And Then There Were Nuns

by Jane Christmas

  You begin at forgiveness, the Voice Within said.

  My reaction was instantaneous.

  Nope. I am not forgiving him, I replied, shaking my head resolutely. No can do. I can’t believe you even suggested that. Besides, forgive him for what? For violating me? For robbing me of my ability to trust anyone again? For hollowing out a cavity within me where fear and bitterness have comingled so completely that my personality has altered from being happy and trusting to being high-strung and restless?

  In the midst of this rant, I took a breath, and that’s when the small, steady Voice Within interjected: No, not him, said the Voice Within. Forgive yourself.

  My eyes sprang open. I stayed on the floor and let the words sink in. It was not exactly a forehead-smacking epiphany, a glorious dawn of understanding complete with an angelic choir belting out the “Hallelujah Chorus,” but it made enough of an impact to make me utter in a rather surprised tone, “Oh.”

  A process of softening slowly took hold, and like the tightly coiled ammonite fossils in the rockery garden and around the feet of St. Hilda, I started to unfurl.

  Forgive yourself.

  For nearly thirty years, I had beaten myself up about something I could neither have controlled nor have anticipated. I had held myself responsible for answering the urgent knock at the hotel door without thinking about my safety, for not expressing my anger and outrage, for not going to the hospital or to the police immediately after the attack, for letting the guy get away with it.

  Instead of fighting back, which is what I should have done with every ounce of my being, I cultivated a posture of confidence and humor to cover up my weak spots and to convince myself that I was A-OK. It takes work to maintain that strong, impermeable exterior. That armor of invincibility that I had forged so skillfully as self-protection had kept at bay those who might have helped me. At the time, I didn’t want anyone’s help: I was afraid they would think less of me.

  Ah, that old, deadly sin Pride. It had slithered under my skin, snaked its way into my heart and made a bed there. It was feeding off my life force and suffocating my relationships. The denial and the pain was infecting everything in my life.

  What people do not understand is that the more you avoid something, the more it will torment you and rip you apart and also rip apart those you love who do not understand why they are being ripped apart.

  ( 7:iv )

  A NOTICE went up on the bulletin board informing the sisters that private confessions would be heard the following week. Fulton Sheen, the late U.S. archbishop, once said that hearing nuns’ confessions was like being stoned to death with popcorn.

  I penciled my name into one of the available slots. If years of prayer, sporadic therapy, medication, binge eating, and binge drinking had not worked, then maybe confession would ease the trauma of rape.

  Confession in the manner practiced by the Roman Catholic Church is not usually done in the Anglican faith, but some Anglican religious communities adopt the Roman tradition during Lent as a way to start fresh. Easter is the Christian new year.

  I went back to my cell and had a sudden urge to clean it. It was only when my arms were up to their elbows in warm, soapy water that I recognized the pattern and the symbolism it conveyed. There’s something about a rape memory that sends you into Lady Macbeth mode.

  Sister Patricia had asked to meet for another session of lectio divina. I was pretty sure she knew I was hiding something, but while she stayed on topic this time, her insight was prescient.

  She had let me choose the passage, so I randomly picked Saul’s conversion on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:1–18). I read it aloud, and then we sat back in our chairs to have a good think about it. The sun filled the little room above the chapel, and its rays landed on our faces, momentarily blinding us as we drifted into our meditative trance.

  I pictured angry, vindictive Saul storming off to Damascus in a blaze of self-righteousness—in the heat of the moment, in the heat of the sun—to exterminate some Christians. It got me thinking about journeys, both small and large, and how we set out with our agendas and expectations, like Saul had, only to discover that the journey ends with an entirely different result. Through the reversal of expectation is wisdom gained.

  Sister Patricia felt that Saul’s blinding by a lightning strike and the eventual restoration of his sight went beyond vision. “The attack itself was physical, but his healing came with the gift of insight.” She raised her eyes and held my gaze. “The attack went right to Saul’s heart to change his thinking and his attitude.”

  ( 7:v )

  FATHER P., looking a bit like Friar Tuck, smiled as I entered the small room off the chapel’s narthex. It was a plain, cramped space with two chairs facing each other and a crucifix on the wall. A small clock ticked away on a side table beside a box of tissues. I patted the side pocket of my dress to make sure I had a supply of my own.

  From the moment I signed up for confession, I had been a wreck. The rape memory tormented my every waking moment and catapulted me back into the shock zone. I felt the same queasy sick-fear that had overwhelmed me when the rape first occurred. Once again, I felt violated, raw, exposed, like a big open sore. It made me pine for the good old days when all I had to worry about was whether or not to be a nun.

  After we exchanged a few pleasantries, Father P. asked what was on my mind.

  I took a deep breath, exhaled evenly, and glanced at the little clock on the table. We had each been allotted fifteen minutes. Could I explain my situation in fifteen minutes?

  Remember, the Voice Within gently chided, this is confession, not a therapy session. Got it?

  I unfolded a scrap of paper on which I had scribbled my points.

  I gave Father P. the nuts and bolts about the attack, about how I had kept quiet about it because I had been too ashamed. How by turning the blame on myself, I had allowed someone to get away with a crime. How I had become harsh, anxious, distracted, and angry to those who deserved a more present and loving person. How the secret had kept me imprisoned for nearly thirty years in a cell of shame.

  “Thirty years,” said Father P., shaking his head. “That is much too long to have carried this, my dear. It is time to let go of that burden. God forgave you long ago. End this hardness on yourself now.”

  He said some more words, then made the sign of the cross and said the prayer of absolution, and as he did I became aware of a sudden and clear breeze whistling through me, blowing into the corners where some of the shame had collected and dispersing it like dust bunnies.

  And then I stumbled from the room like blind Saul with tears clouding my sight.

  ( 7:vi )

  BACK IN my cell, I sobbed out the residue of pain, and when that was done I sat up and breathed in deeply and expelled the air in great whooshes. Then I prayed.

  I splashed cold water on my face and went down to the cloister to reintegrate myself with humanity. There was lightness in my step, but I also felt numb. Healing would not be instant, I was under no illusions about that, but at least a poultice of relief had been applied, and it put me in the mood to celebrate.

  And yet it was still Lent. Would it ever end?

  I was so done with Lent. I had stopped attending my much-loved compline because the Passiontide liturgy—we had moved into yet another liturgical season with its accompanying set of new hymnals and prayer books—was too depressing. Sister Margaret Anne had warned me that the liturgy would be more solemn. It was worse: the hymns were like funeral dirges, and the chants rose and fell like sighs and sobs.

  Palm Sunday had brought an interlude of joy and a bonus of sunshine. Sister Jocelyn had tucked palm crosses into the harnesses of the two rescue donkeys in her care, and they led the procession of sisters and congregants from the courtyard of the castle to the chapel doors. But Palm Sunday had fluttered in and out like a butterfly, and now Holy Week had arrived, the death march to Calvary with its stories of misery and betrayal, and its rituals and rites.

  The first r
ite was Tenebrae, which is held during the last three nights of Lent.

  Tenebrae is seldom practiced in the Anglican Church anymore. It is a demanding and complex passion play of three nocturnes, each with three psalms and three readings of Scripture. Most of it is chanted, and all of it is conducted by candlelight. The central piece of Tenebrae is the unfortunately named hearse, an inverted V-shaped wooden stand that sits in front of the chancel blazing with twenty-five candles, representing twelve apostles, twelve prophets, and Christ. On paper, it sounds like a Christmas tree; in reality, it looked like a KKK burning.

  On Maundy Thursday, the altar was stripped of its linens and candles, and the Reserved Sacrament shrouded in a purple cloth. The ritual always reminds me of what the world would look like without faith and religion, without the glorious, head-scratching, unreal, stirring, aggravating dimension of the spiritual, and without churches as portals of sanctuary and redemption.

  The Reserved Sacrament was moved to the Lady Chapel to sit in repose, surrounded by fourteen blazing candles, until Easter Sunday. Over the next three nights, I joined the sisters for the vigil.

  During one such session, I had an extraordinary vision. Saying you experienced a vision to anyone who does not believe in the spiritual realm leaves them wondering whether you’ve been dipping into Timothy Leary’s medicine cabinet. I make no apologies for visions. Not only do I believe in them, I have experienced them before and will no doubt experience them again.

  There were about a dozen people in the Lady Chapel as I took my seat in one of the prayer stalls. The Lady Chapel was a small room, and some people were sitting on the carpeted floor or leaning against the wall. I closed my eyes and prayed that I would not be transported to the wasteland of unholy and inappropriate thoughts to which I am sometimes prone. I also hoped I would not nod off. Aside from that, I had no expectations whatsoever. The nuns had taught me that it was OK to be empty of prayers, to present myself to God and to Jesus without having anything to say, to listen rather than talk, which I think God and Jesus rather appreciate on occasion.

  But within seconds of closing my eyes, I was speedily transported to a desert. Oh, this can’t be good. Why do I always get deserts? I found myself walking along a path on a dusty hill in a Middle Eastern landscape. The place was devoid of vegetation, a true desert. It looked eerily similar to the vision I had had of Elijah in the wilderness. I plugged along until I saw a man sitting on a hill beside the path. As I got closer I realized that it was—good gracious!—Jesus. The Jesus! What were the odds of that? He seemed to have sensed that I was approaching, because although he did not look at me, he patted the area beside Him as a signal for me to sit down, which I did quite excitedly.

  Jesus, however, did not look as thrilled to see me as I was to see him. He was staring off into the distance and looked sad, weary, and beaten. I looked directly at His profile, realized that He was talking (like His Father, He’s a low talker), and I leaned in to listen to what He was saying.

  He began talking about my time at St. Hilda’s, and He thanked me for heeding His call back at St. John the Divine. I told Him that I had been a little worried that the summons might have come from, well, “another source” was how I worded it. Jesus turned His head toward me and gave me a wry smile. I was going to mention the satanic presences I had confronted at Quarr and St. Cecilia’s—Who the hell sent those weirdos!—but He probably knew all about them.

  He launched into something about the fact that the sisters and all religious orders regardless of denominations needed help. They were struggling. They were worried that there would be no one to carry on their work. He thought I could help.

  Moi?

  I was about to mention the nifty marketing schemes I had come up with, but He sort of cut me off, and in fact He probably already knew all about them, too.

  “About my vocation...” I started to say.

  This time He turned His head and looked directly at me.

  “I already gave you a vocation,” He said wearily. “Why do you want another one?”

  I looked at Him like I didn’t understand.

  “You mean writing? Writing is my vocation?”

  It wasn’t that I was displeased, but I have always regarded writing as self-indulgent.

  “But it’s not a proper one,” I insisted. “All I do is sit on my backside and type. Shouldn’t I be doing something more productive in, say, Africa?”

  “Africa?” He said, fixing me with a penetrating gaze that made me feel uneasy. “Others will go to Africa, but not you. They’re using their skills to do what they need to do. You need to use your skills to do what you need to do. Obviously, people are not signing up in droves to be nuns or monks. Part of the reason is because most religious orders don’t know how to get the word out; the other reason—as you’ve discovered yourself—is that it’s a hard, demanding life.”

  Jesus continued: “The nuns, they are not part-time Christians—they live and breathe their faith through their work, their worship, their vows of self-denial. They do what they do best; and you need to do what you do best to help them. Did you sense the depth of their devotion?”

  “Yes, I saw that they are devoted. And I now understand the sacrifice that nuns and monks make, though I couldn’t exactly feel it, to be honest.”

  “This is what it feels like,” He said, and instantly I was filled with a warm, golden light, along with a sensation of deep and profound love. Not a longing or a sexual love, but something beyond that, an intelligent love; genuine and balanced.

  I gripped the edge of my prayer stall. I heard myself whisper “Wow,” and I hoped no one heard me. Is this really happening? Is it really Jesus speaking to me, or is it me talking to myself? A skeptic might agree with the latter, but people of faith know that visions can and do happen.

  At that point, someone entered the Lady Chapel, distracting me momentarily, but I quickly got back to the vision and to my conversation with Jesus, and I asked—oh, I am such a greedy woman—if I might experience the sensation again. Almost immediately it came over and through me exactly as it had before.

  It was then that I understood completely, albeit briefly, what it meant to be a nun, how the prayers and chants repeated over the course of a day, every day of every year until they take their last breath, allowed them to experience that profound rush of devotion. It does not come always, nor does it come easily, but it was a taste of what was possible to those who chose the path.

  “So? Could you really give up everything and follow me?” Jesus asked.

  I was afraid He was going to ask this.

  I shook my head. “No, I could not. I can be a faithful follower, and I will try to make sure that it directs my witness and my writing, but could I abandon everything for God? No, not to the extent that your disciples did or that the sisters have. I’m sorry.”

  Just then, the bell in the main chapel rang, summoning us to compline. I was disappointed about leaving the vision and Jesus. When I reached my prie-dieu, I realized that my face was wet with tears.

  The vision had rattled me but not in a bad way. In fact I was grateful for it. Whether it was God or my subconscious speaking, it did not really matter (though I will always assert that it was God). What mattered was the honesty and the directness of the words, the unmasking of myself and the acceptance of what and who I was.

  Even so, I had begun to count the days until my departure. Evidently, so had Colin. A card had arrived from him with a melancholy message, and I could tell he was getting fed up with waiting for me. It had indeed been a long stretch. How many other men would wait a year and a half while their fiancées vacillated between marriage and the nunnery? On the phone the previous week, he had likened it to my having an affair, with him waiting on the sidelines for it to run its course.

  ( 7:vii )

  EASTER DAY. Never had I been so happy to see the back of Lent. Good riddance to it.

  I was already awake, showered, and dressed when Sister KT came by my cell ringing a be
ll at 4:10 a.m. and calling out the words from Luke 24, “Surrexit Dominus vere, alleluia!” To which I responded, “Pax vobiscum.”

  As if sensing the tension of Holy Week, the universe had sent an overnight thunderstorm to relieve the pent-up anxiety.

  I gazed out my cell window into the pitch-black, silent spring air. The rest of the population of Whitby, and no doubt of the majority of the U.K., were still snuggled in their beds. For Christians, Easter is the big day, bigger than Christmas.

  We entered the chapel that morning in a mood of uncertainty. The lights were purposely turned off, and we groped our way in the dark to our stalls carrying unlit candles. The Pascal flame was lit and the chapel flickered with the barest of light. A human chain formed as one candle lit another and another until every candle was lit. It was a surprise to see the chapel was filled to capacity.

  The pageantry of the Mass was ancient and moving. Incense suffused the place. Halfway through the service, the electrical lights were flicked on, and the chapel was brought to life again. Alleluia!

  After breakfast, in keeping with OHP tradition, a group of us walked to the beach, and a few of the braver ones waded up to their ankles into the frigid North Sea.

  I hung close to Sister Margaret Anne. She was in a good mood, having heard that her request to be a solitary had been approved. She hoped to be in her hermitage by fall.

  We laughed as we reminisced about my awkward arrival all those months ago, and her obvious discomfort at the sight of me sharing her stall in chapel.

  “I was only surprised because no one told me that I would be getting a seatmate,” she said. “It’s an occupational hazard of being a nun: you learn to expect the unexpected.”

  We talked about my decision not to pursue the life of a nun.

  “You’ve fit in so well here,” she said.

  “You’re kidding, right?” I chuckled.

  “No, seriously. You did really well.”