Poor Clares

The kids and I had a most amazing day on Holy Thursday. While traveling to a small resort town in Wisconsin to vacation with friends, we stopped for a break in Rockford Illinois. 

Truth be told, I had not planned to stop exactly where we did; the goal was the Burpee Natural History Museum. But before we could get to the downtown area and museum block, Big Sister's head was turned by a sign on a small monastery we had passed a dozen times before. 

The sign said, "Poor Clares". 

As it turns out, Big Sister was researching Saint Clare for a presentation and she could not resist a chance to visit the sisters who were the spiritual descendants of Clare herself! It took us three tries to turn around and find the proper entrance, and when we finally did, it was as if God provided an angel to lead us. A car slipped into the entrance ahead of us and led us to a back door that I would not have attempted myself. (It turns out all the other doors were locked tight) I asked him if he knew if the sisters' chapel was open to the public, and he informed me that he was just a medical courier, but that I would need to talk to the Portress anyway. He was ringing her just then.

It was as if we traveled back into the middle ages at that moment, and I realized by putting a few clues together that these sisters are cloistered. They do not generally accept visitors, nor do they leave their grounds. The chapel was not open to the public, nor was their convent. 

Never-the-less, as the courier had already rung the bell, I waited as a tiny, bent, cowled nun - the Portress- peeked out the barely opened, barred door to accept the delivery of medication. The courier let her know that I had a question for her too, and she was willing to speak for a moment. But only a moment! This was NOT a public space and it was breaking the rules of confinement to visit in this way. 

I told her that my children and I had hoped to stop at their chapel to pray along our trip, and that Big Sister was researching Saint Clare for a paper. The Portress nodded and told us to go around the building to a 'public' door and wait there. 

We did so. She buzzed us into a small, darkened chamber with a steep staircase that led to another door. Each door was equipped with little wooden shutters, curtains and grilles to emphasize the confinement of these religious. 

A voice came over a speaker just at the point where I wondered what to do next, and the Portress instructed us to go to the top of the stairs, enter the door and turn left. We did so. Locks clicked and buzzed as we passed through doorways, and we found ourselves in a well-lit and pleasant hallway, lined with a few small rooms. The room toward the front of the building was filled with items that the sisters had made to sell- handicrafts from rosaries to a child's veil for first communion to books. We selected a comic book about the life of Saint Clare for a dollar. 

The room toward the back of the building was a visiting room and built with a very specific message in mind. This is the public space, and anything beyond this space is cloistered. No exceptions. The room had a small couch and a comfortable rug, and on the wall shared with the rest of the monastery beyond was a large window with a sliding glass pane, heavy curtains, and a beautiful but solid cast iron grille. Yes, you can visit with your beloved family member who has cloistered herself into the eternal adoration of Christ, but neither of you will enter one another's world. This space is a holding room for the secular world, and beyond, a deeper space from which the sisters have promised never to emerge. Only the Portress herself has the special responsibility to act as gate-keeper.

As we took all these new sites and ideas in, the Portress, Sister Bridget (who is in our prayers) came to speak with us. She gave Big Sister one of her own small books of meditations of Saint Clare, invited us into the chapel, and encouraged us to receive several sacramentals the sisters had made and had blessed. 

The monastery is not fancy, nor is it unpleasant. Its a handsome, well-kept building which is pleasing to see. Yet it is no castle. Our explorations so far were consistent. Until we entered the chapel! The chapel was BEAUTIFUL! I regretted not having my camera with me at this point, yet it would have been inappropriate to gawk and take photos in this private chapel. Instead, the children and I spent our time in prayer and meditation before the ever-present Eucharist raised up over the rear altar. As is typical in a Colletine Poor Clares monastery, Christ in the Eucharist is perpetually adored. Seated in the throne-like monstrance, the Real Presence can be seen and felt both in the chapel, and also through a viewing window in the rooms behind the chapel. And in fact, this chapel had a large, clear window behind the rear altar, from which the Eucharist was witnessed in all of the cloistered main rooms of the Poor Clares. 

The altar piece was beautiful- made of intricate and detailed mosaics with all the rainbow of colors, and a baldachin or canopy rose above it, carved from stone with many beautiful symbols. Around the perimeter of the chapel large oil paintings of the stations of the cross hung, and each stained glass window told a story of the bible, Christ's life, or the lives of Saint Francis and Saint Clare. In addition, two bas reliefs of Saint Clare's resting place and of Saint Collette hung on the walls. In the back of the chapel were several statues so beautiful that I nearly cried- one of Saint Frances hugging the battered, pierced feet of Christ on the cross. 

The sisters were cleaning the sanctuary, polishing each square inch as if caressing their heavenly love, and the altar of repose was set up wonderfully with flowers and beautiful cloths for Holy Thursday. The sisters would not leave this altar unattended until midnight, when Christ is to be taken from the garden. (What a parallel and contrast in how Adam and Jesus leave their gardens!)

I left the monastery fortified for a challenging weekend, and believe very much that this was God's offering to brace me for an upcoming storm. For the children, they were awed and blessed with this experience, and while the idea of being cloistered reels the 12 year old girl's mind, the experience at the monastery touched her deeply and renewed an interest in spending more time with the Dominican sisters who live near us at home. 

I was only able to take pictures of the exterior of the monastery, but that seems appropriate. For some things are best kept removed from the common. This is what SUPER looks like in supernatural. Its not the makings of a bad horror movie, but rather that which is above, spiritually, the natural world. These sisters live in a foreign place to me- someplace between heaven and earth, but definitely closer to heaven.

What pictures I did take were of the wall enclosing the monastery compound. And that seems right because the wall speaks for the place. A wall need not be a hindrance or a closed border. I think Robert Frost got it right. Something there is that does not love a wall. A wall is something- a port different from any entrance. 

 

Mending Wall ~ Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall, 

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, 

And spills the upper boulders in the sun, 

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. 

The work of hunters is another thing: 

I have come after them and made repair 

Where they have left not one stone on a stone, 

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding, 

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean, 

No one has seen them made or heard them made, 

But at spring mending-time we find them there. 

I let my neighbor know beyond the hill; 

And on a day we meet to walk the line 

And set the wall between us once again. 

We keep the wall between us as we go. 

To each the boulders that have fallen to each. 

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls 

We have to use a spell to make them balance: 

'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!' 

We wear our fingers rough with handling them. 

Oh, just another kind of out-door game, 

One on a side. It comes to little more: 

There where it is we do not need the wall: 

He is all pine and I am apple orchard. 

My apple trees will never get across 

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. 

He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'. 

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder 

If I could put a notion in his head: 

'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it 

Where there are cows? 

But here there are no cows. 

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know 

What I was walling in or walling out, 

And to whom I was like to give offence. 

Something there is that doesn't love a wall, 

That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him, 

But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather 

He said it for himself. I see him there 

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top 

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. 

He moves in darkness as it seems to me~ 

Not of woods only and the shade of trees. 

He will not go behind his father's saying, 

And he likes having thought of it so well 

He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."