were still among them. Her letters to me always requested stories about what my twins had done and said – I know she repeated them to anyone who knew me.

The most remarkable trait of hers was her trust – in people, in process and in life generally. She knew I was troubled by my longing for an intimate other. One of my graduating seniors in Cambridge, in particular, seemed so close to being my soul mate – always in emotional and mental harmony with me. I remember walking up the stairs to our beautiful Southern mansion- style convent home with its mulberry trees, wrap-around porch and chandeliers in the parlor and music room, thinking my idea of heaven would be coming home to a house like this to live with him. My position as his teacher and that I was several years his senior made me careful around him, but I indeed loved and admired him. She knew this, and yet allowed him to drive me to the train I would catch to return to the Motherhouse in June. Most other superiors would have said no, but her attitude was, let what will happen, happen. She once quietly told me that the reason she could never leave and never seriously considered marriage is that she knew in her heart that she would “love the man to pieces” and he would desert her. In any case, Eddie was the perfect gentleman during our ride but as the train was pulling out, our eyes locked for what seemed like minutes and that gaze nourished my romantic soul for months. I always appreciated that she trusted me.

When any one of us visited Sr. Justinian in her little room near the college, she always had pieces of candy to share, a treat not readily available in the convent of those days. In her eighties, after she had moved to the assistant living building called St Francis, she always offered to do more of her share of dishwashing and other chores. She said she made a bargain with God that if he would keep her legs working, keep her out of wheel chairs, she would be a servant to all, which was her normal stance throughout her life.

I first met Sister Francis Aloysius when I entered St. Ambrose High School as a freshman. We held her in awe. She seemed to favor the older students, so as we went up the grades, she was the one we wanted to favor us, to welcome us back and to greet us warmly after we had graduated. She treated every returning student as if he or she was the most important person in the world, introducing them to her class and inquiring about the details of their lives. I looked forward to being one of these visitors.

But I never returned to visit her classroom. Instead, when I decided at age 17 that I had to check out this possible vocation, this call to enter religious life, she was the one I went to talk to about it. She was full of stories of unlikely young women who left careers and boyfriends, even fiancés, to follow their vocations and who were now very happy.

What was most intriguing about her was a classic dignity, posture, and gesture. I later found out that her father had been a state senator, and I could easily imagine her as one too. A lively complexion, a riveting gaze from her dark brown eyes, and a brilliant smile revealing an occasional gold tooth seemed to be necessary parts of her appearance. Style and charisma had always fascinated me and though I could never truly define those traits, I knew them when I saw them – as I did in her. She was my high school history teacher, but there are only two things I remember from her classes. First, in a debate, she chose Joe Tiziani to defend the then-feared but now disgraced Senator Joseph McCarthy, and me to oppose him. Second, she had her whole class recite the same long poem each day as the school bell buzzed for classes to begin. Now I often mock-repeat part of that poem as a day ends, the seemingly inane words: “Now the sun is going down behind the wood, and I am very happy ‘cause I know that I’ve been good.”

Through the years, she remained good friends with my mother and, after my departure, when I visited the convent, she exercised the same charm with my daughter Marta that she had with her students. My aunt, Sister M. Priscilla, had arranged for Marta and me to have lunch with her and Francis Aloysius and they clearly hit it off. As she aged and had to leave teaching, she was given various tasks at the Motherhouse, finally ending as a seamstress with one of my crowd, Sister Mary Wilma, assisting her. I wasn’t there to see her before her death but Mary Wilma was, and though she repeated often to herself that this death was God’s will and Francis Aloysius was in a better place, she too was disconsolate at the loss.

To be continued . . . .

Finding a Guru

“A writer’s pact is with aloneness, letting no work interfere with one’s inner life . . . . Your innermost happening is worth all your love.”     -Rainier Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet.

Through the years I have come to see that there are all sorts of holy women and men, with all sorts of different religious and spiritual beliefs. At age 20 I was a conservative Catholic, feeling no challenge whatsoever to my beliefs except for a Lutheran cousin who delighted in intense argument. By age 50 I had seen others grounded in other beautiful faiths, especially Judaism. In fact, a rabbi helped me decide to leave my religious community through a talk he gave. Several nuns and I attended a Jewish service and were taken aback by the rabbi’s sermon. He seemed to be addressing us directly when he asserted that God’s gifts were not given to us to be tossed back in His Face, as it were. Could he be referring to our vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, I wondered. I knew the Jews practice caring for the poor and are obedient to a core of 613 biblical mitzvot (laws). He must mean chastity, I thought, giving up sex, husbands, children. Maybe he had a point, maybe not – for those of us from different perspectives. But I gave it a lot of thought.

I studied other religions. Through reading and courses I audited at the Harvard Divinity School, I became somewhat acquainted with Islam and came to appreciate the meaning of the very word: Islam means surrender, and Muslims see themselves as joining all nature in absolute surrender to the Divine. I knew the terrorists obeyed a corrupt form of Islam.

I asked one of my professors at Harvard what religion she would follow if she had a choice at birth, and she replied that it would be Hinduism. She explained that it was a religion that isn’t quite a religion, in that there is no set body of beliefs, no one concept of God, many different practices, and tolerance for all beliefs including atheism. She loved its mysticism, complexity and basic philosophy. But I knew I must remain a novice, a beginner in understanding these complexities. I had read the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), India’s first Nobel laureate, and also loved the work of 13th century Sufi poet Rumi, considered one of the most widely read poets in history, even today.  I felt the Rig Veda, the world’s oldest scriptural text, was worth looking into. I learned a little about the Vedanta and some of the essential Hindu beliefs. The idea that every person is eternal at their innermost core, and their goal is to reach moksha, or liberation, seemed familiar. The goal of realization meant achieving perfect unselfishness, seeing the unity of all existence, becoming detached from earthly desires and reaching an eternal relationship with God. Whew! My previous goals began to seem somewhat timid.

My tradition is Catholic, of course, and for a number of reasons, I did not feel I was abandoning Catholicism in searching other faiths. When interviewed by a local paper and asked my religious affiliation, I decided to call myself an ecumenist. Thus while spending the academic year 1992-3 as a postdoctoral scholar in residence at Harvard’s Center for the Study of World Religions, I decided to experience as many religions as possible. Through a fellow resident at the Center I heard about a practice called Sant Mat, born in India but now drawing a million adherents. I began to read its material on meditation and “The Science of Spirituality.” Its leader, Sikh guru Sant Rajinder de Maharaj, whom I met in 1993, awakened me to new possibilities of the holy life. But before I met him, I had to meet Ignacio, a Spanish Catholic, who assured me one could follow this guru and retain any other religion. He himself was profoundly religious and deeply devoted to Rajinder.

Yet he was one of the most skillful moochers I have ever known. Nacho, as others called him, was trying to live cheap. He sponged off anyone he could. He told me it was all in the name of saving his money so that he could be near his guru, even following him to other parts of the world.

I first met him when I saw him trying to slip through our gates behind a legitimate member of the Center. It was a snowy evening, the lamplight barely revealing his handsome Spanish face and lithe figure. I found out later that he had set up a small pad in the room of Alejandro, also from Spain, who was writing a dissertation on Teresa of Avila. I had gate duty that night and wanted to converse but neither he nor Alex cooperated. Then Ignacio seemed to disappear until a party at the Center offered lots of free food to its members. I talked to him there briefly, and told him I was interested in experiencing various kinds of religious practices. He told me about his guru and the wonderful form of meditation he was learning. He asked me to come down to the piano room the next day and he would explain the “science of spirituality” that his guru espoused.

He told me a little about Rajinder and he invited me to come with him to a Satsang (a meditation followed by a talk) the next week. I did so, and met an older man, Sebastian, who every week offered his apartment for the Satsang. Sebastian had a gift for hospitality and for making us all laugh. He teased Ignacio, imitating his strong accent and pretending to mis-hear whatever he said. Since I was new to his group and had not been initiated, he told me to meditate simply by attending to my favorite names and images of God. After a half hour of meditation, we watched a video of Rajinder roaming the hills of India. We heard him talking to some his followers there and we later discussed what he said. I found the guru was quite unattractive physically and mentioned this to Ignacio. He responded, “Yes, and do you think I would follow such an ugly man unless he was very holy?”

I gradually found out what it meant to join the guru’s disciples. No alcohol, vegetarianism, a spiritual diary wherein one records faults, especially against charity or humility, and above all, daily meditation on Divine Light and Divine Sound called “Nam.”  Ignacio and I had many meditation sessions together, either with Sebastian or in places closer to our lodgings, like the paths beside the Charles River, one of the Center’s own meeting rooms, or a quiet place on campus. The advantage for Ignacio in accompanying me was that I would often pay for his meals or let him know where he could eat for nothing.

I met the guru himself later that year at the Parliament of the World’s Religions, a gathering originally designed to occur every 100 years (the first one, held in 1893, introduced many Americans, for the first time, to the religions of the East, especially Hinduism and Buddhism). Later the state of the world came to seem so disastrous, (even in 1993 they were predicting the rapid decline of air, water, and soil quality) that the leadership of the Parliament shortened the time lapse to a mere 10 and then down to 5-year intervals.  In 1993 the Parliament was held in downtown Chicago and the Satsang in a city just outside Chicago called Naperville. There in the meditation center of the Science of Spirituality, I attended Rajinder’s session, which included a lecture and an explanation of his method of meditation. Along with perhaps 30 others, most of them young and energetic looking, I decided to become a disciple beginning with being initiated into his meditation method.

Rajinder sat on a large raised platform, lotus style, dressed in white with the head dress of the Sikhs – I later found out this “new” religion was really a branch of Sikhism. The Sikhs attempt to mediate between Hinduism and Islam, religions long at war in India, and their practices included some of the ideas of each faith.  Rajinder spoke simply and quietly, focusing on the importance of going within the mind to meet the divinity. We learned a mantra, or sacred words that free the mind. We then closed our eyes and concentrated our attention on the “third eye” and on certain music-like sounds that gradually emanate from the inner ear area. After about fifteen minutes of quiet, pleasant concentration, I felt a large, warm thumb press against my forehead, between my eyebrows and it felt, I thought at the time, the way Jesus’ touch might feel. We devoted a half hour to focus on the Sound or Nam – a sound within that could seem like barely audible violins or whispery raindrops or any variety of faint sounds that would gradually become stronger as one meditated more regularly (Ignacio said his became like church bells and would wake him up in the morning).

During a second half hour we centered our attention, eyes still closed, on the area between the brows (where I had seen women on campus who had come from India wearing the small red circles called bindi). We silently recited the mantra, calmed the squirrel-like brain so that it could empty itself of its usual rush of images, worries, fascinations. Soon an odd kind of inner eye appeared and dissolved and reshaped itself; I saw a purplish center with dark outlines, even “lashes” that made me feel quite peaceful as it gently changed colors to white and orange and gold. Eventually I was to learn that third eye was the center through which serious practitioners found transcendence, a sort of uplift into other “realms.” I never experienced the other realms but then I could not sit still and awake for the ideal two and one-half hours recommended, nor could I fit into my secular life the major practices: vegetarianism and total lack of alcohol. The guru and his forbears (his father, Darshun, a poet and holy man was a previous holy leader) talked of the seven realms as naturally as if they were giving directions to a local park. The gurus who initiated the various practitioners would also appear within the vision that others experienced. The ideal in both Hinduism and Sikhism is the importance of a fully enlightened person, a satguru, to guide one toward the Transcendent Absolute.

But though I could not completely fulfill the requirements, I found quite thrilling and joyful the aspects that I could experience. Not only had I actually experienced the colors and sounds predicted, but I had integrated my own religion in imaging Jesus when Rajinder touched my forehead with his thumb to open the third eye. Later, while in line, waiting for the free vegetarian meal that was part of the conference, I felt exceedingly awkward because people kept pushing me out of my place. Then I felt Rajinder’s presence as he touched my elbow and motioned a couple of people to move and let me in more comfortably. This made me feel oddly happy. Then when it came time for would-be disciples to become formally initiated, I decided to join the newcomers. They were a mixed group, more young than old (at 57 I was definitely a senior member). We were to come up to the dais and receive puja, small “sacred” gifts from the Master, as he was called. I noticed that all those ahead of me returned to their seats with a rather goofy, or more positively, exultant, grin on their faces. I was uncomfortable as I knew I didn’t believe strongly enough to have such a blissful reaction to being close to Rajinder. When it was my turn, I stood before him and held out my hands to receive his gift. He was solemn but a sort of ray reached from his eyes into my eyes and/or forehead – the sort you occasionally see in pictures but which I never thought was so tangible. I suddenly too felt immensely joyful as I walked over to sign my name in the disciples’ book. I must have been grinning also as I returned to my seat. This euphoria lasted for several hours. It felt like an abstract presence of God with an accompanying feeling of my being absolutely safe, oddly loved, with a sense that there was nothing to worry about, ever.

I could return to this joyful feeling through the following year. I lost touch with Ignacio when he returned to Spain to take on the position he was preparing for at Harvard – rumor had it he was being groomed for a position in his family’s business, the firm that makes the lovely and well known Lladro figurines.

Looking back at all this, how impossible now seems spending hours a day in meditation with my full-time job, grant writing, the need to exercise, to keep this journal and the unsatisfying distractions during my shorter periods of meditation. I suspect Nacho spends his summer vacation as part of this group. And I hope someday to find a Satsang and return to a full observance of Rajinder’s recommended practices – vegetarianism (despite having a meat-loving husband and family), no alcohol (in this partying, drinking culture), regular attendance at Satsang if possible. It can’t hurt.