Tuesday, August 10, 2010

My day with eccentric nuns at convent where Delia Smith studied

From my tiny attic window I can see that it is a grey morning, with a mist drifting around the dark woods on the far hills.

Closer to home, within the monastery grounds, the dawn light reveals sheep grazing among the apple and pear trees in the orchard, while the neat rows of carrots and leeks in the kitchen garden are testament to the skills of Sister Josephine Margaret.

Now aged 80, Sister Josephine Margaret has a degree in botany and trained at the Royal Horticultural Society’s Wisley Gardens.

Today, between the rigours of prayer, study and religious contemplation, she ministers to the flower garden that produces blooms for the monastery vases, the rows of vegetables that provide for the nuns’ meals, and the soft fruits for the monastery jam.

Here in this lush fold of East Sussex, the Monastery of the Visitation at Waldron is almost entirely self-sufficient, though the 13 nuns who live here, whose ages range from 35 to nearly 100, do supplement nature’s bounty with a pragmatic weekly shop at Tesco online.

Sister Mary de Sales is the nun responsible for this surprising interaction with the modern world.

‘She is the webmistress,’ says the Reverend Mother, Sister Jane Margaret. ‘Oh, yes, very techie. We’ve even got a website now.’

The nuns’ Victorian red brick monastery was originally built as a mansion for a wealthy businessman.

While the nuns who live there rarely go out, they are not as detached from the real world as one might imagine.

They have even heard of the singing Benedictine nuns from the South of France, who have just signed a major recording deal with Universal Music.

‘Isn’t it exciting? That will bring more people to prayer, it really will,’ says Reverend Mother.

‘We do live behind a grille, but we have to be in touch with the world so that we can pray for it.’

The nuns are a silent order, with brief periods for talk after lunch and supper; but they read newspapers and love to watch Poirot and Miss Marple videos during recreation periods.

Some sports events and The Proms are also essential viewing, along with any titbits about the impending UK visit from the Pope.

‘Sister Mary Gabriel loves golf,’ says Reverend Mother. ‘And Sister Paul (after the saint) Miriam is the chosen one: she is going to see the Pope when he comes. Oh, she will love it. She really is a keen Pope watcher.’

From my window, I can also see a pile of neatly chopped logs. Do the nuns do that, too?

Indeed they do. Not for the first time since arriving, I experience a surge of admiration for the Salesian nuns who live and work here; the capable, kindly sisters of this worldwide order, founded in Annecy 400 years ago and who celebrate
their anniversary this year.

They are a remarkable lot. Some of the nuns here have been married and have children outside.

‘Virginity is not the be all and end all here,’ is how the Reverend Mother puts it, although I think it rather helps if the husband in question has died, rather than been divorced.

They are a remarkable lot.

Some nuns had jobs before they took their vows of Solemn Profession; they were teachers, nurses and midwives.One nun was a doctor; another worked in a bank in the City; another stacked shelves in a supermarket.

Yet perhaps the most remarkable features of the Monastery of the Visitation
is not the axe-wielding nuns, nor the acuity of their myriad skills or their fondness for TV detectives, but that they are the only contemplative closed order in the world who invite women to live with them as ‘retreatants’, joining in their services within the heart of the monastery enclosure.

Retreatants can stay for a day, a week or longer, to experience what life is like as a nun.

Some do it just for the peace and quiet; others to reassess life’s priorities; or perhaps as the first step in becoming a nun themselves. So what am I doing here?

Well, I am not really trying to make myself more pleasing to God by becoming a bride of Christ, as nuns are wont to do — although, to be frank, I’m not exactly against making a few lucrative deposits in the Bank of The Holy Hereafter either.

Most of the time, though, I am just trying not to make a noise.

The nuns rise at 5.50 in summer, for private prayer and meditation before the first service, Lauds, at 7.35 am. They celebrate mass every day and pray the Divine Office five times a day, the singing accompanied by the Reverend Mother or Sister Clare Chantal on the zither.

That is, as I discover in my 24 hours as a nun, a lot of running around to be done in the pursuit of Godliness.

Meals are taken in silence, usually accompanied by a recording of a sermon over the Tannoy.

I have listened to readings from Ecclesiastes that began ‘Vanity of vanity, the preacher said’.

Other readings talked of worshipping false idols and noted that a man’s life is not made secure by what he owns, world without end, amen.

And every time, on my hard pew, head bowed along with a dozen bowed, veiled heads, I would guiltily think the penitent’s thought: Do they mean me?

All sorts of women come here on retreat, but I am fascinated to discover that the order’s most famous retreatant is Delia Smith, who lived here at the Monastery of the Visitation for just over a year at some little documented point in her life, between leaving school and starting her career as a newspaper cookery writer.

For months on end, the young Delia prayed and cooked, cooked and prayed, as she whisked along these same dark wood corridors and worshipped in the same lily-scented chapel.

In the end, for whatever reason, she did not make the leap and went on to show the world how to boil an egg and make Piedmontese peppers instead.

She remains on friendly terms with the nuns, a few of whom were here when she was and who still miss her.

Never before or since has the food been quite so good. 'We realised we were looking forward to our meals a bit too much,' one whispered.

All of Delia's cookery books are kept faithfully in the monastery kitchen, which was the reason I guessed that she had once stayed here.

That, and the fact that the cucumber salad we had for lunch was undeniably her recipe.

Washing up my white Pyrex crockery after one meal, I wonder if Delia ever felt the same confusion that I do.

Not about God, but about a notice in the scullery that reads 'Not After Breakfast Please'. There is no clue about what it is you are not meant to do, but in the circumstances, it could be anything.

Sudden proximity to a flock of silent nuns can be alarming for the uninitiated.

In the library, browsing through sections labelled Liturgy, Popes, Gardening, Men (Biographies) and Foreign Languages, I am startled by the vision of Sister Francis de Sales, who is 96, beaming as she ascends silently heavenwards in the glass lift in the corner of the room.

Once in service as a dumb butler to ferry meals around the monastery, the lift is now used to transport elderly nuns in wheelchairs between daily services and the refectory on the ground floor, and their living quarters upstairs.

Later, walking in the grounds, there is a rustle from the bushes and I expect to see a squirrel or a rabbit - but out strides Sister Clare Chantalm, a deckchair under her arm.

Like many of the nuns, she likes to meditate in the open air. Each day, the monastic rhythm revolves around the celebration of Eucharist and the singing of the Liturgical Hours.

Unless in their blue working habits for gardening, croquet , decorating or maintenance tasks, the nuns are always in full fig - which means black cotton habit, a black binder on the head over their unseen white skull caps, then the black veil and the guimpe - the gleaming white bib that casts a waxy light over their pale faces.

Do they have to change the guimpe every day? 'Only if you spill soup on it,' says Sister Clare. Aren't the habits hot in summer? 'Yes, but you just have to think cool.'

The days pass in a whirlwind of worship: Angelus (a form of devotion), prayer, Lauds, the Office of Readings, Mass, Angelus again, Lectio (or reading), Vespers and more prayer before Compline, the last service of the day.

At supper, the spirit of St Delia is with us once more as we drink herb tea or water (wine is taken only at Holy Communion) and silently munch hot cheese scones, more cucumber salad, a bowl of Sister Josephine Margaret's delicious tomatoes, followed by home-made yoghurt and bottled cherries.

Life here has its own simple elegance. So no wonder that the Monastery of the Visitation wants to put themselves and their retreatant programme on the map.

While not every woman wants to become a nun, of course, the feeling here is that at least more will know what the sisters do and where they are.

'We are a welcoming community,' says the Reverend Mother.

Now aged 64, she grew up in a Roman Catholic family in Liverpool; a pop music fan who often went to the 'smoky and noisy' Cavern to see The Beatles and who 'liked Paul the best of all'. That is McCartney, not the Saint.

Later, she taught at a convent in South London before coming to the Visitation as a retreatant herself when she was 25.

She knew immediately that this was where she wanted to be for ever.

Living here is not for the faint of spirit. Following in the footsteps of Delia here is not as easy as following her step-by-step instructions on how to make a nice savoury flan for a feast day.

It is, however, an unforgettable experience; one that does lodge a chip of peace and quietude into the heart of even the stormiest soul.

No charge is made for staying, but the monastery obviously appreciates any donations.

When leaving, I put my money in the receptacle by the door, not realising that it contained holy water.

I left the soggy notes to dry on my desk, next to an icon of St Francis and a printed card that read: 'Blessed is she who believed.'

I knew that Reverend Mother would understand.

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