The Ear of the Heart: An Actress' Journey From Hollywood to Holy Vows (49 page)

Nancy Collins was an energetic protester of the Vietnam War at Connecticut College. “It was a free, anything-goes era, and it seemed at college there were no rules whatsoever”, she lamented. “There was a lot of experimentation with drugs and alcohol and sex. Male students stayed over in the dorms. I didn’t want to follow that crowd.

“I just happened to be at Regina Laudis at the time of Mother Dolores Consecration. I had been taken with the magazine article and asked for a parlor with her. I told her very frankly about the challenges I was facing. She was intense—by that I mean a very strong presence—but wasn’t shy to address my concerns in very down-to-earth terminology. I wouldn’t have believed a nun could be that modern. She absolutely saved my integrity.”

In 1975, Nancy made her entrance into religious life and is now Mother Augusta Collins, responsible for the abbey’s grass-fed beef herd and more than twenty pastures for grazing and haymaking. She can usually be seen atop a John Deere tractor.

—
Mother Augusta holds the herd of Belted Galloway beef cattle, made possible by the gift of a heifer and a thousand-pound bull from Uncle Vance and Aunt Gladys Kincaid. Within a very few years a herd of mismatched cows was transformed into a gorgeous black and white, Benedictine masterpiece
.

Arlene Morfesi, a legal secretary in Manhattan, had recently ended her engagement to a West Point cadet. The broken engagement inspired a makeover, which daringly included champagne highlights in her brunette locks, suggested by her hairdresser, who also introduced Arlene to the Bible group she had formed with a Catholic priest. The priest, in turn, led Arlene to her first visit to Regina Laudis. She became a member of the Advocate Community and in 1976 entered the monastery.

—
As our Sister Rachel Morfesi, she became secretary to Reverend Mother Benedict and now is one of the computer whizzes settling Regina Laudis comfortably into the twenty-first century. She was indispensable in the making of this book
.

Jean Marie Baxter was no stranger to Regina Laudis. When she was one year old her family began regular visits to the monastery to see her Aunt Trish—Mother Placid. She began visiting on her own upon graduation from the University of Denver, where she had earned a bachelor of fine arts degree. Since the age of three, Jean had been interested in art, a passion she shared with her aunt.

“After college,” she recalled, “I went to Europe and, when I returned, found a job in Boston. I thought I had fallen in love and became engaged but eventually faced the fact that my heart was not truly in it. Life was not turning out at all what I had idealized it to be. Something was missing. I was a confused, distraught and angry young lady.

“My visits to Aunt Trish became more frequent, and I met a number of young people in the Advocate Community who were also searching. I was deeply impressed with their capacity to articulate what they were looking for—commitment. I began to recognize this as my search too and became a member of that group.

“I met frequently with Mother Dolores. She is motivated to unlock—whether it comes as an encouragement or a challenge. She recognized that I was avoiding a decision and in a brutal parlor told me flat out to get off the fence. She restored my hope in the
possibilities
of my life. This, in turn, opened an understanding of Aunt Trish’s new identity, and it was then I began calling her Mother Placid.

“In preparation for my entrance in 1976, I had a parlor with Mother Dolores, and I was eager to hear all the wonderful things she would tell me about monastic life. But she said only that she thought I should study life drawing—which sounded wonderful to me—and plumbing.
Plumbing
?

“ ‘Of course,’ she answered, ‘so you can have a practical entrance point for the Community.’

“Yikes! When my family heard that, it brought down the house. My mother was relieved that Mother Dolores hadn’t suggested electrician. ‘You could easily get electrocuted,’ she said, ‘but it is highly unlikely that you might drown.’ ”

—When the abbey is dug up in
A.D.
3000, Mother Praxedes Baxter’s metal sculptures—made by using blowtorches on rusted bathroom sinks—could be all that is left of Regina Laudis, and people will speak well of the artist who made them and of us
.

Patricia Kuppens, now Mother Lucia Kuppens, the Community’s librarian and cellarer, the most important work in a Benedictine monastic community, thought back to 1972, the year she first visited Regina Laudis. “I had struggles with my religion in college, as did almost every Catholic of my generation. My goals then were so conventional really. I imagined I would be an English professor or have a book-related career, I would fall in love, get married and raise a family. And somehow I thought I could do all of the above and still make the world a better place.

“Regina Laudis helped me see that I should put that last goal first if it was going to be anything more than a dream, and I had to start changing the world by changing myself. Someone once asked me why I kept coming to the abbey, and I answered that I was being taught how to be happy. I really did feel that way. I just got happier and freer as a person the more I was here.

“It took me a long time to consider a vocation. It just didn’t occur to me for many years, even after so many of my friends entered. I am happy to say I accomplished all my goals—I am married, and I do spend my life with literature—just in a different way from what I imagined!”

—
Mother Lucia is a true synergist, keenly well-versed in every quarter she touches, yet she is one of the most genuinely humble women I have ever known. It’s a wonder to watch her disrobe the splendor that she deserves and give it to another
.

Margaret Patton was eighteen, a Bennington College freshman and non-Catholic when she first visited Regina Laudis with a schoolmate. She came from a celebrated military family, her grandfather being General George S. Patton Jr., most noted for his command of the US Third Army in World War II. The Third Army liberated more than eighty thousand square miles of European territory, including the town of Jouarre and its abbey, thus bonding the Patton name to Regina Laudis forever, a fact that Margaret was unaware of. Her father, the also prominent Major General George S. Patton, likewise had a lengthy military career, which took him from West Germany to Korea and ultimately to Vietnam.

“I demonstrated against that war while my father was serving in Vietnam”, Margaret said. “I totally dismissed my heritage and what I perceived as the self-aggrandizement of the military. I hated being known as General Patton’s granddaughter.”

—
It was a very weighty chip on her shoulder. She wanted nothing to do with the Patton legacy and refused to speak about it at all. Of course I found that kind of conflict fascinating. Reverend Mother was equally impressed and invited Margaret to raise the American flag on the next August 27, annually commemorated here as the day Patton liberated Jouarre. At our first parlor, she made a comment on our shared “notoriety” that has remained a private joke through the years. “Your face is your fortune”, she said. “Mine is my name
.”

“I converted to Catholicism and entered the abbey at midnight, January 1, 1982”, recalled Mother Margaret Georgina. “Only my father came. It was excruciating for him, but he felt it was his duty to be there. After Mass we trooped down in the snow to the Great Gate. When the prayers were over and I was just about to go in, we heard several gunshots, very close, which startled all of us, most especially my father. It was Mother Dolores!”

—
There was a time when I received some threatening letters, and oblate Ed McGorry, a retired New York City policeman, thought I should learn to use a firearm. On Saturdays we would go out to a field, where he taught me how to shoot a Winchester.22 as well as his police handguns. After a few weeks of training, I could get ten bull’s-eyes with ten shots. I merely thought it would be grand to welcome General Patton with a salute he would appreciate
.

   
Mr. McGorry’s generous gift of protection has continued through the years, with several state troopers in our area volunteering their own time to patrol the property. One of them actually appeared in one of our stage productions. Now that’s bravery
.

“Mother Dolores”, recalled Mother Margaret Georgina, “was extremely significant to my father and helped his relationship to the abbey. He really cared for her, appreciated her straight talk—and, of course, admired her beauty!”

Mother Margaret Georgina is in charge of the vegetable gardens, is mistress of ceremonies at liturgical events, handles preparations for clergy and guests, makes cheese and creates the sanctuary flower arrangements with such grace that I sometimes come to Mass early to observe the performance.

—
Over time, she accepted the military background of her family and came to terms with her controversial grandfather. She even took on marksmanship instruction from Mr. McGorry
.

It was only a few days after my Consecration when the walks started. I asked Mother David if it was possible, during the scant twenty-five minute period between Vespers and supper, for us to take a walk together now that I was legal—that is, professed
.

Mother Abbess explained, “This had always been a time for meditation, but usually we stayed in choir until the supper bell rang. After Vatican II, it was no longer necessary to stay in choir to meditate; you could meditate outside. Before Mother Dolores came into the Community, I already had the practice of taking a walk after Vespers, and I welcomed the opportunity finally, after seven years, to get to know her.”

We walked to Saint Mary’s Woods on the same route that I took the very first time I came to Regina Laudis and was shown out—not too cordially—by Mother David. This time it was a congenial and unhurried walk; the first time we were able to let our hair down and laugh about the long, hard silence both of us had felt
.

Thus began a tradition of daily walks that remained pretty consistent—we walked even in the rain and snow—and continued until the neuropathy hit me in the late 1990s. The walks stopped then, but the time together has not. It has evolved into an unofficial part of the day’s schedule. I still call them walks, but now they take place anywhere on the grounds or even in Corpus Christi
.

At first, I had personal needs to talk over. Mother David has a way of allowing me to integrate what is needed to make the vow to change work in my life. She gives me perspective. To this day, when something is disturbing me, she will say, “Listen up. God does not want this something that is distressing you. God wants you to be happy. Don’t you realize that
?”

—She has never gotten over straightening my collar. Now she straightens out my head
.

Talk during the walks always turned to something that was critical in the Community at the moment, opening up new areas for inspiration regarding Community development. We have kept that half-hour commitment for over forty-two years. That stability is, for me, such a gift because no matter what is happening in our lives, the relationship allows me to trust in my own gift for instinctually sensing the truth. It is probably why we were eventually meant to take on roles of service for the Community, she as abbess and I as her support. Although this time was never an officially scheduled part of our daily program, it grew into just that and has become unofficially honored by the Community—respected and protected and not interrupted
.

—Today the Community not only supports this but insists upon it. The women feel comforted that this conversation takes place. It is touching that the Community relies on our relationship rather than feeling any jealousy. They don’t feel cut off but truly believe that their own lives will be supported through that strength. For my part, the walks have been my lifeline through my whole vocation—the rope that kept me from sinking
.

Thirty

It was always Reverend Mother’s intent that one day Regina Laudis would be an abbey, and central to that goal was the Community’s right to elect an abbess for life, which we had included in our constitution that was finally approved in 1974
.

—That wasn’t ever taken out?

   
No, it was the Benedictine approach. It was kept in. It’s still in
.

Elevating a foundation from a monastery to an abbey is an organic progression. A monastery may start out with a small founding group. If it endures and grows, it goes through stages—dependent priory, independent priory, then abbey
.

There are really no tangible benefits to being an abbey, and certainly there is no power involved. This advancement, therefore, is not about clout or advantage, but about being available for greater service, greater obligation and witness. Although the leader of an abbey is elected by her community, she receives a rite of blessing from the bishop, who consecrates her as an abbess, the highest level a woman can attain in the Church. An abbess is recognized by the whole Church as head of her community. From the Vatican to the state of Connecticut, she is given due respect, and that elevates the whole community
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