The Ear of the Heart: An Actress' Journey From Hollywood to Holy Vows

by Hart, Dolores

  My daddy was a man in search of a star, and I had to rely on the mercy of God and trust that my own love and forgiveness would somehow make the way easier for him.

  The adjoining towns of Bethlehem and Woodbury had accepted Reverend Mother Benedict’s offer to end the standoff on Burritt Hill Road. She had proposed that a new road be built that would follow their northern property line and leave the land intact, thus keeping the monastery enclosure unbroken. Further, she had promised that the Community would pay half the costs and provide half of the physical labor that would go into building the two-mile thoroughfare connecting Flanders Road with Route 61, which would bear the name Robert Leather Road.

  Eight months into my canonical year—and for the next two years—the Community took on the grueling work of turning a forest into a roadway. In fair weather or foul, we women cleared the land with clippers, shovels and our bare hands to make it ready for the heavy machinery to lay the asphalt.

  All emotions—joy, sadness, fear—were present, as were most of the women, led by Mother Stephen and Father Prokes manning tractors and Reverend Mother swinging an axe. I remember mostly gray, damp days that drew the color out of everything. I remember callused hands, bleeding knees, scuffed toes. And mud. Not only earth and water mud. Mud of dust and sweat, too.

  At the end of each workday, I would stand on the edge of the road that was not yet a road but, like an eager child, stretching into growth. Although it was the dirtiest, hardest, most exhausting slave labor I could ever imagine, it was also a very real experience in corporate collaboration. It offered a new analysis of contemplative life, and I found that exciting, but I knew instinctively that it cut deeper into where the basic issues of the discontent within the Community continued to ferment. It was almost the straw that broke the camel’s back.

  All during the work on the road, the group of nuns at odds on almost every issue became more vocal in their disagreements with Reverend Mother. “Why do we have to have all this land to take care of?” they would demand. “We are not meant to get involved with the world. We came here to pray, to meditate, to be good contemplatives. What does this road have to do with monastic life?”

  Reverend Mother stood firm and insisted that land and monastic life do relate. She fervently believed that, from the very beginning, Saint Benedict intended that each monastery would be a center of holiness where monks could live contained lives, built around the recitation throughout the day and night of the Divine Office, but which also could provide all the other necessities of daily life. Thus, throughout history, each monastery has been a self-contained entity. In chapter 48 of the Rule, Saint Benedict states, “Idleness is the enemy of the soul. The brethren, therefore, must be occupied at stated hours in manual labor . . . for then are they truly monks when they live by the labor of their hands.”

  Envisioning that the monastery would become an abbey one day, Reverend Mother foresaw a place with land and animals, a place of green that by the mid-twenty-first century might be the only conservation land left in our area of Connecticut.

  During the work on Robert Leather Road, on one of those mud-encrusted days when, dog-tired and hungry, I took my usual place in line for supper in the refectory, all at once my attention was taken by the water pitchers on the shelf. They were all lined up with handles facing the same direction and made a sparkling, beautiful tableau. A small thing, I suppose, but I hadn’t noticed it before, and it made me realize that someone had made that effort to make our lives more pleasant.

  I soon began to notice other small things that made our life together more comfortable, a little more serene. From time to time, notes appeared at my place at table—notes of encouragement, with bits of grasses or flowers glued to the paper—from sisters who recognized and perhaps shared what I was feeling and cared enough to offer support. Each time I was confronted with a new grace, I was reminded of my trip on the Dutch barge when I saw my first windmill: “There’s one!”

  During a chant lesson, Mother Columba presented me with a book she had made herself. It was a charming depiction of the chants wherein the notes resembled cartoon figures she named Dot and Po who danced up and down on the staff. It became my constant companion as an uncomplicated and painless guide—as well as a reminder that I had not become invisible, that my good friend still cared about me.

  But no matter how hard I studied the psalms, I still could not master the Latin. I could not grasp the meaning. There were nuns in the Community who could translate the Offices in a snap. I was still relying on the translations printed in the book. I had come to the point of just accepting this because there is something in the music that calls you even if you do not understand the words. The beauty of the melodies and the elan of the rhythm make you peaceful and prayerful. “Singing”, in the words of Saint Augustine, “is praying twice.”

  Then one morning in Prime while we were singing Psalm 17 and we came to the verse “et eduxit me in latitudinem: salvum me fecit, quoniam voluit me.” I suddenly knew that this was an important verse. I could feel in my heart that it had meaning for me.

  After the Office, I sought out Mother Columba and asked her what the verse meant. She slowly translated: “ ‘Et eduxit me in’ means ‘and the Lord has led me into’; ‘latitudinem‘, an ‘open space’, a ‘free space’; ‘salvum me fecit’, ‘and He has given me this salvation’; ‘quoniam voluit me’, ‘because He loved me’. It’s simple, Sister. God sets you free because He loves you.” That was exactly what I had felt when I was singing.

  That was the key that opened the Office to me. I used to hear sisters say, “I love Lauds; if I can get to Lauds my whole day is better” or “Without Compline, I feel I have not ended the day well”, and I would wonder what they meant by that. Now I thought of the scene in The Miracle Worker when young Helen Keller realizes the connection between the word she had learned only by rote and the actual thing it represented—water. I could identify with that moment. I knew that if I could stay with it and truly pray the Office, the significance would come through.

  Chanting the Office finally allowed me to comprehend each Hour of the day in answer to the question: Why am I doing this? Why am I sweeping the floor? Why am I lifting rocks? When you come to the Office you have the opportunity to bring to consciousness the fact that you are doing this in praise of God.

  “Run while ye have the light of life, lest the darkness overtake you” appears in the prologue of the Rule. Reverend Mother often stressed in our meetings together that I should “seize that moment”. It was a message I deeply valued. I remained uncomfortable with elements of monastic life that I found unreasonable, and she once said to me, “I think you should write those things down.” Now seemed an apt time to do some moment-seizing. I sat down and wrote a letter to Reverend Mother, the one person with whom I sensed I was earning a place of respect.

  The letter seemed to write itself. Thoughts I had kept pent up since entering came rushing out.

  A real suffering we women share is a need to establish ourselves as individuals, yet everything is geared to some sort of demonical force that wants to stamp out our uniqueness. How can we, as women from the outside, be asked to leave our experiences, like so much baggage, at the gate? Each of us is matchless and should, for the good of the Church and this Community, be recognized as such and drawn upon to share our distinctiveness. We must be essentially what we are in the deepest calling of our natures and should be encouraged to express the gifts we have in order to contribute, share and participate in the growth of the Community. We shouldn’t be just used as animals to obey.

  There is a false image of each woman that is presented when she is so restricted, and so is denied the opportunity not only to permit other people to know her but for her to know herself.

  If only a newcomer had someone to talk to, really talk to and unload the pain, someone who could share her own journey within the enclosure and help point the way.

  The next morning, Sister Judith brought her letter to Mother Benedict, w
ho read it in her presence. “Before you change things here,” the older nun told the novice, “let’s see if you can submit to this outfit.”

  Then she folded the letter neatly and placed it in the drawer of her desk.

  Twenty-Six

  At the close of the canonical year, another ceremony marks a further step in monastic life. Ahead of me was First Vows, which would last for three years.

  During this time I would still remain free to change my mind; not until the end of those three years—five years after entering the monastery—would I make vows for a lifetime.

  But, binding or not, I was making a contract with God. They may be called First Vows, but they are vows. I knew in the core of my being that I would be committing for the rest of my life.

  It was sobering to realize that every woman who had been with me in the novitiate had left. My dear friend Valerie Imbleau, who had just been clothed, would soon also leave. As I got closer to vows, the personal pressure was more immense than when I entered because I now knew the life I would be choosing would be forever.

  I received a long letter from Mom acknowledging the upcoming vows. She insisted she was not writing to dissuade me, but the letter was, in fact, a last-ditch attempt to do just that. She credited me with “special gifts that could do God’s work on the outside” and went on to plead, “Is it ridiculous to say that Billy Graham has reached more with his homilies than someone in complete seclusion?” Then she moved in for the kill: “It is an unnatural thing for a woman not to give herself in marriage and to the love of a child.”

  I didn’t need Mom’s reminder of something that I felt intensely. It was very clear to me that what I was giving over was the right to my own body, relinquishing the right to have a husband, my own children. This realization was on my mind constantly.

  When I was finally summoned to Reverend Mother’s office, I felt I was at least willing to make those vows from an intellectual standpoint, but I was not able to—nor did I even want to—hide my emotional and very human reluctance. I needed to make certain that my motives for continuing were solid and to know without a doubt that making First Vows was the will of God. I did feel that God wanted me here, but the struggle was still so acute that I didn’t know if it would be possible to endure. If my fears reflected a basic worry that I was trying to fit my 8 1/2 AA into Cinderella’s slipper, then perhaps the time had come to change the wardrobe.

  The customs were not a problem for me; I understood them. They were an honest representation of the Benedictine values that I was trying to incorporate into my life. I still perceived the discipline as a barrier, yet something deep inside me knew that discipline is a way of curbing weakness that would cause only distortion and unhappiness.

  Religious life is often painted as something entirely different from what it is. To be obedient and humble should be simply to stand in truth, unhampered by one’s ego. If we can escape the need for recognition that is so built into human nature, we can free ourselves from our inhibiting patterns. It can be a blessed freedom—also a terrible freedom.

  —Was submission the most difficult thing you had to learn?

  Submission to what I felt was wrong.

  Reverend Mother had a great breadth of understanding that gave her the ability to relate, but if she expected something of you, she put the fear of the Lord into you. Mother Placid said she would rather tell Reverend Mother she had murdered someone than tell her she had picked one of her flowers. I think I could say the same.

  Reverend Mother was understanding and not dismayed by my hesitance. “Such anxiety is normally part of our makeup, and it has a value”, she said with a smile. “It allows us to know the limitations of our surrender.”

  Those gray-green eyes that struck me from the first moment I saw them as penetrating and wise now had a profoundly consoling effect on me. The lasting thing about this woman—the thing that made her unforgettable—was that the most important criterion for her was whether something brought her closer to God.

  “You must relax more into the light before plunging into a new set of responsibilities that your culture and background, especially, hardly prepared you for. This sense of panic is not as long-lived as it used to be, but a period of further growth would make the step much less a strain.” She recognized I was not an oddity of the sixties. I’m sure she sensed that a whole new generation of women would enter religious life if only it corresponded to their own internal sensibilities.

  —Indeed, everyone who came after me also needed to find her own identity in the Community and to learn how to serve in specific ways. Obedience must be required, yes, but not mindless obedience. It should require full consent of the nun in accordance with her gifts brought by her genealogy and profession and given in love.

  Reverend Mother hadn’t encouraged my entrance, but she was very receptive now. I received several letters of encouragement from her. “Monastic vows”, she wrote, “are the maximum indication that truly we have come to know and believe the love which God has for us. The step that you are taking establishes you in a state of permanent commitment beyond which you can do no more.

  “But no amount of effort to communicate the sense of inner communion with Christ on the part of those who live this can be truly successful unless God first grants the favor. God did grant you the favor.”

  She sustained me in my vocation. I felt a oneness with her. I knew what she was saying as I know red in various shades of pink.

  At the end of our retreat, she asked how I felt about taking a six-month extension. I felt relief.

  Support came from within the Community. Once again, notes of encouragement began to appear at my place in the refectory. And, as always, Maria offered solid reassurance for commitment. In fact, commitment was in the air for Maria. In April she came for a visit and brought someone she wanted me to meet—a pianist, she said, by the name of Byron Janis.

  —I admired her understatement. Byron Janis, a pianist?

  It was obvious that Maria was in love with Byron, and she was determined to marry him over her mother’s objections. Well, if Rocky didn’t like him, I was sure I would.

  Byron wore a cream-colored suit and fairly glowed. I felt connected to him immediately on both a personal and a professional level. We both loved Maria, and we both knew the nightmare of performing—how tough it is to live up to your own expectation and to face the fear of not performing as well as you had previously. Before they left that day, Byron said he would like to give me a piece of music—the very first song he wrote. He said he wanted it to be mine.

  As the days passed, I was less and less concerned about specific elements of the life that had troubled me. My concern was being replaced with a feeling that the monastic vocation could be truly mine. I worried more whether I would be able to carry out what was needed.

  —You said whether you would be able to—not that there was any question about wanting to.

  That’s true. When you first enter a monastery, you feel that you are on the outside of something and that, though it is invisible, there is a perceptible pulsing heart—a center of truth and meaning that promises to be more real than anything you have ever known and draws you toward itself. That’s your path in a sense—in toward that deeper truth. And it starts to dawn on you that all your worries, your nervous tension about what you don’t understand or how you think things should be, are ultimately not going to get resolved in the ways that were once available to you. You have to let go and experience a free-fall. Otherwise you stay on the outside looking into a mystery that you sense others are caught up in but that you can’t enter. It is very scary to let go of all your old defenses and yet necessary to do so. It is highly paradoxical, but I think that is the form most spiritual truth comes in.

  When I came to the gate, I came with the promise of a forever commitment. It was now that force that took over the apprehension, and if there was any thought then of turning back, I have no recollection of it now. I knew the evil spirit was gambling on my changing m
y mind. I could feel he had big money on that. When, in the first weeks of my entrance, the flood of letters arrived from all those people I didn’t know, telling me how grateful they were that I made that decision, I had a difficult time recognizing the person they were talking about. But I now knew the one they had been betting on. That seems contrary to the doubt, the anxiety, the panic I lived with for so long. But in a sense I never really felt like a person until I came to Regina Laudis. Staying was not a compromise but, in fact, the real challenge of my life.

  I made my First Vows on June 29, 1966. First and Final Vows are written out and signed—Saint Benedict’s shrewdest rule is “put it in writing”. One promises to be bound to stability, conversion of life (for us this vow includes poverty and chastity and literally means one will change) and obedience. A memento card marking each personal ceremony is printed for the celebrant to hand out to family and friends. My choice for the text came from Psalm 17: “He set me free in the open and saved me because He loved me.” It was beautifully illustrated by Mother Placid’s block print of a small nun literally dancing in happiness.

  First Vows are not necessarily private—family members and friends can be invited to the short ceremony—but often they are witnessed by only the Community. No one outside the Community came to my First Vows, not even Mom. This had far less to do with her deep-seated feelings than with the fact that she had not been in good health for some months and had recently been hospitalized in Los Angeles. I knew this from Don Robinson, who remained in touch with her, visiting the hospital every day. She had been experiencing headaches that incapacitated her. Her condition had been recognized variously as a pinched nerve, a sacroiliac problem and whiplash but never definitely diagnosed. At one point she was told the pain was all in her head and that she should see a psychiatrist.