The Ear of the Heart: An Actress' Journey From Hollywood to Holy Vows (40 page)

Chant is not “follow the bouncing ball”. It takes constant practice, and finding the time to practice presented another challenge. Practice was discouraged during work periods, and as a result it cut into my private time. I searched out quiet places inside the enclosure, anywhere I could find an isolated spot, and stole a few minutes each day to go through the exercises. I had to. When you’re off-key in choir, you can feel the body tension around you. Because the chants change every day, I was assigned to a class for an hour each Wednesday to help me keep up with the Community. Nothing gave me more stage fright than having to sing one of those lessons in front of the Community. I used to wonder how I could be so calm on a movie soundstage with maybe a hundred people watching and yet be frozen in front of twenty nuns
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Harriett, too, had been going through a stressful time. The divorce from Al Gordon had left her with very little money. She was now earning her keep as a manicurist and had moved into a little house with a studio that she put to use in various artistic pursuits to keep her balance. Harriett’s almost daily letters to Dolores presented a happy adjustment, though in suspiciously flowery terms that were overly upbeat.

Mostly, what I was getting was a phony smile. Now and then, there would be a letter full of misgivings, offering sympathy for my own qualms and begging me to reexamine my decision. Her melodramatic ramblings and progressively unsteady hand, however, made it quite clear that Mom was again drinking heavily. I was doubly distressed because, at the time of my entrance, I had given her an open invitation to visit and she had chosen the upcoming November
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I went to Reverend Mother with my frustration that, with all her smarts, Mom was still making a mess of her life. Reverend Mother counseled me that finely tuned instruments are often the ones that need the most care. At her suggestion, I composed another tough-love letter—the strongest one I had ever written, one that I knew could hurt Mom deeply. Consequently, I was uncertain of what state she would be in when she came
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But it was a perfect reunion. She was in good spirits—and in good shape. I was simply stunned with reverence for the new person I saw in her after such a painful time
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Mom brought me a pair of boots I had requested. She also brought a cowboy hat—make of that what you will—and my old clarinet. I had mentioned in a letter that I thought it might be fun to play it in the woods. I did that from time to time; it took the edge off. I’ve never seriously played it for the Community though, and it has been years now since I’ve touched it
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—
But I bet I can still play it—if I could find it
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Mom also brought a large album of photos and personal mementos I had asked for. I felt it could be a great help in reevaluating the past and trying to put things into perspective—not to discover if there were things that I could not live without, but to take an account of my life and balance out relationships before taking a major step. In a few months, I would be due for the traditional examination with Reverend Mother and the council to decide whether I should continue
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I knew full well I was there on a trial basis to decide whether I had a true calling. The important thing for me was to find out if I could learn to live with the restrictions. I felt in my heart that I could, but it would take an awful lot of time to curb my independent spirit and to quit locking up everything
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True love is completely open and free of self. It has only to give, even if the price is pain. How does one express the desire to give? I think that one gives completely when he can totally accept all that another person is, by basking in the incredible uniqueness of God’s love expressed in His creation of another human being. We just have to accept Him and be grateful for the love He plants deep within our hearts. Accept it, live on its fruits, and share it
.

—That sounds very much like what I imagine a formation lesson to be. Is it?

   
No. On the contrary, the formation of that day was exactly the opposite. The goal was to seek relationship with God, not my fellow man. But inside I could not let go of the need to love others, and, oh, the fight this caused within me raged constantly
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On November 22, 1963, the entire Community was sitting together in the common room listening to a treatise on hospitality when the portress entered and handed Reverend Mother a note. Reverend Mother rose and said quietly, “The president has been shot. We must pray it is not fatal if the Lord wants him to continue.” Every one of us was on her knees
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Just two years before, I had cast my very first vote for John F. Kennedy, and the thought that he lay dying was almost too much for me to bear. I remember my obedience that day was painting Christmas ornaments, and for the first time I experienced a full understanding of work as prayer
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Later, Reverend Mother called us together again and announced that President Kennedy was dead. She was profoundly affected. She felt he was linked to the very existence of Regina Laudis because American strength and sacrifice had liberated Jouarre
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In the refectory, there was a sign beneath a photograph of President Kennedy: “No recreation tonight.” We were free to spend this time as we wanted. I put on my cape and hood and walked alone to the peach grove. I stood there, in the cold darkness, for what seemed a very long time, growing more and more connected to the intense grief that was surely being felt by the president’s widow and his mother
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Over the next days, like the rest of the country, the Community lived with the impact created by the solemnity of the burial rite, which we witnessed on the little television set we moved into the common room. Members of the Community would come and go throughout the day as their work permitted
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The manner in which the funeral was carried out had that recognizable discipline of ordered movement and seeming impersonality that is so thoroughly American in character. But I could feel each one of the participants putting his whole heart into what he was doing. The incredible maneuvers of the Irish drill corps, the dirge of the Air Force pipers, the volley of muskets, the final poignancy of the bugle playing “Taps”—all this concerted energy surrounded this death with a tribute made unique by the desire of each participant to get it right
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There was personal love in what they did, in the manner they did it. There was love in the way they folded the flag, handing it down to one another, much as early Christians must have handed the Eucharist to one another in the catacombs
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Reverend Mother had written a beautiful statement about Jacqueline Kennedy as a woman who presented a new Eve to the world, and as the youngest postulant, I was asked to read it to the Community. She asked me to include my own thoughts and observations, which I found easy to do because I had concentrated so hard on the woman
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To the entire world, Mrs. John F. Kennedy reigned with contained majesty. In the beauty of her silence, she renewed the American woman’s stature: we are the material of which history is made. In those moments, two sacraments sustained her: one God given—the Eucharist; one man-made—the flag. I was awed by the youthful first lady’s unbelievable assurance. In what had to be the most painful time in her life, she did not shrink from duty
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Nor did she forget she was teaching her children something about living. It was there in the expression of her little girl as she looked to her mother’s face on the steps of Saint Matthew’s Cathedral. Rare trust as little Caroline tried to read in her mother’s eyes the meaning of the event, learning to become a woman by watching the woman her mother was. The little boy of three letting go of the maternal hand and, unaided, standing at attention—John-John saluting his father. This silent scene exemplified the sure motherly touch of a woman communicating womanhood to her daughter and letting her son free to assume his inborn place as a man
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As I read these thoughts to the Community, something captured my heart. It was the electric bravery alive within the very room in which I stood. Here were nuns in silent admiration for one woman’s triumph over grief because they existed in the core of her victory. Here were women with courage to follow an invisible love—in a coffin of seclusion from the world. They follow with no obvious support to the brink of the unknown, there to set fire to a perpetual lamp of love
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I suspect that was the first time that I thought of these women as my sisters
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Twenty-Four

The Clothing—or Investiture—is the second step toward professed life. It’s as if you’re not really a nun until you wear the habit. Up to that time, although you are living in a monastery, you are an observer—simply a guest in the house
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To be clothed in the garments of the Community allows you to feel physically that you are part of it. You will now have a white veil and a new name. You are obligated to take on additional duties in terms of helping to maintain the house
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It also meant I would be totally separated from the world for a full year. Following the Clothing, a canonical year of strict enclosure is imposed by the Church on every novice, whether active or enclosed. I would see no one from the outside during that year, which was set aside entirely for my studies, duties and formation, for, in essence, I would be asking if I am truly called, asking to grow in holiness
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As Dolores wrestled with the decision to make her request to be clothed, she was thrown a challenge in a letter from her friend Ethel Levin, the wife of director Henry Levin, who had been at the helm of Dolores’ two most successful films,
Where the Boys Are
and
Come Fly with Me
. In her letter, Ethel asked Dolores her reasons for entering a monastery, and she pulled no punches, labeling the cloistered life “selfish and useless”. Dolores’ reply, which Ethel shared with us, is a heartfelt application of very personal apologetics.

I hadn’t felt the need to explain the reasons for my choice to many people for I thought that, at best, their interest bordered merely on curiosity, but Ethel’s letter reflected such sincerity that I couldn’t help being drawn into a vital connection. I had to dig to the core of my heart to respond to her challenges, and, in so doing, I faced the truth of my beliefs
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I had not, as Ethel suggested, chosen to escape my responsibilities in life by secluding myself from reality. I believed that if there is to be an ultimate and real salvation for the whole of mankind, it must begin by very personal involvement
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As a monastic nun, I hoped I would be a witness to the truth that love is real, and I was finding that it is no easy trick to live in solitude in the company of nearly forty persons. I figured Ethel knew what it was like to have houseguests for longer than a weekend, and I was sure she was able to put up with them because they were friends and she loved them. I was trying to learn to accept this same charity in relation to others because I believed on faith that each one of us is a creature of God, who is love Himself
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Was my life to be one of selfishness and uselessness? If so, then isn’t all poetry, all art, all music selfish and useless? They too are witnesses to a truth that lies deeply rooted in the heart of man that cannot be expressed in any other form
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I prayed I was learning to embrace an awareness of my real identity instead of marching in a parade of hysterical fantasy. I might have spent years thinking I exist only because I see my picture in a newspaper, because I am Mrs. So-and-So, because I have money, rather than knowing that I am because I am related in all my experiences with the forces of life by being obedient to the unifying force that informs them. God is that unifying force. And if I am united to God, then I am united in the totality of spirit to everything else that attempts to be united to Him
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