The last time I did other people’s laundry, I was eighteen and living for two months with the Catholic community my father is a part of near Lima, Peru. This time, I am twenty three, and living with them for two weeks near Toulouse, France. It may be presumptuous, but I think I am considerably less of a shit now than I was then.
I went to Peru for lack of anything better to do. I wasn’t practicing my faith when I went, though it didn’t take long for that to change – sandwiched between the beauty of the sung Lauds and Vespers, the mystical glaze of incomprehensibility between me and the Spanish homilies, the general joviality, and the delicious deliciousness that is homemade challah for Shabbat.
Day to day life was a different matter. The laundry was alright, I guessed, but sweeping the courtyard to get the dust – the every single day drifting dust – out of it drove me absolutely insane. Volunteering with the Missionaries of Charity didn’t work out well, because I have no patience for feeding developmentally disabled children who have no interest in eating and that’s just that. Homesick for my liberty and for a constant supply of peanut butter M&Ms, mealtimes were the best times, and as soon as I left for ten days to travel the tourist route of southern Peru, I felt so strongly that I was breaking free of a cocoon that I decided the cocoon wasn’t all that great, anyway, and neither was God.
Several months after I’d returned to Colorado, I stood stirring a mug of hot chocolate on the blacktop stove in the winter gloom. I understood in an instant that it is all or nothing with God. That you have to empty your heart all the way in order for even a tiny piece of his enormity to fit inside it. I panicked and decided it was nothing yet, I wasn’t ready.
This time, I have come specifically for the cocoon. My heart has been searching. A hollowing has taken place through experience rather than choice, through scrabbling upward, tumbling backward, cloudy thoughts, ripped nails, tangled hair, little bruises here and there.
The air temperature is perfect and a breeze comes through the grenier window as I hang wet towels to dry. It brings the smell of the roses outside, and a tenderness that reminds me moment to moment that He is present inside the chapel, at the heart of the monastery. His peace fills the air, tangible, a swell in my throat and in my heart.
I sit with Him after Laudes, and after breakfast. I sing for Him before dinner, after dinner. I pop in to say goodnight before bed. His peace is as comfortable an envelopment as the warm breeze outside, that continues as the evening light wanes delicately. I fold towels and tshirts with hardly a thought for the next meal, moving with energy for the first time in years. I am not downtrodden. My insides are quiet.
Souer Marie takes me outside and points to a flowerbed along a low grey wall. She is an aging woman with a loving, pretty face, a hint of mischief, and feet the color of walnuts, “Maintenant,” she tells me, “il faut lever les branches et chercher dessous. Là, tu vois. Elles sont des framboises.”
There are dozens of raspberries, deep red ripening under southern sun. Pools of juice inside the ripest ones spread across my tongue. The day looks of blue and smells of pink and tastes of red and it is all perfectly romantic. There is a depth and simplicity to the beauty of routine, and His presence, and the peace that permeates the monastery. It begins to fill my empty, tired spaces. I am learning what it takes to live life.
The only disorienting thing about this time around is folding the brothers’ clean boxer shorts.
Travel and Retreat 