And Then There Were Nuns

by Jane Christmas

  When the Vatican effectively gave the heave-ho to chant, a curious thing happened to the nuns and monks: they became lethargic, and many got sick. The sense of hearing connects and resonates directly to the heart, but when doctors studied the phenomenon of the fatigued nuns and monks, they discovered something remarkable about brains and ears and Gregorian chant: a well-tuned ear takes the sounds we utter and stimulates the brain by charging the cerebral cortex with electrical charges. In other words, vocal sounds act like antioxidants: the higher the frequency, the greater the impact.

  Some cultures have a higher count of electrical charges in their language than others. British English, for example, has an extremely high count—2,000 to 12,000 hertz (or cycles per second); French has 1,000 to 2,000 hertz; North American English has a paltry 800 to 3,000 hertz. Try saying a monotonic phrase such as “Hey, how’s it going” and then mimic a chirpy British voice saying, “Jolly good, Major!” You can hear the difference, but more importantly, you can feel it.

  When researchers probed further, they found that Gregorian chant contains all the frequencies of the voice spectrum—7,000 to 9,000 hertz. Without this daily dose of brain zaps, it was little wonder that the monks and nuns were getting sick.

  These hits of auditory electrical charges benefit not only the singer but also the listeners of chant who follow the same pattern of deep, peaceful breathing as the chanters. Furthermore, chant’s rhythmic pattern mimics the gentle ebbing and flowing of water, the source of life.

  Though it might on the surface look easy, it actually takes years of practice to master chant. For starters, a novice has to completely subsume his or her personality—chant is no place for the Céline Dions and Pavarottis of the world. The novice must learn to sing at the same pitch as her fellow chanters, sustaining vowels and articulating final consonants in effortless unison, breathing in the same places, and controlling that breath through long lines of mostly Latin Scripture. The secret is to develop a resonating cavity not only in the mouth and throat but in the entire body: chant is about producing a gorgeous sound, yes, but it is also about internalizing the Word of God.

  I can still remember the hypnotizing effect when I first heard Gregorian chant as a teenager. It was as if the music had communicated something inside me. There was a shudder of primordial recognition, and finally a transcendent sense of reverence, as if the universe suddenly made sense. The experience was calming and made me feel as if I belonged to something big and profound. It made me feel connected to God.

  Of course, Gregorian chant wasn’t exactly on the Billboard Hot 100 back then, but whenever I took a break from banging my head to Steppenwolf, Cream, Black Sabbath, and Led Zeppelin and tossed my sole chant recording onto the turntable, I would drift off to a land of peaceful misty landscapes and heavenly shafts of sunlight.

  Like heavy metal, chant is one of the few types of music that improves with volume. Crank it up, and that ethereal echo-like quality will make it sound as if the chant is coming directly from Heaven.

  It is also impossible to entertain a bad or negative thought while listening to chant. It has a cleansing quality, like a sorbet that neutralizes the frenzy of life.

  Because of the misinterpretation of Vatican II, papal HQ had to reiterate its support for chant, and the musical form trickled back into its monasteries and convents. Nowadays, those are the only places you hear it sung, and a great shame that is, because no other period in civilization like our present could benefit more from its restorative powers.

  ( 3:v )

  AS HAPPENED with the sisters at St. John the Divine, I fell quickly and easily into the monks’ routine at Quarr. During the offices, I followed along in Latin as best I could and adopted the monks’ custom of bowing low every time the doxology was invoked: Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto: sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in saecula saeculorum. Amen. (Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit: as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.)

  Occasionally my mind drifted from the page to the monks themselves. They looked to range in age between forty and ninety-plus. One was big and burly; another had a trim gray beard. I had learned through the monk-vine of their diverse backgrounds—construction worker, electrical engineer, marine biologist, teacher, rare-books expert—and that their vocation as monks required them to take up a host of other duties for which they had little previous training: landscaper, infirmarian, housekeeper, guestmaster, bookkeeper, historian.

  I scrutinized their inscrutable faces for signs of boredom or rebelliousness. Did it bug them to repeat the same psalms every Tuesday? Did they regret their vocation or privately wonder about how their lives might have turned out had they married or chosen to serve God in the secular world? Had their natures been truly tamed? How did they manage all the physical work at Quarr and still maintain a worship schedule that could be described as a spiritual Ironman triathlon? Did they just accept their lives and get on with it? I wanted to get into a penetrating discussion with them, but at the same time I was mindful about overstepping the bounds of propriety. In my previous life as a journalist, probing questions were a basic necessity for gathering information; now they struck me as intrusive and nosy.

  I arrived the next day for Mass to discover that it was the feast honoring the Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple, the day Jesus was formally introduced by his parents to the temple elders. Also known as Candlemas, the feast marks the official end of Christmas.

  There were a half dozen people in the congregation that day, five more than there were most days. We assembled in the lower nave and were handed thin tapers by the abbot and monks, who were dressed in white habits and cowls with white embroidered chasubles draped around their shoulders.

  With candles lit, we lined up behind the monks to begin the procession. To my delighted surprise, the procession headed through the cloister door. Finally, a legitimate peek into the guys-only zone! I was thrilled to bits.

  It was a rainy, gusty day, and as we filed beneath the cloister porch chanting Latin hymns and shielding our candles from the threat of extinguishment, billowing clouds of incense engulfed us as the thurifer swung the gold censer rhythmically from left to right. It was an extraordinary experience, almost otherworldly. I glimpsed snippets of the cloister and its courtyard of manicured shrubs and gardens, and of statuary and benches. It no doubt looked nicer in better weather.

  The line processed back into the church, where Mass continued partly in English, partly in Latin. It was all so mysterious and profound, and the incense choked the atmosphere like dense fog. I was so caught up in the pageantry and mysticism that I allowed myself to be drawn toward the altar with the other worshippers for Communion. There the spell was broken. I prepared to receive the host, then suddenly remembered that I was forbidden by Catholic doctrine to do so. Whereas Anglicans extend Holy Communion to anyone who believes in God—theoretically a Jew or a Muslim could receive Communion—the Catholic way is nowhere near as accommodating. Thus I found myself gritting my teeth and glumly crossing my arms across my chest as a signal that I was “other.” It was degrading, like attending a party and being told you had to sit at the children’s table. A spine of rebellion repositioned itself within me. I tried not to appear like a grumpy communicant as the abbot made the sign of the cross above my head and murmured a blessing in Latin, which for all I knew was “Shame on you for not being a Catholic.”

  ( 3:vi )

  I PADDED down the hall the following morning to the guest lounge, where I found Father Nicholas absentmindedly arranging the coffee mugs and biscuit tins on the countertop.

  I had spent the previous few days worshipping, walking, reading—the Bible and Merton, mostly—and sleeping. I felt wonderful; I radiated calmness. How could I not? I was living in a spiritual Eden that expected nothing of me except to love and praise God. During my daily walks, I performed my self-directed duties as an itinerant nun-in-training: I greeted strangers and asked God
to watch over them. I blessed the birds and wild animals, the players lining up their shots on the golf course. I prayed for peace, for England, for Canada, and for full tummies and warm shelter for the destitute.

  In the evenings, when I walked back to the guest house after compline, I stood unafraid in the cold darkness, my head tilted back, mesmerized by a vivid dome of stars. The cosmos never looked so wondrous, so immense.

  But boredom began to creep in. A kind of spiritual stupor had taken hold, and I was sleeping more than was good for me. I had missed three consecutive offices, and if I hoped to be a nun, that sort of slackness would never do. I needed to show a bit more productivity.

  Seeing Father Nicholas moving the biscuit tins around gave me my opportunity.

  “If there’s anything you’d like me to do, please let me know. I don’t care how menial it is,” I beseeched him.

  His response was not what I expected.

  “What is it with you people?” he chided, flapping his arms in a show of annoyance. “People come here to escape the chaos of the secular world, and then they go barmy with the silence.”

  His voice softened when he noticed my chastened look.

  “Look, the whole point is that contemplation is meant to make you so quiet that you can hear God speaking to you.”

  “I’m not sure God intends me to be so idle,” I pouted.

  “I think He does,” said Father Nicholas. “Maybe you should enjoy it while you can.”

  For so many years I had been frenetically active, busy to the point of wondering how I was able to cram so much into a single day. Busyness had become an addiction. Now that I had my wish for tranquility, my body and mind were bucking the peaceful nonsense and craving the next hit of adrenaline and stimulation.

  I moved closer to Father Nicholas and fiddled with the biscuit tins and coffee mugs, too. I asked him how he came to be at Quarr.

  He said he had initially trained as an Anglican priest, but after serving in a parish church he decided he was more cut out to be a monk. Once he became a monk, he realized that his sympathies were more closely aligned to Roman Catholicism than Anglicanism, so he converted and changed communities. He became a Catholic monk and then a monk/priest. Like Father Luke, he had bolted from the Anglican fold. Was everyone bailing on the Church of England?

  Somehow our conversation wound its way around to the topic of abortion. Spend ten minutes in the company of a Catholic, and “abortion” is guaranteed to flare up.

  “I don’t know what it’s like in Canada, but it’s a huge issue here,” Father Nicholas insisted. “Under-sixteen pregnancies are epidemic in Britain—the highest in Europe—and young women are aborting in astronomical numbers. Seven hundred baby deaths a day!”

  His arms were really flapping now. “I studied Vatican II, and there is nothing in there about contraceptives.”

  “Then why is this an issue?” I asked. “If the abortion campaign by the church has been so prolonged and vociferous, why hasn’t it worked? And if contraception isn’t in Vatican II, then how come the church won’t promote it as a way to stem abortions?”

  “Secular politics,” he said, peering at me over his filmy glasses. “That’s the problem. Government has put money into abortion counseling, but they haven’t put any money into pro-life counseling. Governments are in the business of killing: birth control, abortion, eugenics, euthanasia, war. They’re handing out condoms to ten-year-old boys, for heaven’s sake. Gosh, when I was ten I wouldn’t know what to do with a condom.”

  Father Nicholas was distrustful of politicians, and he expressed reservations about Tony Blair’s conversion to Catholicism. “And Cherie Blair is RC, but she campaigns on the pro-choice side.” Among traditional Catholics, the two were pariahs.

  Father Nicholas liked his religion and his politics clean, simple, and unwavering.

  “That’s one of the problems I have with Anglicanism,” he said. “You can never get a straight answer on anything. At least with the Catholics you know where you stand. The Anglicans are all over the map. They debate the theology ad nauseam; everything to them is open to interpretation. By doing that you have nothing to hold on to, nothing to firmly stick in the ground.”

  “Is that why you converted to Catholicism?” I asked.

  “The constant back-and-forth debate on things was a big factor. I’m all for debate, but it’s become insane. It’s like, like...”—Father Nicholas had become exasperated, and he sputtered and swung his arms trying to find the right words—“... like the whole institution is run by a committee of academics! Everyone has an opinion, and no one has the guts to make a firm declaration.”

  “Exactly!” I blurted, stabbing the air with my finger. “I’ve felt the same way for ages. What is it with Anglicans that makes them that way?”

  Father Nicholas exhaled loudly and shook his head. The Anglican Church/Church of England can drive you so mad with frustration that you want to quit. Debates can and do last decades and generations. When a decision does get made, it is written with spectacular vagueness, leaving the decision open to further debate. Even in name, the church is a glaring indication of an institution-wide inability to reach consensus. The church is variously referred to as the Anglican Church, the Church of England, and the Episcopal Church. They are all autonomous churches linked to the Anglican tradition, but there is only a hazy central, universal authority and leader. Meanwhile, go to England, the States, Australia, Canada, South Africa, China, Poland, and you will find the Roman Catholic Church rendered as the Roman Catholic Church. Everywhere. Woody Allen once quipped, “The Roman Catholic Church is the only true ‘The’ church.”

  Evidence of Anglicanism’s flimsy foundation was all around. The day before, while out for a walk, I had wandered into the churchyard of the forlorn-looking Church of the Holy Cross in the village of Binstead. There was no information to be found on the history of the place, and the so-called welcome board did not so much as list the name of the priest. All contact information had been redacted except for a line saying that there was a service at eight on Sunday morning. There was no sign indicating that the church even belonged to the Church of England—I learned that later from the Catholics at Quarr. In fact, I would find similarly redacted signs on several Anglican churches throughout Ryde during my stay on the island. Why was this happening?

  For a faith that was essentially born out of a tyrant’s temper tantrum, Anglicanism has evolved into one of the most flexible of mainstream religions. Indecisive for sure, but also generally tolerant. Still, the Anglican Church seemed to be afflicted with a self-sabotaging gene, and it was worrying me.

  The more I thought about the words of Fathers Nicholas and Luke, the more it raised my doubts about Anglicanism. Was it better to belong to a strict faith in which you quietly bent the rules, or belong to a flexible faith with rubbery rules?

  I thought more deeply about my own experience as an Anglican. Many of the Anglican priests of my acquaintance were like academics: distracted, unhelpful, and afflicted with a strong sense of nose-in-the-air superiority. Of the twenty-five or so clergy I have personally known, all but three or four had been insufferable snobs, so much so that it was the pompous attitude of its priests, not the fuzzy doctrine itself, that was driving away me and others from the church. I once overheard a priest denigrate another parishioner behind the parishion-er’s back for the heinous crime of pronouncing Magdalen College as mag-da-lin rather than the obtuse pronunciation of mawd-lin. Who does that?

  Wait a minute: What the hell was going on? My spiritual journey was supposed to be about becoming a nun, and here it was being hijacked by religion and semantics. Was this where I, a cradle Anglican, was being led? To switch teams? Or was my desire to be a nun more about finding Christian authenticity? I wanted religion without the busyness, the bitchiness, and the bullshit, but the only places that seemed to offer pure, unadulterated spiritual nourishment were convents and monasteries.

  ( 3:vii )

  QUARR’S MONASTI
C day began at five-thirty with vigils, but as Father Nicholas so keenly pointed out when I first arrived, it was doubtful I would be putting in an appearance at that hour.

  My own monastic day started with lauds at seven o’clock.

  Lauds means praise, and of all the offices, it is the one that most brims with positivity. Lauds and compline were my favorite offices, the bookends of my day. I loved the chants at compline and the psalms at lauds. While compline acted as a lullaby, lauds was my wake-up call, coaxing my senses into consciousness like fragile young plants shaking off the morning dew.

  As the monks prayed Psalm 97, which exhorts, “Shout to the Lord all the earth, ring out your joy,” the pale winter sun streamed through the amber glass windows of the abbey church, igniting the day.

  I often headed out for a walk after breakfast. I was girded with an explorer’s enthusiasm, not quite sure where I was heading or for what reason but thrilled nonetheless to be in new and unfamiliar surroundings. It’s true: it is easier to see beauty in the world when you don’t have to slog for a living each day, when you no longer have to worry about your every output being constantly analyzed and judged. My mind cycled back to the workplace I had recently left, and I thought, Yup, I’d rather be praying.

  I turned left onto a mud-packed lane, where Shetland ponies munched contentedly in a paddock and a pair of large sheep presided in another, and past the ruined remnants of a previous incarnation of Quarr Abbey.

  Quarr took root here in 1132, when a small but plucky band of Benedictine monks from Savigny, Normandy, were dispatched by their abbot to the Isle of Wight to build an abbey. The man with the deep pockets for this endeavor was Baldwin de Redvers, earl of Devon and a lord of the island, who believed that funding an abbey and eventually being buried in it would guarantee the everlasting veneration of his soul.