You’ll see this on the morning of January 10th.  I’m writing it on the evening of the 9th, the day that the reality of a full at-home monastic vocation came to me.

For years I had been reading, studying, and inquiring into devotional practices from all kinds of monastics, Protestant and Catholic, young and old, men and women, married and single.  I laughed my way through The Abbey Up the Hill by Carol Bonomo as she told the story of her path into Benedictine oblation, the society of lay sisters and brothers of that order.  For her, it was AA therapy on steroids.

In This House of Brede was great story-telling, and The Story of a Soul brought realities of cloistered life home for two housewives whose purpose was to see if anything like that kind of devotion could be achieved at home.  I had a friend who was feeding me “nun books,” and before long I was starting to write about what we found.  We were both married with children, grandchildren, mortgages, laundry and good old American “busyness”  filling, as we thought, every corner of our lives.

What a discovery!  Monastics in hospitals and watch shops, in universities and in the movies!  A then-famous starlet, after giving Elvis Presley his first on-screen kiss, who went on to other major rolls and loads of fame and lots of money, who had a devoted suitor and his offer of marriage, walked away from all of it, even the man who loved her deeply, and entered a closed monastery (monasteries usually are closed; convents only sometimes.)  Delores Hart still appears on screen occasionally, because she is wise and witty and still a voting member of the Screen Actors’ Guild – the only nun on the roles!  She gets to break cloister to appear on talk shows.  People are still fascinated with a life like hers.

We wanted a life like hers, my friend and I, only it would have to be uniquely ours, fitted to our circumstances.  MIddle-aged married women, already too old to be considered for any novitiate but our own.  We made a start.  Small increases in prayer.  Tiny fasts.  Regular hours of prayer, even if they only lasted for minutes.

Then one day, one of our husbands left to be where we were so happily headed, into the Presence of God.  My husband, in fact.  I hope I’ll never forget the grin on his face some mornings when he would come around the corner and see me giving thanks around a string of old wooden beads … one of the earliest and best of our practices, still very much a part of our happy discipline.  He understood, he gave it all his blessing, he thought it was something valuable, and in the years before he died, the two of us had begun to read and pray together in the morning, coffee mugs steaming at hand.

That very night, on the day of his death, as I was getting into bed without him and feeling that unbending realization that this was my new normal, I knew that I was now the Lord’s alone, if He would have me, and that very reminder made me smile.  Have me?  He had made me ready when I thought I was sort of playing at devotion.

Frank didn’t have to die for me to live monastically.  My friend continues in her at-home cloister, and her husband is still there, still delighted with his wife, and probably still grinning at her when she finds her prayer corner in their library, lights a candle or two, and hunkers down with God.  Others have joined us.  For me on that night, the truth of “going solo” lifted me into the arms of God.  Here was a purpose where purpose had died … my life’s purpose was that night lying in a morgue, and yes, those thoughts did come to call.  Monasticism made everything easier.  I had lived for Frank, and he had lived for me, and the best parts were when we found delight in one another, laughing, dreaming, rejoicing.  Would Jesus mind if I laughed and dreamed and rejoiced with Him?  I knew the answer.

Oh my dear Sisters … whatever the calling on your life … Jesus Christ is so much fun to know!  Come, since we must do this alone, let’s do it together.

Coffee for Two

Cor Unum Abbey album