CHAPELS

Convent of St. Mary, Sewanee, TN

At one time, New Iberia Louisiana’s premier artist, Paul Schexnayder, and I thought of producing a book about Episcopal chapels in Louisiana. He’d illustrate; I’d do the text. However, we both got caught up in work for other books, and all that remains of the proposed volume are the rough texts for three chapels, two of which I've attended in Louisiana and another one in a non-Louisiana region, Sewanee, Tennessee.

This morning, I discovered the notes for texts about two chapels that would’ve appeared in the volume dedicated to Episcopal chapels. At this stage of my writing vocation, I doubt if I’ll get around to writing the aforementioned book, so I decided to share the notes I made in a “chapel blog,” beginning with one labeled "Lagniappe," the non-Louisiana chapel at St. Mary’s Convent here in Sewanee, Tennessee where I worship regularly and sometimes preach six months of the year.

Angel at Convent of St. Mary, Sewanee

The chapel at the mother house of the Anglican Sisters of St. Mary, Sewanee, Tennessee was designed by Architect Robert Seals and consecrated in 1988. It was constructed of native stone similar to many of the buildings here in Sewanee, and the following text (after revisions) would have appeared as lagniappe about a noteworthy Tennessee chapel in the volume featuring Louisiana chapels:

They teach us about living in stillness with the One who guides a community that follows St. Benedict’s Rule. The Sisters, dressed in their unadorned blue jumpers with white blouses, wake up to a gray world of mist, praying the words of St. Benedict: “Let nothing be preferred to the Word of God.” At 7 a.m., a bell that was transported from their original Mother House in Memphis and placed in the tower of the stone chapel, calls them to Morning Prayer and the Eucharist, two of five offices they celebrate each day. 

    The white-walled chapel is the cathedral of our faith where we feast at The Table with this group of disciplined women. A cat lurks in the hall; an aging dog curls up on a cushion beside the Prioress’s chair and frequently goes to the altar to receive a blessing. Through the clear glass window behind the altar, mist rises over the rugged steep overlooking the Cumberland Valley. Outside, a black locust tree welcomes rain now pattering on the blue tin roof. The downpour drenches a garden of roses where a miniature stone angel sits on a swing, surveying her domain. 

    At the plain oak altar with a cross carved in center front, we gather for The Eucharist. On this particular day, the scent of Easter lilies, incense, and candle wax from the Resurrection celebration mingles in the chapel, along with the fiery words of a presiding priest who exhorts us to practice inclusiveness and justice. 

    The Sisters not only offer the world their prayers for all people, they include us in the chanting of Psalms and the Eucharist, then serve us breakfast in a refectory with windows on every side where they look out at a world they praise daily. Hospitality is part of their lifework. They began offering the sacramental life to mountain people on the Feast of the Transfiguration in the 19th century and have kept their doors open to all people since that time. The Sisters are kinswomen of the Order of St. Mary once led by four Sisters, known as the Martyrs of Memphis or Constance and Her Companions, who died nursing victims of a yellow fever epidemic in Memphis, Tennessee in 1878. 

    At early morning Eucharist, Sister Mary Zita, a Filipino nun, sits in front of me, a sock cap with a star design on it atop her head. She is silent, bent over her prayer book. She joined the Order of St. Mary of Sewanee after Prioress Sister Lucy of St. Mary of Sewanee went on a mission to the Philippines where she visited this religious order in the mountain province of Sagada and recruited the little nun. 

    “Life,” the Sisters would say, “is best lived in community. The Community is a microcosm of the Church. We live in dependence on God for all that is needed, using what is given with care and simplicity as stewards of God’s gifts. Let nothing be preferred to the Word of God. The altar is the home of our abiding.”

My notes about this chapel end here, but for those who wish to know more about the Sisters of St. Mary at Sewanee, Ten Decades of Praise is available in the library of the Convent of St. Mary, Sewanee, Tennessee. Also available is my book entitled In A Convent Garden, poetry about the Sisters.

Photographs by Victoria I. Sullivan

PARABLES AND PIGS

Dog damage to garage

Sunday, I preached on the Parable of the Prodigal Son, and as an aftereffect of the delivery, at lunch with the Sisters of St. Mary, Sewanee, the conversation centered around the profligate son finally getting a job feeding pods to pigs. I don’t know whether the phrase “pods for pigs” was some kind of biblical alliteration created by an early translator of The Word, but the botanist in our crowd, Vickie Sullivan, and others around the table Googled and found that the pods were actually a chocolaty bean from the carob tree that pigs must have relished. 

The conversation caused me to wonder if perhaps a pig had been the culprit that damaged the siding on a corner of the garage door while we were sojourning in Louisiana. A photograph of the damage is shown above. I mean, if boa constrictors can proliferate, move around, and damage properties in Florida and nutria migrated and proliferated in Louisiana, could pigs do the same in Tennessee?! 

According to the manual, Wildflowers in the Smokies (lead author, Peter White), during the late 1940s European wild hogs escaped from a game farm in North Carolina and entered the Great Smoky Mountain Park of Tennessee and North Carolina, and attempts to remove them have failed. Now, these are no ordinary pigs; they’re large babies that root up wildflowers and create wallows in lower elevations in beech gaps, damaging trout lilies and other spring wildflowers, decimate forests by rooting for bulbs and tubers, leaving the beech gaps looking as if they’ve been plowed up. Park officials are worried about long-term effects of these hogs that they actually call wild boars. 

Since the late 1980s, large populations of the boars have been trapped or shot by park crews, but officials claim that total elimination of the hogs is almost impossible. Coyotes like to eat wild hog piglets and red wolves also like to take on full-grown boars, but I’m wondering if there are some park runaways who have managed to migrate to The Mountain here at Sewanee, and are foraging for food near residences.

A repairman who arrived to give an estimate for repairs to the damaged siding told us that there are toothmarks on the siding, and he thinks a large dog (whose owner cleaned up the siding and took it away) chased a chipmunk that crawled inside the corner siding, and tried to make a meal of the little critter. Since part of the siding had been taken away, we surmised that it was a dog whose owner decided repairs might be costly (estimate of $275), so he/she didn’t leave a note. No chipmunk skeletons or missing siding have been found in the woods either.

Unlike some cultures, I don’t have an appetite for roast dog, but I do like cochon de lait —roast pig — Cajun cooking at its best — but there are no carob pods around, and I guess we’ll have to stick to the story of disrepair by a dog who was supposed to be on a leash but got out of control when a chipmunk crossed its path. Sigh. 

We always come home to some kind of damage to the property when we leave Sewanee for the winter, and we once thought the Sewanee campus a safe place to live, but we’ve been taking a ride every day lately… looking for country acreage where we might keep a pen of pigs?… 

LEAVING OUR FAMILY AT ST. MARY’S

One of the major experiences I’ll miss when I return to Louisiana for the winter is my life as an Associate with the Anglican Sisters of St. Mary’s Convent, Sewanee, Tennessee. Yesterday, Victoria Sullivan and I celebrated an anniversary of four years as Associates with the Sisters. We received a lovely bouquet of dahlias grown in the Convent’s garden and two cards with handwritten sentiments recognizing our service with the Community. Sister Miriam had also gotten up at 2 a.m. to bake apple raisin bread for the occasion, a bread that she jokingly referred to as "extremely pregnant" because it had risen to a mid-section height unparalleled in her baking career. Lots of unpublishable remarks followed this reference, and the anniversary was one of those light and laughter celebrations characteristic of the Sisters’ “family events.”

During the 80’s when I attended self-improvement seminars about how to live and work as a contributing person in society, participants were told that there are three things people need to do in their daily lives -- invite others to join them in contributing to community life, make promises to the community, and acknowledge people’s efforts when they've made contributions. The Sisters of St. Mary do those three things. They invite people to become Associates and work with them, requiring each person who joins with them in worship and service to promise to live by a daily Rule. And they support and acknowledge the Associates for their work.

The Big Plus for Associates is that they join an authentic family –a family that remembers birthdays, anniversaries, the names of the Associates’ offspring and grand offspring and one that offers open discussion of problems and ongoing spiritual direction. The family of Sisters listens well, rather than pronouncing personal judgments and criticism; and they provide prayerful, unconditional love. It’s an honor for Associates to be able to worship and pray at four services every day of the week in this small gray stone chapel perched on a bluff of the Cumberland Plateau.

We share the Eucharist and breakfasts on Tuesday and Sunday mornings every week and are sometimes invited, as we have been this week, to share Sunday lunch with the Sisters in a refectory overlooking the Cumberland Valley. The Sisters love to laugh and often praise Victoria for her special ability to tell stories or make wry remarks that incite laughter. In her anniversary card, Vickie received special acknowledgement for her gift of laughter, for her wisdom, and for the time she gives to Convent projects;e.g., the Board of Directors of the Convent.

I often serve at St.Mary’s altar and preach at least once a month while we’re sojourning on The Mountain and feel at home serving as a retired deacon from another Episcopal Diocese on this small, modest altar and sharing the Gospel with a congregation of 30-40 active members.  I've also been involved in fundraising efforts on behalf of the Convent's work and for maintenance of their mother house and received acknowledgement of those efforts.

In short, we’re included and respected as members of an organization that is a well-functioning servant leader organization, one that doesn't just pay lip service to so-called “religious” ideals but provides Associates a family that is honest with, and upholds, all of its members, unlike many of the dysfunctional families in American society that tout togetherness but practice phony baloney, acts of sniping and unkindness to members of the family into which they're born.   

The idea of developing an Associates order can probably be attributed to a Sister of an early St. Mary's order named Mother Mary Maude who, in 1934, wrote the prophetic words quoted in Ten Decades of Praise by Sister Mary Hilary:

“It has been said that this age is ripe for a new manifestation in the monastic tradition…One wonders in what way it will come. Perhaps in lay organizations, pledged to the ascetic ideal, yet living and mingling in the world. If ever the world needed the salt of distinctively Christian lives it needs it now. Such lives must be based on theological virtues, built up on the moral virtues, pledged to simple and frugal living, detached from worldly standards, fired with a passion for social justice, and sustained by a dynamic energy drawn from sacramental grace and nourished by a systematic prayer life…”

The Sisters of St. Mary in the southern province are the “inheritors” of an order established by four Sisters, known as the Martyrs of Memphis or Constance and her Companions who died nursing victims of a yellow fever epidemic in Memphis, Tennessee in 1878. The Sewanee order also established an order of St. Mary in the Philippines, and a tiny Sister named Mary Zita was called to the convent at Sewanee after the Sisters made a mission to Sagada.

We’re fortunate to have found this authentic family in one of the world’s “thin places,” a community dedicated to "providing the salt of distinctively Christian lives,” devoted to holy work and to caring for people who may not have experienced unconditional love and acceptance by their birth families. I might mention that members of the Sisters’ family include three cats and three dogs who scurry through the halls and sometimes join us at the Eucharist.

We'll miss our wonderful Convent family, but their e-mails, letters, phone calls, and prayers always follow us to Cajun country. It's exhilarating to enjoy a relationship with the Sisters that St. Paul described in I Corinthians 13, verses 1-13.  I invite you to re-read it.