Episode 2: The Beauty Within // Transcript

In this recording, Sr. Evelyn chose to be addressed as Sr. Jean. 

Sister Jean, a 55 year old woman from Scotland came in her youth to seek her fortune in Quebec. There she had what she terms a dark, spiritual experience, a life shifting event, which pointed her in a new direction. Sister, Jean:

Sister Evelyn:
I was living with my one sister and my girlfriend came with me. It was going to be a big adventure — we were leaving and going — it was a youthful, adventurous scheme. But the thing was when I got there, I was so homesick and I just wished I could go back to Scotland, but-

John Masko:
What were you missing so much?

Sister Evelyn:
I missed my parents and I missed Scotland, just the countryside. But I felt myself that it was really a spiritual experience because I had drawn a little bit closer to God before I left Scotland, I had had a little bit of — I was always religious, but I'd gone to deeper-

John Masko:
You were Catholic?

Sister Evelyn:
Yes, I'm Catholic. And I'd gone a little bit deeper into the — I was reading books, spiritual books, little pamphlets and I'm not a reader, then I wasn't anyway. And I had really sort of without really realizing it, I was — what would you say? Kind of falling in love with God.

John Masko:
Maybe. I don't know.

Sister Evelyn:
That's what it kind of — but I really, you know how someone falls in love with somebody else and they don't realize it until after a certain length of time? So when I came to Canada, I think it was like what they call a dark, spiritual experience. I missed my parents, I miss Scotland, I missed everything. And then that was the time when God came through.

John Masko:
So you feel that out of this darkness...

Sister Evelyn:
Yes.

John Masko:
Came and did you use the word enlightenment? I can't remember, or how you put it.

Sister Evelyn:
Well, that would be very true because the experience was of, and I was in distress. When I go into church to pray, I'd feel very peaceful and I felt consoled, but as soon as I'd come out of the church, then all the homesickness and everything.  

So when I went in and that's what happened, I went in this one day — I'd been going there for over a say three, four weeks, every single day after work — but this one day it was the experience I had of God and when he came in this experience, then all the homesickness left. You know, it was like a sickness that had been taken away. And when I come up from prayer and I experienced this experience of God and I walked out, I mean, that's what it was like, it was like as if you weren't in love with God. That's what I felt like.

And the one thing in my heart was how can I repay this? Because he had heard my prayers, he had taken away the darkness and he had given me a light and the wonderful experience that God was there and that he loved me and I thought, "I must do something for that." And that was when I started pursuing a religious vocation, I felt he called me then to something special.

What I did was, when I came home — I didn’t know any religious people, I was just new in the country, I looked up the yellow pages and I picked out some place in the yellow pages. I was in ecstasy actually, I mean, I went home and told my sister and they thought I'd be all right the next day. But I was actually, I mean, in ecstasy, I was really, I was just bursting with joy. And I phoned up and I said to the sister that answered, "I'd like to come for an interview." And I told my sister that I was going to be a nun, that was one thing I did say when I-

John Masko:
Just like that?

Sister Evelyn:
And I'd never thought about it before, it was kind of like an inspiration. I said, "Guess what? I'm going to be a nun angel." She said, you, "If you've been, just come from church?" And I said, "Yeah." you know and then-

John Masko:
You'll get over it.

Sister Evelyn:
That's right. And then the next day they thought I'd be back to normal, but I wasn't, I was still the same. It's a beautiful life, that would be the first thought and it's a very well ordered life in a sense that it's cut out to a certain extent, but it gives-

John Masko:
It's what?

Sister Evelyn:
It's orderly, like it's scheduled. There's a good schedule and it's orderly. But in doing that, there's a great freedom interiorly because you don't have as many big, big responsibilities as you would have outside. And so therefore there's a space in the heart, which in a sense, leads to adventure, you're more in the sense of living inside rather than outside.

When I say that, I mean that it's a life that brings you to the recognition of the goodness and the beauty and everything you come across. And as the time goes by, I think it's because the exteriors are simple and that you get into the essence of the thing rather than seeing the fancy glittery part outside. So for example, you can see a cow, just a cow, we have some cows-

John Masko:
A cow?

Sister Evelyn:
Cows, C-O-W, that wouldn't seem like something really beautiful, but you can work there and look at our field and you'll see a cow passing by or you'll see it gambling — the gambling and all — and you just look at it and the beauty of it, it can be fat and it's big plumb eyes and it's a big animal. But day after day seeing these things in nature and so on after a while you actually see the essence of the thing. You sort of get underneath and kind of see the beauty of the creator.

John Masko:
So your sense of sensitivity to that or your vision is heightened by the lack of these externals? Is that what you're saying?

Sister Evelyn:
Yeah, that's very true. You really hit on something there because Cistercian — that's what we are, we are Cistercians — they did that deliberately. We don't go in for a lot of flowers and statues and so on, like in churches and so on because the idea there was that you looked within, that you try to... You look for the beauty within. But what I find is and I have found that, I found the beauty within, but I also find now that you also come out and see the beauty within exterior things too.

John Masko:
There's a resonance of some kind.

Sister Evelyn:
Yes.

John Masko:
How does that work? When you say the beauty within, and then I'm adding that it resonates with beauty without, what is that? What does this mean? What is the beauty within? Let's start there.

Sister Evelyn:
The beauty within, in a sense, could include all kinds of things. It could be an attitude and for example, an attitude of appreciation or gratitude. But the beauty within always is love, that it’s the love that shows all the beauty, because God is love and he has made beautiful things and beautiful people.

So if you have love in your heart, and if you experience that love, then when you go out to creation, it's like a filter in your eyes — you're seeing through a beauty that has come from in. And it does resonate because you're seeing the good. You’re seeing God made everything and it was good.

But as if you're anxious and I mean, we all have times when we feel like that, you're anxious or disappointed or so on, and you look inside your heart and love isn't experienced at that time in a sensitive way. Well then you, when you look out, things don't look quite as beautiful. Sometimes the outside can come to the inside, I mean, you can be feeling that and go out and look at a rose and the beauty of the rose hits you and it's like in a reverse experience. But most of the time I would see it would be the other way around — within, it would be that, they say that you have the whole world within your heart.

The life is so nuance that you kind of grasp the different shades and meanings of different things because when you're sitting in the morning by yourself, there's a kind of experience of solitude. You're kind of by yourself reading and you can go from place to place as you want. When you're reading in the refectory and you come together and it's a kind of joyous experience — you come for a meal altogether and you sit beside each other we don't all sit across from each other, we sit like the last supper, it's like the top part where Jesus sat.

John Masko:
Yes.

Sister Evelyn:
And then there's tables coming down here and tables coming down here-

John Masko:
So it's sort of like three sides of a...

Sister Evelyn:
That's right.

John Masko:
Rectangle.

Sister Evelyn:
That's right. And some sisters behind and so, which is nice because you're kind of still on your... Because the life is we're cenobites and we're kind of, the call us and we're cenobites and we're in community. There's a kind of solitude, we go together to God together, we're together to God, we kind of support each other, but there is a certain solitude you give it, the silence is for solitudes, for prayer, it's not just to be kind of separate, it's there kind of, our goal is prayer as much as we can possibly do and so we're kind of give each other a space, you don't interfere with the other sister by chatting and so on because we're after a life of prayer.

John Masko:
Another question I wanted to ask you was, does the tone of your prayer shift or the intentions? So that, do you say to yourself, "Well, I was hearing in the news about these terrible drug problems out there, so for the next week, I'm praying for resolution of the drug problem." Does that happen where you pick certain topics or certain things that you pray for?

Sister Evelyn:
Well, yes and no, because what we have, we have what we call a prayer board.

John Masko:
Prayer board?

Sister Evelyn:
A little prayer board in our cloister and people phone up and they will ask us to pray for them. We get prayer sometimes, we have our little candy industry and someone will write a letter, "Please pray, my son is on drugs." And what happens is whoever gets the phone call, will write it out and then that that's put on the prayer board and then all the sisters read that prayer board and when we read that prayer, we take that to heart. And then, it depends on what each sister is doing, but we all have our little formula and, and shall I just tell you what I do?

John Masko:
Sure.

Sister Evelyn:
Well, what I do is I look at the prayer board and I look at all the intentions, and then I try to remember the names and for the next week, I'll try and remember that particular intention, specially and in a sense where I actually sit down and I pray for it.

But then what I find is as time goes by, I'm inspired. I might be feeding the cows and all of a sudden that person will come into my mind, so I haven't actually decided that I'm going to pray, but when that person comes into my mind, I think to myself, "Well, that's kind of a special call. That's almost as if the spirit has made that kind of very special to me." And so-

John Masko:
That inspiration?

Sister Evelyn:
Yeah, maybe in some particular way, my prayer is wanted just at that particular time. And so when that happens and then I pray right there and then. Now we take those prayer petitions very, very seriously, because our life is for prayer And we are interested not just for our own spiritual life, as the time goes on, you love the world, you want happiness for the world.

We’ve come a way not to get away, but to be actually more involved in the world because you have that space to kind of sit back and look and consider and yearn for a better world.

John Masko:
Yearn for a better world.

Sister Evelyn:
Really and I find that that gets stronger as time goes by. And I also find as time goes by that, in actual fact, I think prayer is powerful. I really believe that prayer helps and that God hears prayer. And I'm convinced of that as the time goes by because well, so many people see prayers are answered also, but I have that almost the experience in my heart when I pray that in faith, that this is going to make a difference. If it's not tangible, if it's not something in the inside, I know in God's plan that it helps.

So, and then when that week's up you see we have more prayer petitions and I don't forget those, I mean, what I do is then in the morning, I'll say, "Well, I pray for all those — the people who have asked us to pray — and all the people who have asked us to pray in the past." I don't just forget them, but I mean, I'm focused on things that people are asking for at this time. And then somebody will say, "Well, I'm going to have a surgery on the 12th of August, or that, could you please pray that it would be successful." And if we can find at what time it’s at, we like to know and at that particular time, the whole of our community will try and pray for them. And I'll tell you, one thing, the whole community praying for something is really, really powerful, much more than just your own. Getting together in an intense prayer.

In the end I would say that all things work for good if you have the right attitude, even mistakes and failures and crosses and if you have the right attitude, all things will work for the good.

John Masko:
A flower can grow from something that's negative.

Sister Evelyn:
Yes. Maybe even a more beautiful flower because you've had, as I said before, you've had a challenge and it hasn't been all easy. You've had to work and you've had to push and pull and at the end of it there's been an accomplishment of some kind and even the old is it, I think it was Young, I was reading one of his books and-

John Masko:
Jung?

Sister Evelyn:
Yeah, I've got his book on the interior of the soul and he said that he learned more from his failures than his successes. Isn't that interesting?

John Masko:
It is. More deep ideas for us to wrestle with, what is the essential beauty of something and how can one grasp it? And what's the relationship of self view to worldview — inner to outer? Can one perceive beauty without if one can't find beauty within? And the prayer board, can you believe it, a board with petitions that sisters unknown to the petitioner are taking to heart and prayer. It's a measure of my cynicism, which may in part reflect our cynical age, that my first thought on hearing of the prayer board was “how quaint,” but you know what? On occasion, since that interview during a difficult patch, I've wished that I was on that prayer board. And then I feel immediately ashamed that I think such a thing. "Oh yes." I'd chide myself resorting to fantasies about an omnipotent figure to intervene on your behalf, more grist for the analytic mill, which hits at another fundamental and in the end unanswerable question, is there room for spirituality in the mature?

Speaking, theoretically, can a mature person have a profound belief in God? “Silly question!” you may say, but depending on which group you drop into, even among the studied and bright, you might hear, "Yes, there's absolutely room for profound belief." Or "I doubt it." The question goes at least one step deeper because it depends on how one regards maturity. I've met some who see religiosity of any stripe as a sign of psycho-emotional immaturity. Well, such discussions would lead us very deep, very quickly and would go on in fact, I guess we could say have gone on forever.