Abbey in the Wilderness

In February of 1972, six Trappistine nuns from the East, traveling Highway 83 southeast of Tucson, came across a sign: Coronado National Forest. They looked at each other with incredulous smiles. Ahead of them, to the right and left and all around, the “forest” was rock, weed and cactus. The sign, they thought, should have read: God's Wilderness in Arizona. Here was something they could change . . .

The nuns were from a convent in Wrentham, Massachusetts, near Boston, on their way to form a new cloister. Upon the enthusiastic recommendation of Father Thomas Rice, a native of Massachusetts who had come to Arizona earlier and now serves as Pastor of St. Patrick's Church in Bisbee, the Reverend Mother had earlier scouted this southwestern state for a suitable site. She discovered 120 acres at a 5000foot elevation along the eastern slopes of the Santa Rita Mountains, almost surrounded by unoccupied federal land.

Here one can gaze out upon countless ripples of earth expanding to the horizon, and yet be alone. The foreground is speckled and mottled with many shades of green — yucca, cedar, clumps of grass. Following the contours closely, examining gulleys and creases, one might find cattle, white and still as rocks. A keen observer of the vast, intensely blue sky would be likely to see a single bird circling widely, using its fringed wings to glide closer and closer to the ground.

Ordinary weeds spread over a hillside like lacey textiles. On ridges they arch delicately, resembling dancers arranged against a plain blue curtain. In a breeze they shimmer. With backlighting they glow. As clouds come along and veil the sun these silvery plants still shine mysteriously against a darkening earth. They curl and weave and swing their leaves, but when the wind blows they bend and bow, refusing to break, for they are both young and old, supple yet rooted.

When Mother Angela returned to Wrentham, she asked who among the 50 sisters might be willing to adapt to desert life. All volunteered. The six selected were: Mother Cecile, and Sisters Celestine (a builder), Loretto (a gardener), and Beverly, Victoria and Clare (crafts workers).

Arizona is long indebted to the Catholic Church for having sent nuns to its territorial villages to open hospitals and schools. The first to arrive, in 1870, were the seven Sisters of St. Joseph who reached Tucson from San Diego traveling by wagon and with a formal military escort to find all 3000 townspeople waiting and cheerful bonfires lit on every corner. For the next 30 years small but stalwart units continued to come to growing towns, bringing comfort and mercy to the sick and poor, and proper upbringing to rough-and-tumble pioneer children. They were a “civilizing influence,” historians have written.

But civilization has a way of turning on us, and in every generation there have been deeply concerned men and women who left the more populous areas of the world to live apart on a spiritual or physical desert. There have been those who wandered in search of perfect answers, and those who lived in caves or huts as hermits. The most common form of monasticism is cenobitic, characterized by communal life. So it is with the Trappists and Trappistines (more formally called the Cistercians of Strict Observance), who derive their ideals from the rule of St. Benedict. It is only in recent years that they have become well-known to the lay public through the writings of Thomas Merton, who let us see that monks and nuns could still be human.

The mystery of monastic life here at the abbey is counterbalanced by its very ordinariness. Daytime hours are divided equally among three kinds of activity study, prayer, and work! Ideally all work is prayerful. Within the cloister, near silence increases this opportunity. As Thomas Merton suggested, "If we said only what we meant, we would say very little." The Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration at the convent in Tucson call the Trappistines at Santa Rita their "country cousins."

Simplicity the classical expression of the devout is well-suited and sometimes exaggerated in a group trying to establish a new community in the wide open spaces. Since each family of monks or nuns enjoys a degree of autonomy in determining the use of their Habit, the Santa Rita sisters change into blue jeans for labor, a fact that shocks some traditionalists. But it is only evidence of another monastic tradition common sense. For who could possibly Rototill a garden, lay tiles on a floor, or ride horseback to repair fences, in long white garments with loose sleeves and panels that flap in the breeze?

Each abbey tries to be self-supporting, but help is available from the motherhouse until the new group reaches its goal. The logical source of income for the Santa Rita sisters appeared to be crafts. "We are all crafty," said one of them. Even Mother Cecile, when she can take time from her administrative duties, helps out in the workshop. Their stained glass, ceramic mugs and handmade notecards are always in demand. These are available in their own gift shop at the abbey, by mail, or at the Arizona Historical Society in Tucson.

The Trappistines are farmers, inheriting techniques and a fine reputa-tion from the Cistercians who led Europe in its agricultural development. Here they are challenged by a strange new soil, but the sisters have already gone beyond subsistence gardening, have succeeded in their experiments to raise melons, and have established an orchard.

Their sheltered canyon is ideal for grazing livestock; they receive a small income from taking in a neighbor's horses. And they continue to build, hoping to eventually expand their facil-ities to accommodate more than occasional retreatants.

What retreatants there are come away with the conviction the abbey might also quickly prosper if the sisters turned their attentions to the culinary arts. Guests are served in the visitors' room where the Portress of the Day greets them from her side of a table which runs the width of the room. She makes the trips to and from the kitchen along the enclosed courtyard, carrying food on trays in covered dishes, a feast to spread over the tabletop before she is through: pea soup, slices of wheat bread, homegrown cauliflower, creamed potatoes and eggs, an apple, and a large square of cake baked especially for visiting friends. At supper there might be three thick slices of

moist cranberry bread, a mound of cot-tage cheese, a cup of diced fruit. Break-fast is toast and eggs, an aromatic relish sent to the abbey as a gift, a sweet orange. And at the next meal, a potato-and-cauliflower soup attests to a provi-dent cook.

Such food and a life spent out-of-doors have improved the women's health, but their routine here is rigor-ous. It takes exceeding concentration on one's higher purpose when the day is 16 hours long. It begins before dawn when the Portress rings a handbell along the corridor, waking the sisters for Vigils. This is the daily symbolic watch for the coming of the Lord.

On the visitors' side, the light flicks on above the chapel door. Within, there is an aura of warmth and incense. Facing the lit sanctuary from the dark-ened wing, separated from the clois-tered sisters, visitors find a focal point above the altar, the stained glass cruci-fix made there. At special times during the year there may be bouquets of wildflowers. The pre-dawn ritual is reflected in the windows, as the sisters in their white and black habits chant in unison.

There is time for private scripture reading and prayer before breakfast. Then, at 6:15, the sisters are again in the chapel for Lauds and the morning Angelus. Three tolls of the tower bell signal a time for mental prayer, and Father Roman Payant, a retired abbot who lives down the road and helps keep the house in order, arrives to sing Mass.

It is the liturgy that links this little community of nuns in spirit to other abbeys. Every day at the same time, the gentle voices of the six sisters reach out over the land for other members of the religious order and for the world. Often, friends are there witnessing these moments from their side of the enclosure, as the sun comes up behind them and gilds the trim edges of the wooden pews.

Then morning work begins.

Father Payant, in addition to performing priestly duties, is a chief builder along with Sister Celestine. One of their first large chores was to erect a new crafts shop to replace the sagging adobe structure they inherited on the road below.

An old map reveals that the curiously outmoded building was a stagecoach stop in the late 1880s. The road led a mile and a half toward the mountains into a village built on placer gold. Greaterville had a population of 500, including some infamous gamblers.

What a surprise they would have if they could return and find the stage stop taken over by nuns and Sister Clare designing stained glass crosses!

But the Greaterville Road was not the first important access into the region. In 1681, the missionary-cartog-rapher, Father Eusebio Francisco Kino, made his way up the Santa Cruz and its tributaries, bringing seeds for new crops along with seeds of faith to the Indians of Pimeria Alta, on the other side of the mountains. Kino's accomplishments are the subject of informal study among the six sisters, who had not heard of him before they arrived in the South-west. Their first series of clay mugs depicts his missions.

Near the abbey the meandering roads and riverbeds of old Arizona can still be glimpsed where they intersect the pavement. But walk over a rise in the "wilderness" now and you will find fences extending mile upon mile, see giant steel poles shouldering the high-wires above broad spaces that once isolated ranchos. In juxtaposition to the sturdy mountains, these earnest endeavors still seem as fragile as Tinkertoy construction. Caught somewhere on this landscape between a courageous, dream-filled past and a nebulous

In future, a single human feels uncertain.

And that is why an abbey exists. "The human city gives it fairest fruit,"

said philosopher Jacques Maritain, "when it is crowned by the contemplative solitude of a few pure souls who intercede for the multitude." It is

not an easy life. There are three novices

Now, but the past has seen them come and go. Sometimes the near silence works upon them adversely. Sometimes the need to be alone becomes intense.

Faith is one of the most important qualities needed for living as they do, but, the Santa Rita sisters maintain, another is a sense of humor.

At midmorning, looking from a hillside opposite the abbey enclosure, it seems nothing moves. The eyes are drawn horizontally across the ridge, then vertically, up the simple, almost

then vertically, up the simple, almost

austere tower, unmistakably French, rising from the basic, Spanish-influenced construction.

enced construction.

The little valley below the ridge is a passageway guarded by long, low hills, the very same hills that hide the road to this place from the outside world.

Along it comes two objects moving slowly, more-or-less together, and they may be horses. Sweeping the hollow with a glance, one finds two more gentle-looking brown creatures already browsing under the trees, nuzzling the November earth for tender shoots. As the light becomes more intense, a A weedy, wintry patch of surplus land is transformed into a luxuriant pasture.

The dry grass looks green after all; the scrappy mesquite trees become capable

of shading. And there is another horse

wandered into a painting by Peter Hurd or Samuel Colman. Or we have wandered into a painting by Peter Hurd or Samuel Colman. Or we have been taken back in time, when perennial streams coursed through these valleys and these animals have just escaped from conquistadores.

The absence of city noises hurts our ears. It will be days before we are accus-tomed to the presence of silence. We hear the hollowness, a painful pressure, as we wait for sounds.

The crunch of boots on gravel. The snap of a twig we meant only to touch.

The rattle of dried pods on wiry stems.

The chip-chip of hidden crickets. A clicking of orange-and-black wings worn by insects we have never seen

before. The hum of electricity as it

passes over a utility pole to the abbey.

Two birdcalls, back and forth, from one

bush to another. The flapping corner of

this page in a notebook. The pen

scratching. Thud-thud of unsteady

hooves. The whicker of a horse shifting its bulk from one set of legs to the other. A ripping away of a mouthful of its bulk from one set of legs to the other. A ripping away of a mouthful of

wind in our ears. The rustle of corn-

stalks. The whispering sound of sandpaper as it rubs new pottery smooth.

The breathing of humans.

"The acquiring of interior silence," wrote Thomas Merton from his monas-tery in Kentucky, what self-conquest it entails!"

The drive from Tucson to the Our Lady of the Santa Ritas Abbey takes little more than an hour. One would expect it to be the same returning. Yet, thoughtful now, it seems the journey has only just begun.

"The longest journey is the journey inwards of him who has chosen his destiny, who has started upon his quest for the source of his being. . . ."

- Dag Hammarskjold, Markings Editor's note: For information regarding the purchase of craftwork, write: Rev. Mother Cecile, OCSO, Santa Rita Abbey, Box 97, Sonoita, Az. 85637.