33

BECOMING A COMPANION

There was something about how the orangy-red maple leaves had collapsed in the backyard, as if the tree had slipped out of her skirt, that made me wistful. It was December already, a year past that first Wednesday morning Mass when Sister Suzanne told me she’d brushed her teeth beside Dorothy Day. For a year now, I had been meeting with Kristin and Jane and Kathie every month to talk about Salesian spirituality and share from our lives.

It was time, now, for the final retreat to discern whether I should make a commitment to become a Visitation Companion. One Saturday morning, I joined the sisters for prayer in the small chapel at the Fremont Avenue house. Another woman I did not know was also in the chapel, along with Sisters Karen and Suzanne and Mary Frances. Sister Brenda handed me a set of books: a hymnal, a book of antiphons, and a book of Psalms, with a laminated Song of Zechariah acting as a bookmark.

Though I had prayed with the sisters in this tiny chapel many times over the year, I still got lost moving back and forth between the prayer books and Psalms and blue hymnal. The opening prayer was sung: “Oh Lord, open my lips and my mouth shall proclaim your praise!” We sang antiphons. Each side of the chapel took turns chanting the stanzas of the Psalms, back and forth, sing-chanting the ancient words of David.

Later, when I read an introductory book on Catholic theology, I would come to understand the meaning behind many of the things done during Mass: the reverential way the sisters would cross over their foreheads, mouths, and hearts before hearing the Gospel read out loud; the emphasis on communal readings of Scripture, knowing full well that Christians need community to properly engage the sacred texts.

During the time set aside to offer up our own petitions, the woman I didn’t know asked for prayer for her husband. “Pray for him,” she asked as tears shone in her eyes, “pray for our marriage, which feels so fragile. Thank you for being my spiritual community, my sisters.”

After, I climbed the stairs to a little, tucked-away bedroom on the third floor of the house. The novitiate. I dropped my backpack on the floor. On the walls were pictures of different artists’ renditions of the Visitation story. The stairs were steep and creaked underfoot. It was cold inside the house. I dragged in a space heater that had been left in the makeshift chapel and plugged it in, its grill glowing red.

There, I did the assigned reading and went through the retreat questions. I’ve agonized over many decisions in my life—what college to apply to, whether to get married, what job to pursue. But this? Did I want to be a Visitation Companion? This wasn’t hard. Unlike Sister Katherine’s discernment story, I didn’t need a priest to flip a coin to tell me what I wanted.

Yes, my heart said clearly. Yes, yes, yes.

When my retreat was over, I set up a meeting with Jody to talk it through. We met at Breaking Bread, a café that serves soul food midway between my house and the monastery. Over biscuit sandwiches and portabella mushroom cakes, she asked me how it went. I said that it seemed right, almost natural, to become a Visitation Companion. That I hadn’t been so sure at the start of the formation process, but now I knew that I wanted to take this next step. The only thing that I wasn’t quite sure of was my ability to commit to doing extra service during the year ahead. I was working nearly full-time, writing a book, raising small children, and it was harder to get away in the evenings. Was I, in good faith, becoming a Companion when I didn’t have much margin in my life?

“I felt some of that pressure in my earlier years,” Jody told me. “But now I understand more that being a Companion is mostly about carrying the charism of the Visitation with you. It’s mostly about practicing Salesian spirituality wherever you are.”

I took a sip of coffee and remembered Saint Francis de Sales’s maxim, “Be who you are and be that well.” The charism, or spirit, of the order was to live faithfully in one’s humdrum life, to give each day over to God, expecting difficulty and obstacles along the journey.

“And, don’t forget that the sisters really want you to pray with them,” she said. “Praying with them regularly is a great way to show your commitment to be a Visitation Companion.”

It seemed too easy. Stop trying to practice your faith alone, just show up and sing Psalms and hymns and listen to the Gospel being read. This, too, is a ministry. This, too, is companionship.

On a cold Saturday morning in early Advent, I joined Kathie and Jane and Kristin at the commissioning service for Visitation Companions. The ceremony came at the end of an Advent retreat at the monastery, and a group of around twenty-five people were there to witness our promises.

Jody handed out three items: a loaf of homemade bread, a book about Salesian spirituality, and a small oval medal on a long red ribbon. On one side was the face of Saint Francis de Sales; on the other was Saint Jane de Chantal. She handed these items to me, but not before I was invited to share my intentions, my hopes for the year of partnering with the monastery in prayer, study, and service.

I was not prepared—I didn’t know I would be making this statement, so I blurted out how I found the nuns while trick-or-treating, that I knew this could be a place where I belonged. That it was here that I wanted to explore spiritual singleness, and it was here that I realized that I am not single at all.

Then the crowd, all smiling faces pointed at me, clapped loudly, and Jody handed me the book, the bread, the medal. I put Saint Francis and Saint Jane around my neck and beamed. I touched the small emblem at my throat and stepped back to hear from the others making their intentions that morning.

That’s what they were: intentions, not vows. I was not becoming a nun but instead joining the sisters in their ministry of prayer and presence. Josh and the kids weren’t there to witness my intentions, but I knew they supported my commitment to this spiritual community. I was becoming a Companion.

After the Interfaith Supper Club’s first few gatherings, Sunday mornings at Calvary felt different. When I walked into the back of the sanctuary, Angie waved me over to sit with her. I spotted Julie with her newborn son, who was born on Epiphany, and gave her a hug. I got to hold the baby and smell his head. Jessie and Savannah sat together near the front of the sanctuary, and I made a mental note to find them after the service and ask how their wedding planning was going.

On Christmas and Easter, Chris and Pete are there, too, and Josh is by my side. He leans over when the choir starts to sing “Our God Is an Awesome God” and whispers, “This song is too much, I need to go take a walk,” and I whisper back: “Okay.” As he slides out of the pew and walks to the back of the sanctuary, I glance over at the other couples. Pete is subtly looking at his phone. Chris took a bathroom break a while ago. Jessie is nestled next to Savannah but doesn’t sing.

God bless them all, I think, God bless all of these agnostic or atheist or otherwise spiritually ambiguous partners. They are only here out of love.

Sometimes we all sit together in a pew, all us interfaith families, and I remember seeing the seven Visitation Sisters taking up a pew of their own during Sister Brenda’s first vows, like seven beads on a string. It makes more sense, now, why Sister Katherine and the rest hate the term “spiritually single.” Christianity isn’t meant to be practiced alone.

After two years, I can’t claim to be new to Calvary anymore, or the monastery for that matter. Now I am on the lookout for other singles who tread water during fellowship hour.

I don’t imagine the saints as often in the pews these days, but I do still walk over to pray with the nuns when I can. On those mornings I learn about another new saint’s feast day and hear the sisters reflect on their mystical lives.

When I sing the doxology with the congregation at Calvary, I sometimes look around at the nuclear families and singles and couples in the pews. I hear their voices all around me. I am not alone; I have never been alone.