feminish

I slinked off into retreat last Friday, down at a medieval priory west of London. The stone floors were cold and the gothic arches reassuringly old. Time slowed and I played with acorns.

The priory is empty of nuns. They have died, as humans do, and have not been replaced. The last two survivors are seeing out their dusk in the almshouse wing. But the energy of the female spiritual life is still there: bells in just the right place; carriage clocks with fairy-like rings; and a total absence of dust - as though the stones remember the centuries of unrelenting female labour dispelling it.

I noticed two framed tablets hanging in one of the narrow red-and-black tiled corridors. Yellowing paper squares had been pasted one-by-one into the frame, each bearing testament to the death and life of one of the sisters. Where monks might have carved stone slabs or wooden plaques, the modest sisters here had a bit of paper and glue. Spaces have been left at the end for those yet-to-die; there’s sign of tipexing and re-gluing. I immediately thought of the immense old-style library type-writered catalogue books, which end up extending to impractical numbers of weighty, frayed volumes (now it’s all just stored in zeros and ones to be flung at us through LED screens at the tap of a finger).

Here was one entry in the frame:

CECILIA
OF THE TRANSFIGURATION

ELEVENTH AND LAST MOTHER

ORDER II

12 FEBRUARY 2004 AGED 89 YEARS

IN RELIGION 64 YEARS

There was also “Hope of the Precious Blood” (9th Mother) and “Priscilla Lydia, Foundress and First Mother”, who died in 1876.

Powerful words.

These women didn’t seem so very far away after all.

I slinked off into retreat last Friday, down at a medieval priory west of London. The stone floors were cold and the gothic arches reassuringly old. Time slowed and I played with acorns.

The priory is empty of nuns. They have died, as humans do, and have not been replaced. The last two survivors are seeing out their dusk in the almshouse wing. But the energy of the female spiritual life is still there: bells in just the right place; carriage clocks with fairy-like rings; and a total absence of dust - as though the stones remember the centuries of unrelenting female labour dispelling it.

I noticed two framed tablets hanging in one of the narrow red-and-black tiled corridors. Yellowing paper squares had been pasted one-by-one into the frame, each bearing testament to the death and life of one of the sisters. Where monks might have carved stone slabs or wooden plaques, the modest sisters here had a bit of paper and glue. Spaces have been left at the end for those yet-to-die; there’s sign of tipexing and re-gluing. I immediately thought of the immense old-style library type-writered catalogue books, which end up extending to impractical numbers of weighty, frayed volumes (now it’s all just stored in zeros and ones to be flung at us through LED screens at the tap of a finger).

Here was one entry in the frame:

CECILIA
OF THE TRANSFIGURATION

ELEVENTH AND LAST MOTHER

ORDER II

12 FEBRUARY 2004 AGED 89 YEARS

IN RELIGION 64 YEARS

There was also “Hope of the Precious Blood” (9th Mother) and “Priscilla Lydia, Foundress and First Mother”, who died in 1876.

Powerful words.

These women didn’t seem so very far away after all.