The Ear of the Heart: An Actress' Journey From Hollywood to Holy Vows (48 page)

Dale Rushton, a teacher with a master’s degree in religious education, came at the suggestion of her confessor at Catholic University. She had no special interest in the monastery; it was just to be a visit. “If there was anything I wanted not to be,” she insisted, “it was a nun.”

Her father, a newspaper editor in Worcester, Massachusetts, seconded the suggestion of a visit. He had been intrigued by the fact that Regina Laudis was now home to a film actress he admired (so much so that he once skipped the Easter Vigil in favor of viewing
Francis of Assisi
on television).

“That was kind of shocking,” recalled his daughter, “but he was pulled like a magnet to her beauty and intelligence. He respected that she had been drawn to something more in her life and followed it.”

The two other women, also there for a visit only, came—hitchhiked, in fact—from Newton College of the Sacred Heart in Boston. Adele Hinckley and Laura Giampietro arrived in tie-dye and love beads. It was the era of national strife that was erupting in violence over the war in Vietnam. Experiencing discontent with government, displeasure with schools and dissatisfaction with conventional approaches to religion, young people were looking for alternatives.

When I heard that Adele and Laura had hitchhiked to Regina Laudis, I told Reverend Mother how impressed I was and asked what she thought of them
.

She replied, “I think they are our future
.”

At first, the visitors from this generation came singly or two or three at a time—on weekend breaks from college. But before long, there were thirty or forty young people visiting regularly, many seeking relief from the confusion they were feeling in the turbulent sixties. A few had preexisting bonds of friendship with the monastery, but most were curious strangers who had only heard about Regina Laudis. This first influx of lay interest in us was oriented not only toward individual spiritual growth but also toward a communal experience
.

—With this infusion of long hair and love beads, were you criticized for taking in beatniks?

   
I think the townspeople must have had binoculars because the kids did not camp out on the lawn with their funny clothes and guitars. The young men stayed in Saint Joseph’s and the girls in Saint Gregory’s. When there were a lot of them, friends of the monastery would put them up in their homes. But, yes, there was talk
.

Patricia Kuppens, a student at Connecticut College, was one of those early visitors. “It really was a natural, organic thing”, she said. “Adele and Laura had been making regular visits, and one weekend, Laura’s boyfriend, Tom Camm, joined them. Back home, people began noticing a change in Tom, who had a reputation for walking on the wild side, and word got around that the change was because he had found ‘an amazing place with really cool nuns.

“Out of the chaos of the times we were all searching for some meaning and direction, so we just decided to find out for ourselves. When we came to Regina Laudis, we saw a tremendous happiness in each woman, a sign that they had discovered real community that had lasted over time. Other young people we met here felt the same way.

“The community aspect was one thing that attracted us a lot. Numbers of people were then experimenting with communes and cooperatives. But usually, they didn’t have a long life span. It would go sour somehow, and coming off this experience of disillusionment, we were cautious. But, while we were here, we went by the monastery ways—we absorbed the hospitality of the Community, the graciousness of Reverend Mother Benedict and the understanding of those who worked with her.

“I’m pretty sure that some of us were aware of Mother Dolores’ Hollywood background. A few had come because of her. I had seen
Where the Boys Are
, and there was the article about her Consecration in
Ladies Home Journal
that went through my circle like lightning. She was a great draw, I think, for the men but also for the women in terms of identifying with her.”

A religious community does not generate life by itself. It needs the complement of laypeople
. Oblates
is the Benedictine term given to those who have a response to monastic spirituality but don’t feel called to religious life. Oblates have existed for centuries, and most, if not all, Benedictine monasteries have oblates who are primarily related one-on-one to a specific individual
.

An informal program existed at Regina Laudis that provided a place for young persons to work with Father Prokes and the Community on the land. It evolved from a practical need for help. As far back as I can remember, Mother Stephen always needed help, and there always seemed to be some young person who wanted an agricultural experience—or maybe just some time away from home. These local volunteers would help out in exchange for food and lodging
.

The new visitors also wanted to do some service—manual work—and we gladly gave them that opportunity. However, they recognized that they needed something besides the work to channel their energies, get them grounded. Working together bonded them but didn’t particularly focus their desire to participate more fully in Benedictine spirituality and serve the life of the monastery within their own circumstances. But how can laypeople relate to a
cloistered
order? How could they be more engaged with the monastic life was the question
.

Under the guidance of Father Prokes, Regina Laudis embarked on some—I guess it could be called—experimentation to see if there was a way we could make that particular gift of oblation more expressive of the contemporary scene. He directed our first month-long retreat experience around the restoration of our blacksmith shop, which was the first step in a structured participation
.

But you don’t become an oblate because you’ve hammered a few nails or mowed the lawn for a month. There’s a challenge to accept; the question became: Can you also experience community in your own right? And then, of course, a request must be made. “Can you teach us how to form a community of our own?” they finally asked, many months later. “What are the principles? We must know why it works for you because we would like to have something like that with men and women outside the walls of the monastery.” We encouraged and helped them to form communities, each with its own unique mission according to the character and gifts of the people involved
.

The Closed Community was the first lay community to begin at Regina Laudis. The name does not mean that the group was closed in the sense of being isolated, but enclosed. The members said if they were going to be Catholic, they were really going to live it and not just pretend it. Because many were gifted in art or worked in construction, much of their concrete contribution in service took the form of building projects
.

Among the core group were young couples—Joseph Giampietro and Sharon McGurdy, David Stein and Nancy Kotowski, Joseph Moller and Regina Paliatta, George Zifcak and Isabelle Giampietro-who married and raised families. They became doctors, teachers, social workers, computer experts and musicians, and all, happily, have remained in relationship to Regina Laudis. One couple in the group was already married—Joan and Jim Gilbert. Group member Tom Camm felt he had an artistic calling—in dance—and wanted to pursue it, which took him away from Regina Laudis for a spell
.

The Closed Community really was a pilot venture that, as more people started coming, eventually inspired other women at Regina Laudis to support other groups in their own areas of expertise. Thus was born the Associate Community, oriented toward making the vision of Benedictine life visible beyond the enclosure. They speak of their call as “bringing life into dead situations”. The Organic Community is made up of people from various areas—medicine, nutrition, retail, agriculture—who are interested in living organically as fully as possible. For them
organic
means “according to the holistic principles of Benedictine life”
.

Doctors, nurses, psychologists and others in the health-care professions formed the Healing Community. They soon opened the door for other professional people, such as artists and teachers, who saw their discipline as primarily about healing some area of spiritual woundedness. Healing Community founding members Richard and Phyllis Beauvais, the directors of the Wellspring Foundation, a therapeutic facility in Bethlehem, brought together physicians and nurses dedicated to providing a place of retreat, prayer and communal support, which they named the Contemplative Medical Center
.

The Advocate Community came into being as a result of the controversy surrounding the Supreme Court decision in
Roe v. Wade.
It is primarily made up of lawyers and other legal professionals dedicated to being advocates for the sacredness of human life from conception to natural death who often donate their professional services as needed
.

“Young people are always in a crisis; they’re emotional—crying all the time”, Patricia Kuppens said. “Creating those communities took a lot of energy from the monastery. There were many hours of discussion in the parlor with Mother Placid and Mother Dolores. Mother Dolores was especially instrumental in seeing that the young people had a voice.”

—
I was the catalyst, so to speak. I was there to do everything I could to draw them out, get them to say what was in their hearts. Also, I had the capacity and the training to make the meetings come alive. I would just project whatever was the best role in each situation
.

Ten single women, including Patricia, Dale and the two hippie hitchhikers—Laura and Adele—made regular visits, joined lay communities and, most significantly, related ever more strongly to the Community. Throughout the seventies, all ten entered religious life at Regina Laudis, thus fulfilling Reverend Mother Benedict’s hope for the continuation of the monastery. Each of these women has celebrated her twenty-fifth Jubilee.

In 1969, Dale Rushton was the first of the ten to enter Regina Laudis and is now Mother Anne Rushton, an expert in chant. When she entered, she had no formal musical training, but she was sent to study with Dr. Theodore Marier, one of the world’s masters of Gregorian chant. For twenty-five years, Mother Anne taught chant to Community members one-on-one and went on to help Dr. Marier write
A Gregorian Chant Master Class
, the most respected text on the subject.

“Early in my postulancy,” Mother Anne remembered, “Mother Dolores went out of her way to get to know me. I thought it was because I have an impaired arm, but since then I’ve seen that she does that with everyone who enters. When it came time for my Clothing, and I was faced with deciding what would be on my card, she gave me the insight that at that stage in my development I needed the hand of the consecrated person. There is an imprint of her hand on my Clothing cards. She made the cards herself in our print shop.”

When Laura Giampietro began visiting the monastery, she showed strong artistic gifts, thanks partly to her father, Alexander Giampietro, a professor at Catholic University and a renowned sculptor and ceramist. As a student, Laura accompanied her father to Italy, where she learned from the expert Emanuele Rondinone many methods of pottery, a craft she ultimately established at Regina Laudis as Sister Perpetua. Her name and her pottery—as well as that of her apprentices—are appreciated worldwide.

Laura’s schoolmate Adele Hinckley was twenty-four and pursuing an academic major in art and literature. “I didn’t have a professional goal at the time but was looking to be brought into development of who I was meant to be”, she reminisced. “I had always thought I would like to work in some capacity with animals but had never been in an education situation where science and things of that nature were pushed. I remember that I was impressed that the monastery land program was then adding a complement of animals as well as its own dairy.”

Adele is now Mother Telchilde Hinckley, the first nun to be in charge of the pig herd, although at the time of her assignment she was heard to say, only half-jokingly, that if the job area she was being considered for “started with
p
and ended with
g
,” she was “outta here”. She now also oversees the monastery dairy.

Martha Marcellino was a curly-haired, miniskirted student at Sarah Lawrence College whose older brother John “Jocko” Marcellino cofounded the rock group Sha Na Na. As her taste in music leaned decidedly toward rock and roll, she was surprised to find how responsive she was to the Gregorian chant at the monastery. “I was even more surprised to find that I was attracted to the communal lifestyle”, recalled Mother Noella Marcellino. “I had the impression Mother Dolores thought I had a religious vocation, something that I was totally unaware of at the time.”

—
Absolutely, I did. I remember thinking, well, it’s obvious her mother didn’t dress her, but still she was quite striking in her femininity—a demand of sorts to be wanted. But the bravado of her exterior was overshadowed by the innocence in her eyes. There was a call in that innocence. The intensity was for Christ
.