The Ear of the Heart: An Actress' Journey From Hollywood to Holy Vows (78 page)

The Community working alongside Father Prokes preparing the land for building Robert Leather Road

The Community and oblates spent years digging rocks on our land to build the dovecot
.

(
Right to left) Lady Abbess, Mother Rachel, Mother Placid, Mother Noella, Cassandra Beauvais and Mother Anastasia take down a tree to clear the land for the building of our new church
.

We raise our own food at Regina Laudis. Here the Community is planting our potato crop
.

Mother Stephen aboard her tractor

Hard hats are as routine on our property as veils. Sisters Esther, Ozanne and Alma at the end of a day of chain sawing, chipping and brush cutting
.

Mother Debbora Joseph gathering wood from trees the nuns have felled to load into the chipper—a machine that chops branches into mulch

Mother Telchilde has assisted in the calving process over seventy times; here she helped Maya in the birth of Angelique

Mother Perpetua, our master studio potter, at her wheel

Mother Augusta and Brother Iain make the best haying team in the world
.

Many visitors to the abbey join us in our work. Here Matt Mittler’s theater group Dzieci works side by side with the Community on haying day
.

The 1970 ceremony for my Consecration was held in the the chapel I saw on my first visit to Regina Laudis, and despite the cold, wet weather outside, it felt warm and even cheery due to the golden yellow panels of glass that dotted the window panes as a welcome. My friend Valerie Imbleau, who had returned to secular life following her departure from the monastery, was now a professional photographer and volunteered to photograph the ceremony. Her photos appeared in
Ladies Home Journal
with an article written by Anne M. Wolf, who was the assistant to my Hollywood publicist, Frank Liberman. Continuity there, too
.