Living in memory

Memeories are not always the same. Sometimes, they are distant and detached. Other times they are so vivid it is as if we stepped out of time and into the past, taking us back to former places, and bringing alive what we once thought was gone.

I guess I'm thinking this way right now because I am at the monastery where I onced lived as a nun for so many years. This is not the first time I have come down. But for some reason I cannot pin down, this particular time is moving me far more than it ever has in the past. And I wonder why.

Perhaps it is because an era has passed...the era of youthfulness and energy. As I go around the grounds,
thoughts of what once was keep returning to my mind. I remember how as novices we used to run out each wash day to hang clothes, praying for sunshine. In those days we used wringer washers, dunked the clean clothes in big tubs of cold water, ran them through the wringer and then took them out to hang. When we brought them inside, they smelled of fresh air and sun.

 I remember the vegetable garden I loved to work in each summer. No heat could keep me from going out each afternoon, planting, weeding, watering so that I could look forward to the harvest. It was a battle to avoid the fire ants, who also loved my garden. No matter how hard I tired, I never failed to get into a nest at least once a season. Still, when I brought in my fresh cantelope, fresh corn, and fresh tomatoes, it more than made up for all the trouble.

I remember most of all my place in choir: the organ bench. While others sang their praise to God, I had the unique joy of accompanying them. Too many emotions come with this memory, for my greatest love in life was music, and I was never happier than when playing before the Divine.

And so I battle my nostalgia. I suppose it is telling me I still have letting go issues. I suppose further that my true love comes from the values and lessons I learned once as a young nun, where life was interior and silent. And, I think one cannot help but feel somewhat in the beyond when in the atmosphere of a monastery.