The Ear of the Heart: An Actress' Journey From Hollywood to Holy Vows (42 page)

During that year, there were times when I felt special, as if I were doing something very difficult—more or less unheard of—and I began to feel changes in myself. As a novice I began to take my turn as an acolyte, which required me to sing alone and was therefore a big deal. As a novice I was assigned a rotating obedience as reader in the refectory and in choir. I could now be a choir servant, the person who assists the hebdomadarian (the singer who leads the Office) and carry the holy water as she blesses each place in the monastery at night. This was a custom Reverend Mother brought from Jouarre. It’s a privilege to perform this service, and I took it very seriously. As a novice I was able to join a schola, the little group that stands with the foundress and helps center the singing of the Mass—again, a big deal
.

There was something pure about the lack of outside contact. I really began to dig into my life
within
the monastery and to answer my needs
within
the Community. The separation from the outside world forced issues as it anchored me, made me look into myself more
.

To enter the contemplative life truly, you have to go through a narrow, lonely place in your being, where you face all your fears and selfish patterns, even when you don’t know what these are. I thought I was very grown up, very mature. You don’t realize what a child you are until God tests your heart and you go through that deep place all of us have to go through
.

—
I felt like a fisherman, knee deep in a roaring current, balanced on one leg with a fish on the line—and my suspenders falling down
.

When Mother Placid returned to Regina Laudis, she was quite concerned that the radiant young postulant she remembered from a year before now appeared tired and drawn. She suggested to Mother Benedict that a meaningful obedience for Sister Judith would be art work.

I was assigned two hours a week that would replace one garden obedience—an unexpected gift very early in my canonical year that allowed me some time to devote to a real interest. I began to work with Mother Placid in a small room in the basement of the monastery building she called the studio. I called it a haven for those two hours a week, an answer to a long, sighing prayer. Being reunited with Mother Placid, whose departure had left me so angry, was a grace I accepted with great joy
.

Never having plunged into serious study of art before, a new world opened up. Mother Placid was passionate about art. “It is not”, she would repeat often, “merely self-expression; it expresses something. In all primitive societies, the artist was the storyteller, there to express his beliefs, his tribe. Art has a practical meaning. It has a spiritual meaning. It has a communal meaning
.”

Together we studied anatomy, design and sculpting. I made clay figures for miniature crèches that were sold in the monastery art shop. Our first major endeavor, however, was the result of a visit by the California mosaic artist Louisa Jenkins, who had been introduced to Regina Laudis by Clare Boothe Luce. Originally Louisa had come to meditate, but after she and Mother Placid became friends, she began passing on her artistic expertise. We were taught enameling by a master. I learned to fire the tiny medals of copper with enamel glazes in the studio’s small kiln. Louisa also taught us to make ecretions
.

—Ecretions?

   
That was what Louisa called them. Rice-paper collages. We tore up a lot of multicolored rice paper, glued the pieces together in thin, thin, thin layers to create a collage of abstract design and put heavy boards over it and walked on it. “Voila!” as Louisa would say. “Ecretions!
”

Before long, we found we could sell our wares—the ecretions, the enamels and, at Christmastime, the small crèches—through the Catholic Contemporary Arts Gallery on Madison Avenue in New York City. Using my knowledge of movie promotion, I sent postcards about our work to everyone I knew in New York. The gallery manager couldn’t believe all the people who came in
.

—What did the artwork sell for?

   
I think the ecretions were priced at $150. Our pieces were priced at less money than the owner thought they could bring. There’s an instruction in the Rule that monks are to sell their crafts at something less than the going price in stores so that poor people would have access to goods
.

More importantly at this critical time, Mother Placid talked things over with me while working, which helped me understand the inner mechanism of the monastery. She threw light on the dissension I had earlier perceived among that group of older nuns. It was growing. At Sunday recreation, when novices were with the professed, I picked up on whispered complaints. Often when I came into the laundry room, nuns fell suddenly quiet, and I knew the women hadn’t been discussing how to fold linen. When Mother Placid would return from a meeting, I could tell she was rankled. I could just feel it in her
.

Those women in the Community who were not with Reverend Mother questioned the blind acceptance of her as foundress. They were traditional in most ways, but the American way of voting for a superior appealed to them. They felt they should not just accept but elect. They wanted to establish a new foundation without Mother Benedict and Mother Mary Aline at its head. They were also increasingly resentful when Father Prokes reminded them of Reverend Mother’s accomplishments
.

Father Prokes was never shy about promoting her credentials. “Do you really know this woman?” he would challenge. “Do you know what she has gone through to make this foundation happen?” Now, Reverend Mother was a tough lady, but she didn’t elevate herself because ultimately she felt whatever achievement she represented was not a result of her will but of God’s. She believed that her Community should accept that
.

I shared Father Prokes view of Reverend Mother. I had long since rejected my first impression, made when I was a guest during her twenty-fifth Jubilee, that she was naïve. The quality I had observed was not naïveté; it was holiness. I recognized her as a godly woman
.

At each phase of formation you have a different formation mother. My new novice mistress, as she is called, was by-the-book Mother Stephen. Any gift I was sent was immediately submitted to her discernment. She allowed me to keep only very expedient things such as socks or writing paper. There was no judgmental connotation when she said I could not keep a particular item; it was just not proper. I could accept that
.

But I had a problem with being told how I should respond to a specific experience—say, to a book that she had also read. I resented her projection of her own personal experience onto my experience. And I could not abide being told what to write in my letters. I revolted then, but a seed was planted at that time that would flower years later
.

—Did you have a shoulder to cry on?

   
I did not have a Community member’s shoulder to cry on, if that’s what you mean. To pose an internal question to someone just didn’t exist then. No, I held it in. But even if you cry on someone’s shoulder, you can do that for just so long
.

Because of the lack of communication, you had to rely on what you sensed from a sister who may have wanted to help but was prohibited from doing so—maybe a smile or a whispered “Courage” as you passed in the hall. I couldn’t get rid of the impression that the religious life should bring forth kinship persons. It brought forth heroic individuals, true, but it didn’t include a relational base, which was the way the Church started, wasn’t it
?

I can’t imagine that men and women are meant to give up their impetus for fruitful relationships. I think fertility is part of us, and if you don’t become fruitful at one level of your being, your fertility is to be used in another dimension. A person is not meant to be isolated
.

—Not meant to be isolated? Are you speaking about monastic life?

   
No, I don’t think isolation works for a person anywhere
.

Would a postulant or novice at Regina Laudis today go through the periods of isolation that you went through?

   
I hope not. I really hope that she would knock at my door
.

The separation during the canonical year was extremely hard on Harriett. Unable to talk with her daughter on the telephone, her letter output doubled, every letter beginning with “Hi, Honey” or “Hi, Kiddo”, never “Sister Judith”.

Harriett had taken to giving interviews to fan magazines. Writers who could not gain access to her daughter came to her for quotes, which she effusively provided. In one interview, she announced that she had begun Catholic instruction herself so that she could “fully share and relate to” what her “daughter is living.”

—
Oh yes, that
sounded
great. That was the response that made everybody happy. There was no way to try to go into any greater depth about it with her. Actually, she began instruction three times. She did always try. She wanted so much to have something work. But, as with her forays into AA, she didn’t follow through
.

Harriett’s life was beginning to show signs of falling apart. The Mazza-Hart talent agency was a flop, and with increasing regularity her letters hinted at financial problems. Finally she wrote that the trust fund was gone and her landlord was threatening eviction.

I thought Mom had gotten herself into a pickle by pouring money down the drain for booze, and I did not offer to send money. First, I flat out didn’t have the resources to do that. I had no money of my own. But it would have been a cruel thing had I been able to send a check
.

Like her, I was involved in a day-to-day struggle to maintain stability. I was dealing with my problems; she had to deal with hers. I knew how tempting it is to cry out. My battle to find the peace and comfort of God’s presence continued every night. But Reverend Mother kept faith in me. She let me cry over day-to-day disappointments and failures because she thought I could pick myself up. When I did pick myself up, I felt stronger, and then I was grateful for her confidence in my strength. What we often need is another’s conviction that we can make it
.

“
Money is not what you need, Mom”, I wrote her. “What you need is the courage to live in a sober state of mind. If you go back to the booze, you will just be showing me that I was wrong to have confidence in you
.”