Still sisters run deep

SILENCE, work and prayer are the ingredients of life in a Benedictine order.

'We've cried enough to break the drought,' says Sister Magdalen

NERIDA Mather was a naturopath living in Sydney in the mid-1990s when she reached a turning point. She was a lapsed Presbyterian, a spiritual seeker in her 30s who meditated, lived a good life and visited India before deciding an ashram was not for her.

When she needed to recover from a bad dose of flu, filmmaker friend Varcha Sidwell recommended recuperating at the Abbey at Jamberoo, a Benedictine retreat two hours south of Sydney.

Mather was deeply moved by her experience of abbey life. She converted to Catholicism - received into the faith at the Abbey - and became a postulant, a trainee nun. Nine months later she donned the habit and the white veil of a novice and took a new name, Sister Magdalen.

"I had a very satisfying life," Magdalen says, looking back on her days before becoming a nun. "I always sensed something deeper and wanted God integrated into my life more."

Magdalen won't be drawn on the detail of her life before she became a nun. She'd had a long-term relationship and had been a member of a female rock band at university. She graduated with a bachelor of arts degree and a diploma of education but left teaching after three years.

Magdalen's life inside the Abbey and that of five hand-picked women chosen to spend a month with the Benedictine nuns at their converted dairy farm will be revealed on ABC-TV in a three-part Compass program beginning on October 14. It shows the sisters, and their special guests, living mostly in silence and prayer.

The decision to allow access to this closed community was made by the late mother abbess who, after being approached three times for permission to film inside the Abbey, decided the Holy Spirit was trying to send her a message.

Sidwell's proposal was accepted because of her long association with the sisters.

"I firmly believe now, having known the women in the community for a long time, that this is a life people undertake in spite of everything their head is telling them," Sidwell says. "The modern, contemporary world has so many options for women." But life at the Abbey has "something within it that's ancient, outside the culture" of the day. Some people recognise a compatibility "and can say yes in spite of everything".

Five women spent 33 days at the Abbey, participating in a routine that includes attending church seven times a day, starting from 4.30am, so they can pray for people in the outside world before dawn.

Sidwell had wanted to follow a novice or aspirant, someone who wants to try the life for a short period to see if they have a deeper interest, but that was deemed too intrusive. Instead she decided on a group of women of various ages, stages of life and circumstances.

The three hour-long episodes follow Robyn Vinodolac, recently retired from the fashion industry on the Gold Coast; Meg Holmes, a Victorian mother of three; Tusa Finau, a Queensland musician; Lyn O'Grady, a Tasmanian crisis care worker; and Tammy Solonec, an indigenous consultant and single mother from Perth, who were hand-picked from more than a thousand applicants. Vinodolac, 58, is the oldest. Finau, 23, is the youngest.

But it is the shrewd O'Grady who comes up with the most telling image for life with the sisters who host and mentor the group. "Nuns are like swans," she declares in episode two. "Moving gracefully across the water, paddling like hell underneath."

Magdalen agrees the vows are challenging: obedience, conversion of life and stability. "The stability vow says I will remain here with these people."

In some ways it is similar to marriage "but it is also, more deeply, maintaining stability in the heart".

Sisters are allowed 11 visits from outsiders each year and to receive letters but no email.

Saint Benedict was a fifth-century monk whose most famous legacy is his rule, devoted to prayer and hard work. And there is a strong commitment to education.

Magdalen has, to her enormous relief, just completed a masters degree in theology at the University of Sydney, via a distance education program. She also is responsible for some of the "formation", or teaching, of those who have not yet made their final vows. She has a fine voice and is required to use it at some of the services as chanter.

Although the Abbey is open to outsiders for retreats, having five women on the site for five weeks was a challenge for the order. "We prayed that we would get women who could enter into this 100 per cent," Magdalen says.

"I think they found the hardest thing was making an authentic connection inside, of understanding Benedictine values and practice. How does this praying seven times a day relate to my life?"

That certainly sums up Finau's view. "It's one of those things I don't think I will ever get my head around," the Queenslander says. "But it's what they feel is right for them. Ultimately we are all good people." Finau's greatest challenge, apart from going to church so frequently, was living without her passion, which is composing and playing music. Her sister-mentor, Sister Hilda, realised it was a serious difficulty and gained permission for her to play the church organ every day.

Finau happily returned to her close family life and to the band she and her sister play with, Hymnia's Craft.

"It was five weeks of my life spent in this obscure place where I did some strange and wonderful things that I will carry with me for the rest of my life," she says.

O'Grady went in thinking: "I'm ready for something like this". And emerged with two words. "God is," she says.

She found faith and is working out what it means to her daily life. "There was a lot of anger in me because I see so many people who have to deal with so much oppression, violence and abuse."

She was impressed by the demands the Benedictine life makes for "praying for everyone, without judging anyone".

Along with prayer and praise, the days were busy with practical demands. This includes making candles and craft required to keep the Abbey's shop supplied and tending Sister Mechtild's vegetable garden.

Several of the nuns appear in the series and Hilda is unforgettable. Her warmth and big personality place her in danger of becoming a celebrity. She can crack a joke, lecture and reassure, coax and admonish and look them right in the eye, unflinching, as they tell sadsecrets.

She is very keen that she "make a difference". If doing the program makes "this much" difference, Magdalen recalls her saying, holding aloft her pinched thumb and finger a centimetre apart, then it was worth the disruption.

A camerawoman, sound recordist and Sidwell did the technical work, filming mainly in the church or the cottage in the grounds where the women stayed.

"The women were so respectful of us and so graceful - quiet on their feet - it was never intrusive," Magdalen says.

Still, O'Grady admits it was hard yakka. "Anyone who goes to somewhere like the Abbey is not running away from something they are running to something," she says. "Anyone who was fake would be found out in five minutes and could not stay."

That struggle made it a fascinating social and spiritual experiment on various levels. Being deprived of a mobile phone, leaving behind family and friends for a month were not the toughest demands, nor was the incessant church-going.

With the volume of the outside world turned down and discouraged from seeking the usual relief of speaking, what Magdalen calls "the cacophony within" came roaring up to greet the women, with the inevitable result: tears and upset.

The nuns are old hands at dealing with this: each of them went through it, too. "We cried enough to break the drought," Magdalen recalls of weeping women over many years. But they are not always tears of sadness; they can also be overwhelmed by joy or hope.

"The seed needs to fall into the ground and die so something else can grow. That's the kind of experience of letting go of self."

Sidwell saw the beginnings of this for Magdalen all those years ago, when she was still Mather. The pair attended a vocations weekend together. "When I saw what was happening to her, it was like watching someone falling in love, it was so powerful," Sidwell recalls.

"A year later Nerida sang at my wedding and entered the Abbey the next day."

About a year after that, Sidwell's daughter Benedicta was christened at the Abbey, with Magdalen as her godmother.

Magdalen is not sure what interest the series about the Abbey will generate but the sisters are setting up a website to manage any queries. At present they take one aspirant a year. They stay at the Abbey for three weeks and at the end consult Hilda, who manages vocations.

The nuns missed the women when they left. "It was a little bit flat for a while," Magdalen admits. "It was an extraordinary opportunity to walk with these women as intensely as we did."

The Abbey will screen at 9.25pm on the ABC from Sunday. Jill Rowbotham is The Australian's religious affairs writer.