AustinGranny.com - News from the Convent

Thursday, March 3

Yesterday my e-mail included news that the Benedictine Monastery has elected a new Prioress named Sister Nancy. My apologies for this.

Poem for a Lost Generation

All the good names were taken

By the time we heard the call;

Times were different in the '50s

When thirty-six girls entered that fall.

Come time for us to take the veil

When our old lives must be forsaken,

We still found comfort in the fact

That those old dated names were taken.

Can you imagine some eighty years,

Bearing the name of an obscure saint,

Who, truth be told, achieved her grace

By suffering it without complaint?!

Yet all the good ones we admired -

Catherine, Margaret, Rose and Anne -

Were spoken for, so long ago.

Then Vatican II changed the plan!

Richarda and Ephrem seemed to fit

And sound like prioress to my ears.

Sister Nancy is another matter...

She must be from those boomer years.

Whatever happened to our generation?

Good solid names - I'll recite you a litany:

Jean, Gerry, Carol and Barb were skipped over...

Next thing we know, it will soon be a Brittany!

Comments:

"That’s just toooooooooooooooo good. I printed it off and will share it with Nancy. She’ll love it." Barb

"Oh, now I guess I'll lose my Prayer Day, too!!!"
[]8^) (Turned sideways, a Benedictine wearing glasses) Carol

"CUTE! Hey, you can’t lose it… (we might have to give you another one!!) Barb

"Or Tammy, Jay Lo, Beyonce... I guess that really dates us... " Jean

"Yes, we have come into an enlightened age, and all those MALE names are buried!
Campion and Hugh,
to name just a few!!!!!"
Gerry

"I was just so eager to hear who was named prioress and had to wait until I got home from Israel on March 11. Congrats to Nancy!!! She was one of the women I worked with when I was vocation director. I pray that all goes well with her in the coming years. What an adventure! Abraham has nothing on her." - C

And now you can guess the reason that I left the convent so many years ago...
it wasn't the vow of Poverty. I grew up during WW II on a family farm on the prairie in Minnesota.
I could even handle a vow of Chastity... well,
in retrospect, perhaps not.
But really it was the vow of Obedience that tripped me up!
— Granny

The Monks of St. John's File in for Prayer
by Kilian McDonnell,
from Swift, Lord, You Are Not. © St. John's University Press.

In we shuffle, hooded amplitudes,
scapulared brooms, a stray earring, skin-heads
and flowing locks, blind in one eye,
hooked-nosed, handsome as a prince
(and knows it), a five-thumbed organist,
an acolyte who sings in quarter tones,
one slightly swollen keeper of the bees,
the carpenter minus a finger here and there,
our pre-senile writing deathless verse,
a stranded sailor, a Cassian scholar,
the artist suffering the visually
illiterate and indignities unnamed,
two determined liturgists. In a word,
eager purity and weary virtue.
Last of all, the Lord Abbot, early old
(shepherding the saints is like herding cats).
These chariots and steeds of Israel
make a black progress into church.
A rumble of monks bows low and offers praise
to the High God of Gods who is faithful forever.