Angeline
Description
A moving, lyrical, melancholy, and spiritual novel by the acclaimed author of The Night Child, in which Sister Angeline, unwillingly sent to a radical convent and confronting her tragic past, asks the deep question, follow your heart or follow the rules?
After surviving a tragedy that killed her entire family, sixteen-year-old Meg joins a cloistered convent, believing it is her life's work to pray full time for the suffering of others. Taking the name Sister Angeline, she spends her days and nights in silence, moving from one prayerful hour to the next. She prays for the hardships of others, the sick and poor, the loved ones she lost, and her own atonement.
When the Archdiocese of Chicago runs out of money to keep the convent open, she is torn from her carefully constructed life and sent to a progressive convent on a rocky island in the Pacific Northwest. There, at the Light of the Sea, five radical feminist nuns have their own vision of faithful service. They do not follow canonical law, they do not live a cloistered life, and they believe in using their voices for change.
As Sister Angeline struggles to adapt to her new home, she must navigate her grief, fears, and confusions, while being drawn into the lives of a child in crisis, an angry teen, an EMT suffering survivor's guilt, and the parish priest who is losing his congregation to the Sisters' all-inclusive Sunday masses. Through all of this, something seems to have awakened in her, a healing power she has not experienced in years that could be her saving grace, or her downfall.
In Angeline, novelist Anna Quinn explores the complexity of our past selves and the discovery of our present truth; the enduring imprints left by our losses, forgiveness and acceptance, and why we believe what we believe. Affecting and beautifully told, Angeline is both poignant and startling and will touch the hearts of anyone who has ever asked themselves: When your foundations crumble and you've lost yourself, how do you find the strength to go on? Do you follow your heart or the rules?
Anna Quinn is an American writer and teacher based in Washington State. She is the author of the novel The Night Child. Her writing has appeared in Psychology Today, Writer's Digest, Medium, Washington 129 Anthology, and Alone Together: Love, Grief, and Comfort in the Time of COVID-19 Anthology. She is the founder of the Writers' Workshoppe in Port Townsend, Washington. When she isn't writing, she's kayaking the Salish Sea or hiking in the Olympic Rainforest.
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Content
Chapter
Three
When Sister Angeline is twenty-four years old, only a year after taking her final vows, the Archdiocese of Chicago runs out of money to support the Daughters of Mercy. The foundation crumbling, stained glass shattered by bullets. The once-solid neighborhood collapsing into crime. And the number of nuns
dwindling
dwindling
dwindling.
The archdiocese closes the convent down. Heartbreak for the small band of women. Seventeen of the brides over seventy. They've lived and prayed here for decades, believed this was their home. Now they will be sent to nursing homes or families with extra bedrooms. The three younger nuns will be transferred to convents around the United States.
"I'm sending you to Light of the Sea convent," Sister Josephine says to Sister Angeline. It is morning, and they are sitting in her small dark office. The room has only two tiny, square stained-glass windows. The one above the prioress's head is open slightly, and the morning breeze whispers its way into the room and touches Sister Angeline's face. But now the cry of sirens, and they both close their eyes and whisper a Hail Mary. When they open their eyes, light slants in and lands on the papery hands of the old nun-the crinkled fingers clasped together on the worn oak table between them.
"Light of the Sea is on Beckett Island in the Pacific Northwest," Sister Josephine says. She is in her late seventies. A strand of gray hair hanging loose from her wimple. The heavy slump of her shoulders. The authority gone from her body. She will go to live with her sister in Michigan and volunteer at Our Lady of Refuge, the local Catholic elementary school, twice a week.
"They are looking for another nun to join them," Sister Josephine continues. "When their director, Sigrid, wrote to me, I immediately thought of you." She moves her hands, tucks them under her scapular, and the light flashes now on the silver crucifix hanging from her neck, illuminating the entire body of Jesus.
"But the Pacific Northwest is thousands of miles away." Sister Angeline stares steadily into the old woman's eyes, an overwhelming feeling of dread creeping throughout her entire body.
"There's more," Sister Josephine says.
"More?"
"Light of the Sea is not a cloistered convent. There are five Sisters, and they have contact with the outside world, and they're-they're quite radical. They've started their own community and no longer follow canonical law. They define their convent as a deconstructed one, an intentional spiritual community inclusive to all."
"They're excommunicated?"
"Yes. The pope has removed his blessing, but it doesn't mean they are stripped of God's blessing, remember that. They left of their own accord, and they, well, they just have their own vision about how things can be done." Sister Josephine shuts her eyes for a moment, inhales deeply, and then opens them.
"Their own vision?"
"Their abbess, Sigrid," Sister Josephine says calmly, "is a dear friend of mine, and you are like a daughter. I want you to be with her. I've prayed long and hard on this and I believe it's the right place for you. You'll love Sigrid." She clears her throat, rearranges her fingers into a shaky steeple. "She used to live here with us, but over time, she decided she couldn't live with the Vatican's stance on homosexuality and abortion, the subservient role of women, the cover-ups, so she left and started her own convent-it's been going for over forty years." Sister Josephine's face soft with pride. "She was, still is, the Gloria Steinem of nuns. She marched in civil rights protests, campaigned for the Equal Rights Amendment. She even says the Sunday Mass for the locals."
"Without a male priest?"
"Without a male priest."
Sister Angeline looks at Sister Josephine and takes this information in. Something sparks inside her. The kind of flicker she hasn't felt in a long time. She remembers how often her mother had shouted about the Church's subjugation of women-she'd hated the fact women didn't have the same rights as men, didn't have rights to their own bodies, were rendered illegitimate to deliver the words of God. She'd even flown to Rome in the '70s for a women's conference and marched in front of the Vatican, wearing a pink pantsuit, and carrying a sign that said, Open the Door! Open the Dialogue!
Meg and her mother came together on the Church's issues, one of the few subjects they agreed upon, and more than once, before Meg took her solemn vows, she asked herself why she would join a convent connected to an oppressive Church. She likes to think at some unconscious level it was because her mother often said, Don't run, stay and fight. But the truth is she joined because all she'd wanted was to atone for her wrongdoings. In the cloister, life is designed for atonement and prayer. Except for the tiny garden out back, she's never left the convent. The dentist comes to them. The doctor comes to them. The groceries come to them. Sometimes if you want, a relative even comes, but Sister Angeline requests no one and no one requests her, and she wants to keep it that way.
Sister Angeline knows her vow of obedience means she needs to listen to the prioress, but she also knows that since Vatican II this vow no longer means she need serve blindly. She need only listen intently-to hold open the possibility that others might know what's best for her and who she is meant to be. And she trusts Sister Josephine. Admires her wisdom and fairness. But this. This is too much. She needs to be in a place where she can focus all her energy on prayer, not designing posters for protests and campaigning for politicians. She needs to pray without interruption.
Outside a motorcycle roars its engine. A guy shouts, look out, asshole!
"I'm not going," she says.
"Sister Angeline, do you remember the conversations we had when you were going through your six years of discernment? I expressed to you then that I didn't feel you were here for the right reasons. I believed that you, like most novitiates, were having doubts, but you were so passionate about prayer, I allowed you in. However, my sense now is that your doubts, your unhappiness, have only grown stronger, and hiding in a cloister is not the means to spiritual growth."
The walls collapsing on Sister Angeline, the cells in her body simmering distress, her chamber of solitude and privacy dissolving fast. "Am I supposed to be happy?" she says. "Or am I supposed to draw closely to the suffering of others? Was Catherine of Siena happy? Rose of Lima? Joan of Arc?" She immediately wants to suck these words back into her mouth, the arrogance and absurdity of comparing herself to saints deeply embarrassing.
"Listen," Sister Josephine says. "I know the sacredness of the cloistered vocation. I also know how enclosures and locked doors can fool you into believing isolation and prayer are the answers. But those women, those saints-they had a fervor, a fire burning within. They did not stay behind walls-they were out in the world."
For a few moments, Sister Josephine says nothing, just opens and closes the steeple of her hands. Then she says, "I believe you are ready for what's coming next, I can feel it. To follow a doctrine that isn't yours is a tremendous burden."
Angeline bows her head. Tears begin to fall.
"I want to tell you something," Sister Josephine says, more softly. "Something very personal." She rises from her chair and walks toward the large oil painting of Mary. She stumbles slightly, even though the floor is bare.
Sister Angeline waits, her heart working to control itself. In the seven years she's lived here, she's never heard Sister Josephine reveal anything personal. Not a word in the halls, not a whisper at meals, not a sound except for chanting and song and an occasional reprimand should someone fail the vow of silence.
"Decades ago, when I was a young nun in Ireland, I was assisting at a facility in Galway operated by nuns who sheltered orphans and cared for babies and unmarried mothers, a Magdalene institution-you've heard of those, yes? The home babies?"
"Yes."
"Once the babies were born, we were to care for them until they were adopted. At times, there must have been at least a hundred."
Sister Angeline's hands reach for her belly, and she enfolds it.
"But the conditions were horrible," Sister Josephine says, "the rooms damp and cold, all the babies whimpering, the stench of urine so strong you had to hold your hand over your nose, and there was hardly any staff, and I knew . . ." Sister Josephine's voice catches, and there is a small silence before she continues, her voice barely audible. "I knew many of the babies were sick, starving of hunger, but I never saw a doctor or nurse come near the place."
Sister Angeline's hands clasp her belly tighter. No, don't think about her. No no no. Inhale, exhale.
"And sometimes the tiny ones would disappear and I'd never see them again and when I asked, 'Where are the babies?' I was shushed and glared at and told to scrub or polish-" Sister Josephine crying now as she speaks, her shoulders trembling, and Sister Angeline thinks she should run to her, hold her, but she can't, she...
