“Has William Penn’s vision of unity come about?” I asked. “Is Pennsylvania still as he hoped it would be?”
Sister Janette’s face fell, and her previous enthusiasm seemed to leave her altogether.
“Oh, Corrie, it’s so sad. No—Pennsylvania has become just like New England, just like every other place. From such glorious beginnings, most of the groups that came here eventually became just as isolationist in their ways of thinking as the Pilgrims before them. Even though freedom was extended to them to come here, very few actually shared William Penn’s vision. They were reluctant to extend the same openness and sense of unity outward to others as had been extended to them originally when they came to Pennsylvania.”
She looked out the window with a wistful gaze. “I find it so hard to imagine! It looks so double-minded to me. And yet, there they are, worshiping freely in Pennsylvania, and yet with an inwardness and skepticism and resistance toward unity with everyone else. My mind just cannot absorb the inconsistency, even the hypocrisy of it. I know that is a strong word, but that is how I feel about the matter.”
“Yet you are still excited about the work of your convent?”
“Oh yes! What a perfect place for us to be—right in the midst of so many different expressions of Christianity! We could find no more perfect soil for our experiment, as the bishop calls it, than among the diversity represented in Pennsylvania. Maybe most of the groups there have lost sight of the vision that brought them there, but we haven’t!”
Silence fell as I thought about all she had said. At last I asked Sister Janette another question, although it was far different than what we had previously been talking about.
“If unity is what your heart longs for, then this war between the Northern and Southern states must seem awful to you,” I said.
“Oh yes, it’s absolutely heartbreaking,” sighed Sister Janette. “The other sisters and I have given as much time in prayer to the country as to all our other work. This division and strife cannot be God’s will, no matter how much each side tries to believe God is on his side.”
“How can that be?” I asked. “How can people think that God is with them, when they view things so differently?”
“Unity, Corrie . . . for the same reason that unity does not yet exist between his people.”
“What do you mean?”
“Because people put their own self-interests above those of their neighbors, even their Christian neighbors. And then they attach God’s name to those self-interests and pretend he originated what they believe rather than admitting that they came from their own biases. It’s the cause of all the world’s strife—putting ourselves above our neighbors. It’s the very thing Jesus warned us we couldn’t do without ruining all he came to do for mankind.”
She sighed. “This civil war in our nation is the extreme extension of the disunity that exists between all the segments of God’s people. North and South are fighting each other with guns and cannons, while the different groups of Christendom fight one another with words and doctrines and by isolating themselves and shutting out all those who do not believe as they do. But at the root, I see nothing so very different there as in this awful war we are now engaged in. In the kingdom of heaven, which lasts forever, I’m not certain that the silent strife and divisions among God’s people don’t have even more serious consequences than this war which is tearing our country apart.”
Chapter 11
A Different View of Marriage
Sister Janette’s words were strong ones, like nothing I’d ever heard before. Everybody has been talking about this war as if it is the most terrible thing that has ever happened in all of history. Her idea that the intolerance between Christians might even be worse was a thought that took some getting used to.
We sat quietly for most of the rest of the day, talking every once in a while but not as seriously as we had before. Late in the afternoon my eye chanced to fall on her hand again, and I suddenly remembered the question that had been raised in my mind when I first met her.
“Do you mind if I ask you about your ring?” I said. “I thought nuns weren’t married, but isn’t that a wedding band on your finger?”
Sister Janette looked up at me and smiled. “But we are married, Corrie,” she answered. “When we take our vows, it is like a marriage ceremony, and afterward we wear a wedding ring.”
“I . . . I don’t understand.”
“Not very many non-Catholics do,” she said. “But when we take vows of chastity and give our lives to the church, we are not devoting ourselves to Catholicism or to a certain order or to a life of loneliness. At least it was not so for me. I gave my heart and my whole life to Jesus. I truly consider him my husband. I am married to him. The Bible speaks about God’s people as the bride of Christ. And I live out the devotion of my love for him in service to his church and the people he sends me. That is why I wear a ring. My heart and my life and all that I am belong to him.”
“I’ve never heard anything like that before,” I said. “It’s beautiful.”
Again she smiled. “I’m glad you think so,” she said. “So many people look upon women such as I—nuns, with our distinctive dress and peculiar lifestyle—and feel sorry for us. I think we are looked upon as a lonely sort, like religious spinsters who could never hope to be married and so became nuns because there is nothing else for us to do.”
“Do you really believe people think that?”
She laughed lightly. “You would be surprised at the things I’ve heard about how Catholic sisters are looked upon! But for me, being a nun is entirely a free choice. There were some young men who paid attention to me when I was seventeen or eighteen. But I wanted to give my life to Jesus and him only. I could have had all sorts of marriage proposals, but it would not have changed anything. Jesus was my first choice as a husband. I wanted to devote my life to him and no other. And I have never been sorry—not for a minute. I made that choice, and I make it anew every day.”
She looked at me with an intensity that obviously came out of deep feelings. “I love Christ, Corrie. I love his people, I love his church, I love doing his work, I love the world he made, I love his Word, the Bible, and I love being part of all he is doing in the world. I would have no other life than exactly the one I have chosen. I am a happy, contented woman, Corrie, and I wear my wedding ring with pride and a heart full of love. The life I have with him of purity and chastity gives me a fulfillment that goes beyond the mere personal satisfaction of what some might consider earthly pleasures and happiness. Some might look upon mine as a life of sacrifice and denial. But for me it is a chosen life of laying down my complete being in submission and service and devotion to him. It has brought me happiness, not taken it from me!”
After all the thinking I had been doing before meeting Sister Janette about Cal and marriage and my future, her words gave a whole new direction to my thoughts. Since almost before I could remember, all the way back to when Ma and I talked about my probably not being the marrying sort, marriage had always been the thing a young girl looked forward to. If you didn’t marry, there must be something wrong with you. But now Sister Janette said that she wouldn’t have married no matter how many offers she had, because she chose and wanted to be devoted to Christ and no one else. It was something I had never heard before.
I couldn’t stop thinking about it all the rest of that day, and the next. And I couldn’t help wondering what, if anything, it all might have to do with me. Was I, like Ma’d said, not the marrying sort? Or even if I was, might Jesus want me to be married to him like Sister Janette was?
I didn’t know what to think of that—and I didn’t know if I liked the notion or not! I didn’t want to be a Catholic nun . . . or I didn’t think I wanted to be. Could I be married to Christ and not be a nun . . . not even be a Catholic? What might “service to the church . . . service to Jesus” mean for me, a Protestant, with no convent to go to . . . no order to join?
The ideas got confused and mixed u
p in my mind as I considered everything she had said. I wanted to belong to Jesus, but I didn’t know if that meant I shouldn’t be married to someone else.
I never did get it all resolved. I tried to pray quietly, but even that was hard right then. This whole way of thinking about it was so altogether new that even prayer came hard.
Then right in the middle of my thoughts, Sister Janette’s voice interrupted.
“Corrie,” she said excitedly, “I’ve just had the most wonderful idea! Why don’t you stop with me and spend a few days with the sisters at the convent? I want them to meet you, and you can see for yourself everything I’ve been telling you about!”
I thought about it, and the offer seemed very attractive to me. I did want to see Sister Janette’s convent and meet the other nuns, to find out just what this new way of life was really like.
I turned the idea over in my mind. I had told President Lincoln I would be coming to Washington sometime in late June, and it was only the first week in June. Surely I could spend a few days in Pennsylvania, and then go on to Washington to meet the President.
“Thank you,” I said at last. “I think I would like that.”
Chapter 12
The Sisters of Unity
I accepted Sister Janette’s offer, and in two days I found myself in as different a place from Miracle Springs as anything I could ever have imagined. Suddenly there I was, with a small community of Catholic women, most of them not much older than I was—three or four of them even younger. But they were all just as nice as Sister Janette, and immediately made me feel very much at home among them. I especially took to one of the sisters whose name was Jane. She took me under her wing and let me in on the goings-on of the place.
I had a tiny little room to myself, with only a narrow bed and a small writing desk. But after the stagecoach and train, it was a welcome change. After I had been there for two days, they began calling it “Corrie’s room.”
After talking with Sister Janette on the train and listening to her enthusiasm about all they were doing among Christians of the community, I expected something quite different from what I found. I thought there would be “activity,” more things happening. But the atmosphere around The Convent of John Seventeen was very quiet and subdued, hushed, peaceful. Sometimes I felt I was supposed to whisper all the time. It took me a day or two to get used to the change.
They had Mass every morning, which was unlike any church service I’d ever been in before. I hardly understood any of it. The nuns ate all their meals together in the large room beside the kitchen. That was a lot of fun, with talking and laughter. After lunch they went to their own rooms or to the chapel for quiet and prayer and meditation. Actually, prayer and meditation went on all throughout the day, but I never could completely understand the pattern, even though Sister Janette was very good about trying to explain it all to me and make me as comfortable as she could. There were many chores, too—tending the garden and the sheep and goats and chickens and two cows, fixing meals and cleaning up afterward, laundry, and other work. They all stayed very busy all day long, besides praying and reading their Bibles and meditating, and I helped with the work as much as they’d let me.
Being part of a community of women was very different for me. The spirit of love and cooperation and unselfishness was extremely appealing. It almost made me want to stay there with them. But at the same time, it was so very Catholic, so different. I couldn’t help feeling like a stranger.
How could Christians be so different? I wondered. But even as I asked myself the question, I realized that the Sisters of Unity were trying to lessen those differences. As totally different from them and un-catholic as I was, they accepted me among them entirely, and never once tried to make me act or behave like them. They just let me be myself, and seemed to love me as I was.
After a few days at the convent, I went with several of the sisters to an Amish barn raising. That was a day I’ll never forget! The men had funny beards without mustaches, and the women wore dresses that all looked the same with little white caps over their hair. There was a sternness about them on the one hand, but, like the Catholic sisters, they made me feel as if I were one of them. And once the work started, there wasn’t a second wasted! The men and teenage boys began carrying and sawing and hammering and tying big beams with heavy ropes, and in less than an hour were calling for everyone—women included—to come and pitch in together to hoist the first huge wall up off the foundation slab and into place. I found myself squeezed in between a young Amish man and one of the sisters from the convent. When the signal was given, a team of horses pulled at the ropes, the end of the wall lifted off the ground, and then we all got in underneath and lifted the wall boards up higher. In a few seconds our hands were outstretched and the great line of people standing side-by-side slowly inched forward, holding the wall above our heads, walking it gradually higher and higher, while the horses pulled the ropes attached to the top, and the strongest of the men held the bottom of the wall in place to keep it from slipping.
At last the wall reached perpendicular, another shout called off the tugging of the horses, the command was given to release the wall, and suddenly there it stood, twenty or more feet in the air, standing tall and true on its own. We all stepped back, and a great cheer of triumph went up. The first wall was in place, and the morning’s dew was still not off the ground! But there wasn’t a moment to lose! Even as we were shouting in our victory, half a dozen of the men were hammering diagonal boards in place at the wall’s ends to hold it steady and keep it from crashing down.
I was already sweating, and the day had hardly begun! This was hard work! If the sisters from the convent made it a practice of attending barn raisings and getting their frocks dirty and their hands blistered helping with the men’s work, and bringing food to help feed everyone, I could see why these Amish people could hardly help but accept them and consider them their friends. There was more unity going on in that barn raising between a handful of Catholic sisters and a small community of Amish farmers and their families than any book or sermon by an Amish pastor or a Catholic priest could ever achieve.
By the end of the day I was thoroughly exhausted! As we rode back to the convent in the back of the wagon, we were nearly falling asleep. The sun was setting over the Pennsylvania fields toward the west. Every muscle in my body ached—but what a satisfied feeling it was!
Four walls and the joists of a great roof stood where there had been nothing but a wood foundation when the sun had risen that same morning. There had been laughter and good food and many conversations throughout the day in the midst of the work. It seemed as if we’d been there a week, not just twelve hours. Not only were these women from the convent truly my sisters by this time, I now felt I had an equal number of friends among the Amish community who would welcome me into their homes just as fully.
Part of me hated to leave. My heart longed to get to know them better, and I was beginning to understand why Sister Janette was so deeply stirred when she spoke of unity. It was love that burned in her heart. I understood that at last, because I now felt it myself for many new people—Catholic and Amish—that I’d never even known existed a week earlier. And feeling love for them only served to stir up even deeper longings to be connected with even more of God’s people.
I truly was beginning to feel some of the yearnings that gripped Sister Janette’s heart. As we bounced along slowly in the wagon, talking and laughing and quietly recounting the events of the day with pleasure, in a deep place within me I found many thoughts and feelings I had never had before stirring into life.
Oh, how I slept that night! And the next morning when I woke up and tried to move, I discovered two hundred muscles I never knew I had—and every one of them was screaming in pain!
I crawled out of bed, only to discover that I’d slept away half the morning!
“Hard work, Corrie?” Sister Jane greeted me. I was amazed that all the sisters had been about their tasks as if yesterday’s b
arn raising was nothing out of the ordinary.
“Yes,” I answered, rubbing at my arms and shoulders. “Aren’t you sore?”
“A little,” she laughed. “Believe me, every one of us knows what you are feeling. We went through that at first, too. But we are used to it now. You’ll just have to stay here long enough with us to raise two or three barns. Then you’ll think nothing of it!”
I tried to laugh. But even that hurt.
But as much as the thought of raising another barn any time in the near future seemed an impossibility to my aching body, Sister Jane’s words remained with me all that day and well into the next.
Chapter 13
Prayers of Dedication under an Oak Tree
You’ll just have to stay here. . . .
I couldn’t get the words out of my mind. For the next few days after the barn raising, I kept to myself. I stayed in my room, resting, spent some time in the chapel praying, and went for a couple of long walks in the countryside. All the time I was thinking over and over about what Sister Jane’s words might mean for me.
This was like no other place I’d ever been, and within me were thoughts like none other I’d ever had. I found myself thinking not so much about unity or about the Amish and the barn raising but about the sisters, about the life they had chosen to live. I remembered over and over what Sister Janette had said about having chosen to be married to Jesus and to serve him completely. I am a happy, contented young woman, Corrie, I recalled her saying. My devotion to him has brought me happiness. . . . I would have no other life than exactly the one I have chosen.
I had grown up for years thinking that for a young woman not to marry meant failure in life. The image of the spinster was one everybody was familiar with, and the silent dread of every girl once she got to be sixteen or seventeen. Ma had helped prepare me for it, of course, so the thought of living my life unmarried was not fearsome to me. But there was still something about being single that most folks seemed to think was unnatural. I know Uncle Nick and Pa worried about me from time to time, even though I was doing fine by myself.
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