For Book Lovers Everywhere

Dear Bibliophiles,

Give yourself a treat, avoid the lines at your local box store today and read this opinion/memoir piece by author Anne Lamott which appeared in the Sunday Week in Review Section of the New York Times last weekend. Lamott is a  popular author of down to earth reflective memoir with realistic insight rooted in the wisdom of sobriety and an adult experience of faith. The love of reading, cultivated by otherwise disfunctional parents, is one of the gratitudes on Lamott's Thanksgiving list.

 

What would your personal account of early exposure to the wonder of books include? Where do the memories lead you?

 

Its a great day to curl up with a good book? What are you reading? The middle school  librarian in me is eager to finish "Son" by Lois Lowry, the fourth in her "Giver" series.

 

Happy Reading!

 

Anne Lamott is the author of "Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers".

Triggers of Memory

Between the Sheets

           This morning I changed sheets; a mundane necessary task which for the sake of degenerating lumbar disks is frequently postponed. Yet I do relish the luscious sensation of slipping between sundried sheets reminding of fresh air and sunshine; 100% cotton percale, although muslin will do, preferably line-dried. Hanging the family wash on a pulley rope clothes line stretched between house and telephone pole is a science I learned at an early age; spacing and strategy required so no whites would be soiled by obstacles. Discerning neighbors noticed planned placement, a factor in rating urban household management skills.

            Today’s chore conjured memories beyond skill and function. The yellow sheet with woven decorative edging turned out of its folds and unfurled over the bed is well over fifty years old. Its survival attributed to the quality promised on its label “Dan River – 100% cotton percale” and having been stored in my mother’s linen closet, kept in reserve for guests.

            How can it be dated with a degree of certainty? It is one of the “good sheets” used when Dr. Epstein, our family physician, made house calls to diagnose and treat measles which kept a second grader out of school for two weeks. A call to Dr. Epstein was followed by an abbreviated bed bath, a clean pair of pajamas and a change of bed linens. The routine was enough to cure because Mom often said, "All I have to do is call the doctor and you get better."

            These sheets, their elegant textured borders never becoming wrinkled off grain in the wash, their crisp coolness relieving fevers, spoke the word “special”. These sheets had come from Gimbles Brothers after all. My aunt, the family’s arbiter of value, quality and good taste, benefitted from insider information. Her neighbor, Eddie Frankavilla, presided over the linen department in Manhattan’s historic department store just south of Herald Square. Fastidious bow-tied Eddie who knew his stock well and was a connoisseur of merchandise quality shared news of upcoming sales. After picking up the best 400 thread count percale sheets and plush towels ordinarily out of our price range now happily affordable, there would be an obligatory walk through the fabric department. My aunt and my mother ran materials through their sensitive fingers testing texture, heft and weave, occasionally pronouncing a bolt of cloth to be “nice goods”. Following down the aisle I would touch material worthy of their endorsement; lessons for life in fabric evaluation. Such a trip to Gimbles would disappointingly include only a glimpse of the department catering to coin and stamp collectors, my father’s lunch hour haunt.

            The beautifully trimmed high quality sheet placed on my be today lost its mate years ago and was passed along to me by my mother likely for use, she thought, on the beds of my sons. The sheet spoke “pretty and feminine” and was again kept in reserve. Resurrection came with my return to a single bed in monastic quarters. The sheet is not a mute relic. It has survived, continuing to speak to me of a former time, of a former world, and of dear ones long gone. Surely, ‘they don’t make them like that anymore’.

A Special Memory for All Nuns - The Day of Entrance

Noli Me Tangere by Maurice Denis

This may be a simple Sunday in Ordinary Time but for me it remains the Feast of Mary Magdalene. I entered this monastery only seven years ago on this date. It was a Saturday, an endless Saturday, it seemed because I was not to arrive here until 5pm by which time my family (three sons and one daughter-in-law joined by my mother, father and sister) would assemble for the brief ceremony of entrance, sung Vespers with the community and then my last dinner with family in the guest dining room.

After morning mass in my parish church I enjoyed breakfast with friends at a favorite place and then tried to make the rest of the day move along with last minute packing and a householder's last cleaning effort coming from nervous energy. (God knows that the house, inhabited by two bachelors and a variety of friends hasn't seen much cleaning since!)

The ceremonials were not without nervousness either. My parents did not approve of this move of mine and, without a doubt, I worried about my sons, especially the unmarried ones. Was I deserting them? Was I letting them down? It was a time when things were particularly unsettled in Israel and my father noted prayers for the peace of Jerusalem included in the Palms of that evening's Office. He may have been disappointed in my choice but he paid attention to every word and action.

The community provided a lovely dinner along with wine for our last toasts and good-byes. It wasn't forever. My parents are an hour's drive away and my youngest sons only 20 minutes from the monastery. But in another way, it was forever. Things would never be the same for any of us; new levels of relationship, independence and dependence, love and respect and cherishing.

When the date of July 22nd had been settled upon, I felt it a blessing that it was the Feast of the Magdalen. For a long while I had felt an attraction to her and with this turn in my life I called upon her to be the patroness of my incorporation into this community of women as one who knew the experience of being an outsider, of wanting to join with others in support of Jesus, of faithfully and loving him and following him and, in the end, being the one to receive the announcement of his Resurrection and the commission to become Apostle to the Apostles. She seemed to have mastered the art of being lovingly and attentively present to Jesus while integrated into a company of women.

About eight months later at the end of my ten day in-house retreat just before becoming a novice, I received a note from the Prioress. "Do you have any request regarding your name in religion." My note of response read, "As if the name Hildegard was not sufficiently daunting , and if the line on the necessary document is long enough, I would like the name Hildegard Magdalen of the Resurrection." With great joy, I received just that name the next day when I appeared at Morning Prayer in Redemptoristine red and wearing a white veil.

Leave for Icon Writing Retreat this evening with great anticipation.

When Mothers Become Contemplative Nuns - Part II

Pencil Drawing by Matthew Pleva

Original 2 x 3 inches

Early this spring, I asked for some feedback from visitors to this blog concerning what kept them coming and what was of interest to them. A number declared their curiosity about my vocation story. Part I of that story appeared in May '07. You can see it by going to the Archives in the sidebar.

Before marrying in 1967, I had lived every day of my life in the same house in which my mother was raised in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York. My Sicilian grandfather, a U.S. Army veteran of World War I, visited Sicily in the early 1920s and returned to the States with a young bride and her eight-year old sister in tow. By 1931 he was a widower with two young children, jobless and just managing to hold on to his house and family in the midst of the Great Depression.

My father arrived in the United States at age seven with his parents and sister. They were escaping the dire post-World War I inflationary economic conditions in Germany. My mother says that my father's family did well during the depression in comparison to hers because my paternal grandfather brought master machinist skills with him and took on the job of superintendent in their Bronx apartment building to minimize the rent. Dad speaks of getting barrels of coal ash to the street each Saturday morning and washing the floors of long hallways. My mother has memories of food baskets left at the door, long lines waiting for shoes and caring for her little brother who never knew his mother.

How did these folks meet? My grandfather brought his seventeen-year old daughter to a party sponsored by the International Ladies Garments Workers Union and my father, newly minted member of the U.S. Air Corps, was there with a friend. At the end of the evening, he told his buddy, "I am going to marry that girl." They will celebrate their 64th wedding anniversary next month.

I grew up in a three generation culturally Italian household. This was the family to which my father returned as a veteran of World War II with service in the Pacific. He'd been a freshman in City College in 1939. He became a draftsman and finished his education at night graduating with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering.

We lived across the street from St. Mary Mother of Jesus Church. None of the adults in our household went to church but my sister and I were sent. We remember Sunday morning children's masses, confession lines on Saturday afternoon, Novena on Tuesday night, the Sisters of St. Joseph who taught us in CCD (Confraternity of Christian Doctrine) and the Baltimore Catechism. We did not attend the Catholic School because our parents preferred the public school as a better reflection of multi-cultural society in which we lived and would, one day, work and raise families.

Even among these comparatively mild Roman Catholic influences God spoke to my heart at an early age. My oldest memory of being deeply touched is situated at Holy Thursday morning High Mass. I watched the procession all a glitter in gold, mystified by incense and awash in tutti frutti colored sunlight filtered by stained glass windows. I was only seven or eight years old but nonetheless awestruck as the Eucharist was carried to the altar of repose. I knew something 'other' was present there.

When it came time for high school the notion of religious vocation was percolating in my heart. Perhaps a bit concerned about their daughter's welfare in a big public high school, my parents agreed to my request to attend Fontbonne Hall Academy, a small school run by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Brentwood. The school was located on the banks of The Narrows, the entrance into the harbor of New York City, flanked by the boroughs of Brooklyn and Staten Island. Today that stretch is dominated by the Verrezano Narrows Bridge. After four years of the excellent general education provided by the sisters, I went on to Hunter College of the City University of New York. I am in debt to Hunter for its highly prescribed (before all the curriculum changes wrought by the tumult of the late 60s and early 70s) liberal arts education - double major in History and Elementary Education, minor in English - and graduated in 1967.

When Mothers Become Contemplative Nuns - Part I

"Home" by Matthew Pleva (pencil drawing, original 2x3 inches)
Gift on the day of my entrance into the monastery

A mid-twentieth century experience of American Catholicism gives a rather distorted view of the history of religious life. It leaves little room for the reality of diversity and the ups, as well as the downs, of vowed life throughout the history of the Church. As illustration I offer my memory of those who became sisters when I was a teenager. At the end of my freshman year in a small private Catholic academy for girls in Brooklyn, New York, circa 1960, five graduating seniors entered the teaching congregation which staffed the school. Two years later, another student from that class entered a cloistered community. All of the sisters I knew at the time had entered as teenagers with the exception of one who was considered a 'late vocation', because she postponed entering until she graduated from college. I believe that this label stayed with her throughout religious life tagging her as somewhat the oddball. In hind sight, I see that it was not only age that separated her but also the natural difference in viewpoint and exposure she carried as a result of four years of higher education as a lay person. The experience of large annual (in some cases semi-annual) entrance classes persisted from the 1930s into the 1960s. For the average Catholic this was 'the' way people entered religious life. More rare but also possible were the sisters' juniorates, and preparatory levels of seminaries and brotherhoods that accepted young people in their early teens. While we viewed this a the norm, the homogeneity suggested here was a small blip in the historical time line. It is important to note here that the blip so described ended with the mid-1960s and the promulgation of the documents of the Second Vatican Council. Of the five young women I knew who entered the teaching congregation in 1960 only one remained a sister by 1970. The woman who entered the cloister remained for only five years.

Recently I have been doing some research concerning St. Hilda of Whitby (England, 614-680C.E) Venerable Bede recorded her achievements as the foundress and Abbess of a double monastery of both women and men. Double monasteries were not unusual at the time. The Council of Whitby (664) was held at her monastery and she participated in the discussions by which it was determined that the Northumbrian Celtic Church would give way to the practices of the Roman discipline. Hild (Celtic name) did not enter a monastery until the advanced age of 33. We have to remind ourselves that the average life span for a woman at that time was little more than forty years. My research also revealed that historians today think it probable that Hild had been married and widowed before making the decision to enter religious life. If this is so, it marks a continuation of more ancient tradition dating back to the 3rd and 4th centuries in which it was common for widows, as well as virgins, to flee to the 'desert' to emulate the reclusion of the great monk, St. Anthony.

Closer to our own time, we have the example of St. Jeanne Frances De Chantal, widow, mother and co-foundress of he Order of the Visitation. In 1610, she and then Bishop of Geneva founded the Order of the Visitation of Mary, "a congregation dedicated to prayer and works of charity. Their original intention was that the order would be adapted for widows and other women who, for reasons of health or age, could not endure the rigors of enclosed life. But the plan met with such carping disapproval from ecclesiastical authorities that in the end Jeanne consented to accept enclosure. Jeanne's daughters were married by this time, but her fifteen-year-old son...resisted his mother's plan to enter religious life. He was the occasion of a melodramatic test, for which Jeanne is especially remembered. Laying his body across the threshold of their home, he implored her not to leave. Without hesitating she stepped over him and proceeded on her way." (from All Saints by Robert Ellsberg, Crossroads Books, 1997)

Fortunately I did not have to step over anyone's prostrate body. When I entered in 2000 my three sons were 28, 25 and 23 years old respectively. The oldest was married, middle one graduated from college and the third finishing up at a community college. Responding to the current phenomenon of young adults returning to their childhood homes I jokingly say, "They came home and I left." My oldest son was initially concerned about the fate of his brothers without benefit of my steady hand, not to mention the checkbook to cover expenses. Since our house carried an old, very affordable, and nearly paid off mortgage, these two have easily taken on the responsibility of home owners. Without a mother paying the the phone and AOL bills, etc., they have come into their own as mature, responsible young man. They feel fortunate to be living in the only home they have ever known. The drawing above is my artist son's rendering of that house. A light shines in only one window, the window of what was my bedroom. He said that is what they saw when they came home every night.

These three became my staunchest supporters. I like to think that the gift of freedom they gave to me was a sign of their gratitude for many gifts of freedom and respect I gave them as individuals and mature young men during my seventeen years as a single parent.

“Afterwords”
Sr. Hildegard Magdalen Pleva before the Final Blessing
at the Mass of her Solemn Profession in the
Order of the Most Holy Redeemer
March 25, 2006


Loved ones, dear sisters, Redemptorist brothers, faithful friends; let us rejoice. The age of miracles has not passed!

What a story! In Sicilian we would say, “che romanzu” – what a soap opera – seems I’ve had almost as many lives as Erica on All My Children! Some might use the Yiddish word “mishigas”, a craziness of the improbable proving that “truth is indeed stranger than fiction.” What else can it be other than pure miracle? And each of you, in one way or another, in large part or small, has been an instrument of God’s beneficent grace, a sustaining gift; a sign of love in some part of the story.

The ritual you witnessed today was suffused with spousal imagery. It is a ritual concerning a promise rooted in the baptismal promises shared by all Christians. In the limited vocabulary of human experience there is no better metaphor for the quality of these promises than that of a long, loving, joyful, mutually generous, faithful, and sometimes painful marriage. Perhaps no one here can better attest to the requirements of life-long promises of commitment than my own mother and father poised as they are to celebrate the 63rd anniversary of their spousal love.

The faithfulness and devotion to commitment that we prayed for today are meant for each and everyone here. It has been my hope that this celebration would be inspiration and encouragement for your own myriad promises and commitments; whether it’s fidelity in marriage, dedication to nurturing children, perseverance in religious vows, faithfulness to honoring your true self, obligations in earning a living or the duties of citizenship and service. We need all the help we can get because as we know from first hand experience none of it is easy. But remember, the age of miracles has not yet passed. So be stout-hearted in sure knowledge of God’s covenantal promise, “I am with you always.”

Gratitude can never be adequately expressed but one must try. First of all, to my sons, Jonathan, Matthew and Andrew, thank you for being who you are, for forgiving me and loving me, and for allowing me to be what I am.

To the elders of our community of women – those already in God’s embrace and those with whom I live who continue to be wise mentors, models of perseverance, wisdom, and charity - your lived promises have made this life available to me.

I look out now not on a sea of faces but at a panorama – the panorama of a lifetime of relationships. Beginning with my parents who gave me everything, each of you knows the part you played, the gifts you gave to me and those you continue to give.

Many are united with us in spirit whether by virtue of friendship, family ties or sisterhood in the Order; from British Columbia to Chulucanas, Peru; from Liguori, Missouri to Fort Erie, Canada, to Mason, New Hampshire; from Dublin, Ireland to Modena, Italy; from Merrivale, South Africa to Bielsko-Biala, Poland; from Kezmarok, Slovakia to Legazpi, in the Philippines. Isn’t that a wonder!

I feel very much also the presence of many who are now enjoying the embrace of God: the grandmothers I never knew, my grandfather and aunt who influenced my childhood, sisters from the community and friends, some of whom have only recently left us. They are together with us in the Communion of Saints.

I am, at least in part, the sum total of what they and you have been to me.

In a life centered on contemplative prayer one is joined to all people and to the world in ways that surpass the boundaries of time and space. Our foundress, Maria Celeste, heard Jesus say,

“I want you to be espoused to all souls and to experience
the same delight which I experience in them.”

Be assured of the faithfulness of my prayers for you and know that our loving creator God has truly delighted in you and in all the promises you’ve kept. May we continue on our way in covenant with God, as gift to each other, as witnesses to love, hope, fidelity and peace, in a challenging world.

Just as Robert Frost’s traveler in darkness stopped in the snowy wood to revel in beauty and be renewed by awe, we have stopped to connect with the wonder of God. Now we too have “promises to keep and miles to go before we sleep.”