Nuns Pursue the Arts, With ExActress’s Lead

BETHLEHEM

WITH the help of the former actress who gave Elvis Presley his first on-screen kiss, the Benedictine nuns at the Abbey of Regina Laudis are using music, drama and other art forms to not just celebrate “the beauty of God’s creations,” but also to help support their monastery, which this year quietly turned 60.

The fruits of their efforts are everywhere on the abbey grounds. Sheep sculptured from steel dance outside the Regina Laudis church, and a stained glass sun always shines on the abbey entrance. An outdoor theater draws sold-out crowds to annual summer plays, and last month, the order released its fourth CD of Gregorian chants, “The Announcement of Christmas.”

“Music and the arts help people come alive,” said Mother Dolores Hart, 68, the abbey’s prioress, or second in command, who gave up Hollywood and Broadway to become a nun in 1963. “They lift people’s minds and spirits, and in that enlightened state, help people find God.

“God isn’t a whiskered old man,” she continued. “He’s alive and can be experienced in things that move us to feel love or beauty. That’s why we use the arts as a form of prayer, and then try to share those prayers with other people.”

As with their three previous “Women in Chant” CDs, the nuns recorded “Christmas” from behind the checkered black-iron grille in the abbey church that separates them from those who go there for Mass or eight daily prayer services.

Unlike other orders that train women to become teachers and health care workers and go out into the world, Regina Laudis is a closed order. The nuns take a vow of stability, to live and work within the abbey for the rest of their lives.

Several latticed grates on the abbey grounds separate the places where the nuns live and worship from visitors. But while their community is enclosed, it is in no way closed off. On any given day, dozens of people make their way into the wooded Litchfield County hills to spend time praying, learning and creating with the 38 women who always wear the traditional Benedictine floor-length black habit and veil.

Part of this creating involves working in the abbey barns and gardens, milking cows, sheering sheep, tending beehives and harvesting vegetables, among other duties.

Making raw-milk cheese, ice cream, honey, jellies, yarn, leather and other goods from the many animals the nuns tend is also part of their daily routine. But not all of what they make is practical. Take the dancing steel sheep, for example, sculptured by Mother Praxedes Baxter.

“A beautiful statue, fountain or painting allow a person to look at the world differently and to see its beauty, which is a wonderful thing,” said Mother Praxedes, 57.

A printmaker when she joined the abbey in 1976, she now works in marble, bronze, clay, stained glass, wood, copper and precious stones, among other materials. In the early ’90s, she helped design and oversee the construction of the abbey’s Church of Jesu Fili Mariae — an open, barnlike structure made from the wood of local trees and wall-length windows that “bring the outside in,” Mother Praxedes said.

“As an enclosed community, we have time to contemplate, create and nurture our crafts, and then send the results out into the world,” she said. “That’s our gift to people.”

Although encouraging creativity is one of the Benedictine principles Regina Laudis was founded on, Mother Praxedes and others credit Mother Dolores’s background as an actress for much of the order’s excitement and success in supporting the arts.

“She encourages us to tap into our emotions and to find a positive way to express them,” said Mother Noella Marcellino, 56, who worked on “The Announcement of Christmas” and, with a doctorate in microbiology, oversees cheese making at the abbey. “Mother Dolores taught us that emotions are universal — that everyone experiences happiness, sadness, anger, joy and passion — and that we can use them to better connect with people outside the abbey through our art, whether it be in the plays we host, in the songs we sing, or in the ways we celebrate God as we chant and read prayers during worship.”