Sister Dorothy and the Myth of Catholicism

I went to Sister Dorothy’s funeral a couple of weeks ago.

                                           

Melanie and I and the kids drove up to the campus of the College of Saint Benedict in St Joseph, Minnesota. My sister Marlene and some other family members were already there when we arrived. I didn’t expect to find anyone else. Sister Dorothy was a nun who had spent almost her life toiling in anonymity in the mailroom on campus.

Yet I had to be there. Not to fulfill some family obligation or to say good-by to someone I really knew very well. Sister Dorothy was my cousin. But I hadn’t spoken to her for three years and much longer before that. Over the years, there had been a steady stream of Christmas cards exchanged and lately pictures of the grandchildren included. Her cards were always full of cheerful tidings and promises of prayers. But I never really knew the woman very well aside from the platitudes my mother used to heap on her simply because she was a nun.

Instead, I drove several hours north to say goodbye to someone who always treated me with respect when I was growing up. None of my other relatives ever did that. The adage at family gatherings was always the same…children should be seen and not heard. 

I also wanted to pay homage to someone who embodied the true ideals of what it means to be a good person…without the label of Catholic or Protestant or being a member of any organized religion.

It turns out there were a lot of folks in the Gathering Place just outside of church. Besides the full cadre of her fellow nuns, there were close family members, extended family, relatives and friends. I was surprised at first but upon reflection it made perfect sense. Although she spent her life in quiet service to the Lord, Sister Dorothy touched a lot of lives through her simple life and kindness toward others. Simple acts of kindness can be a very powerful tool. Kindness and concern, the hallmark of these nuns, can trump a facade of ostentatious generosity anytime.

Most of the other nuns were older and frail like Sister Dorothy. Sadly their numbers are steadily declining. The mass was your standard affair replete with all of the vestiges and pomp and ceremony accorded to a soldier/sister in the army of God. It was a fitting tribute to a woman who had spent her entire life serving her lord and was pleased to do so.

Sister Dorothy spent most of her adult life at the College of Saint Benedict, a small liberal arts college for women. It’s a great school. Melanie went there and got a wonderful education. But it’s not Harvard or Yale or any of those other icons of higher education. Yet in its rural setting, it embodies the true meaning of truth and simplicity.

Sister Dorothy was always an icon for my very religious mother who saw the good Sister as a child of God called upon to do his work on earth. Much like my other cousin, the doctor, my mother felt these two were among the ‘blessed people’ on earth. I didn’t quite see it that way. 

Sister Dorothy never married, never had kids and certainly didn’t swim in social circles or any political arena. She led her life simply and honestly, sorting mail and praying every day as most nuns still do. Sister Dorothy wasn’t a CEO or a statesman or a philanthropist. She wasn’t awarded the platitudes normally associated with great accomplishments or wealth accumulation. She didn’t leave a legacy at the college other than her steady reliable service in the mailroom and her ever present smile to anyone and everyone around her. She was satisfied with her place in life as simple as it was.

She wasn’t a prefect or a manager or a higher up in her order. She hadn’t moved up the ranks not that I think she ever wanted to. She was married to her church and what it represented. She hadn’t accomplished great things in her life. The mail will still be delivered tomorrow and no one, aside from her close friends, will even know the good sister is gone.

Yet in her own very simple way, Sister Dorothy embodied the true ideals of what it means to be a Christian or a Jew or a Buddhist or a Muslim. She is a sterling example of true Catholicism.

The myth of Catholicism today is that it has gotten caught up in the politics of the moment. Catholicism is not supposed to be a game of political one-upmanship. It is supposed to be about embracing all of mankind no matter the gender, social or sexual orientation or political disposition. It is supposed to be about feeding the poor, clothing the naked, healing the sick and giving shelter to those without a roof over their head. 

Isn’t that the reason God put us on earth, to help one another. The church is supposed to be all-inclusive and not exclusive based on how the political winds are blowing at the moment. Sister Dorothy embodied all of those principles and more. She was true to the main tenants of her faith. She was what community is supposed to be all about. 

It was so fitting that Sister Dorothy spent her life at the College of Saint Benedicts, a school where women are recognized for their individuality and uniqueness and intellectual capacity. It’s a breeding ground for alpha females who truly believe they can change the world…and often do.

So often, the nuns seem to understand it better than the church fathers do. Isn’t that just like a bunch of women to cut the heart of the matter and see clearly their mission on earth without the constraints of conventional wisdom or politics of the day.

This summer, I went to Sister Dorothy’s fifty year anniversary with the Sisters of the Order of Saint Benedict. Marlene and I met a lot of our distant cousins that only death or Christmas cards bring together. They all represented my youthful years and as such are a part of the past that I left behind a long time ago. 

Yet the gathering was a good thing because it forced me to go back to a time and place where the simple things in life and kindness toward others triumphed over personal achievement and wealth accumulation. It reminded me of my rural roots, generation’s back, where hard work and labor were the hallmarks of a man and returned kindness was a gift not an obligation.   

           

So I had to be there for Sister Dorothy’s funeral.

To return her simple acts of kindness.

Where the Penguins went to Roost

It began innocently enough. Just another Saturday morning bike ride to discover or rediscover parts of the Twin Cities I hadn’t been to for some time now. The response from my blog
On the Corner of Fairview and Summit got me to thinking about those parts of the city that had affected my life just as that street corner had for so many years.

First stop on my journey of discovery always begins at the Dunn Brothers coffee shop in the Longfellow neighborhood of South Minneapolis right across the Lake Street bridge from Saint Paul. The earlier in the morning the better. It’s before most normal folks are out and about. The perfect time for insomniacs, running and biking fanatics and one oldster reclaiming his past.
               


After a less than nutritional breakfast and some reflection, it’s time to begin my jaunt. It’s a quick decision to head east toward the rising sun and my old haunts in Saint Paul.

F. Scott. Fitzgerald used to live in the row house with the plaque before fame and alcohol cut short his writing career.

 

There’s a story here (from later on in my life) and a poem too (Under Cathedral Dome). But that was another era long since past. It’s probably best left unspoken now…unless it shows up in some future novel.

Mother, Marlene, and I 1946

Then it was a drop down off of Ramsey hill to what was once the edge of downtown Saint Paul.
This would have been the first of several marginal rental properties we lived in before my mother build our home in Highland Park. Not surprisingly, the entire neighborhood has turned over several times now or morphed into empty lots. The playground in the background is now United Children’s Hospital.

Frenchy's Eats 1944 St. Paul, MN

My mother’s first and only grasp at entrepreneurship came right after she got married. It was a small café they called ‘Frenchy’s Eats’ named after my father who was French-Canadian. The venture failed miserably because, according to my Mother, the help stole from her and my father drank away the profits. I’ve often wondered what my life would have been like if it had been successful.



At the other end of the block from ‘Frenchy’s Eats’ is the bar where legend has it my father drank almost every night. It was a half a block and a total lack of responsibility away from my mother’s dreams and aspirations.

I’ve written a play entitled’ Frenchy’s Eats’ which explores that period in my mother’s life, my own life later on and the ensuing repercussions that flowed downstream. I’ll probably never produce it; too depressing for even me to watch all over again.

Marlene and I 1950-ish

 

The only memory I have of this rundown six-plex is a phone call my mother received one evening. She started crying… then my sister started crying…so naturally, I started crying. I was six years old at the time.

I found out years later that the phone call was from a grandmother (on my father’s side) informing my mother that my father had just died in some old flea-bitten hotel in Missoula, Montana. My mother always claimed he was on his way back to Minnesota from the west coast with our Christmas presents… after an absence of four years from our lives.

Hell of a way to find out you’re suddenly a widow with two small kids, no marketable job skills and little in the way of a family support system. The fact that she was able to pull herself up after that (with little support from her sisters) and build a home on Randolph Avenue was quite remarkable.

We were always warned not to talk to or go by the DPs. They were displaced persons mostly from Eastern Europe who were resettling in Minnesota after the war. I learned much later the building was a way-station for these refugees because they had to be quarantined for a certain period of time. Like they were much better off than we were at the time…not! The units are all condos now.

Marlene and I 1949 or so

 

The Little Sisters of the Poor have been doing God’s work since 1855. They were feeding and housing the poor long before I was born. They’re still doing it today.

Wilder Nursery 1949

Wilder Nursery was one of the few formal day-care operations for indigent folk’s way back when. For my mother it was a God-send. Two memories stand out there.

Newspaper Clipping 1948

There was this older black woman who was a playground supervisor. She liked me. Kids can always tell when an adult likes them. She called me ‘butterball’ probably because I wasn’t the thinnest kid on the block. It was my first taste of affection from another human being and made me feel warm all over.

At the other end of the spectrum was this youth counselor who didn’t like me for one reason or another. So under the guise of health and wellness, he made me participate in a boxing match with this big black kid. I’m sure he was hoping the kid would beat the stuffing out of me. Turns out, the other kid was as scared as I was. We just punched each other in the shoulders and other body parts until we both got black and blue and tired. I’d love to be in the ring with that counselor today.



On our sporadic outings from Wilder Nursery, we would go down to Irving Park. Back then, it was old and tired and a sad reminder of its glory days back in the twenties. I led my gang of four year olds from the nursery. We would run around and scream at the other kids and pretend we were cowboys. I had a vivid imagination even back then.

My Childhood home 1955

I’ve often said I’m grateful that my mother gave me life and raised us in this house instead of an apartment. There are a lot of memories there. Mostly good ones and I never once felt different from the other kids on the block because I had a house to live in like they did.

The nuns were housed in this large building across the street from the little French church downtown. My sister and I had to walk by the nun’s residence each morning coming up from the streetcar line. We were always worried we’d meet up with the nuns on their way to school. Dressed in black and white, strict, stern, never-smiling, a walk with them for any distance was pure torture. But by eight grade, as only a group of smart ass boys would agree, that was where the penguins went to roost each night.



I was conscripted into service as an altar boy right after fourth grade. My slot was the 11:30 mass every Sunday. So for years I’d get up at 4:30 to do my paper route and then waste a good part of the morning until I took the bus downtown for mass. I argued for an early morning slot but the priest liked the schedule just as it was. It pleased my mother to see me serve God every Sunday but it sure screwed up my Sundays for other things.



Because we got to school an hour before it began, my sister and I were gently encouraged to go to mass each morning in the chapel…like we had a choice. It kind of spoiled me on the whole concept of organized religion after that.

St. Louis Grade School 1950

 

St. Louis grade school was run with an iron fist by the French nuns. The entire school consisted of four large rooms, two per floor. There were two grades per room. The bathrooms and cafeteria were in the basement. Some of the nuns were nice but never overly friendly. Some (in retrospect) were psychotic and dangerous to small children and helpless animals. But that was a different era.

It was in first grade that the dear old nuns informed my mother that the French spelling of my name was Denis, not Dennis. I’ve been Denis ever since. I learned at an early age that one doesn’t challenge French nuns.  Shortly after I graduated, they tore down the school and put up a parking lot.

I have two memories about the rectory. There was a breeze way between the church and the rectory. That was where the more daring of the altar boys would finish off the wine, right out of the chalice, before returning it to the rectory.

That was where a young battle-scared chaplain from the Korean War ambushed me after my mother called him to say I was acting up at home. I’d never been chewed out before without the benefit of the doubt and any opportunity to defend myself. It made boot camp late on in life seem like a breeze after that

Cretin High School 1957

      

Cretin High School was a true turning point in my life. I was lost and scared and absolutely clueless. But somehow I made it through four years and got a good education. After that, there was no turning back. While I was done trudging up the hill and avoiding the penguins, I was still on my quest for a lifetime of learning.






My kids have already thanked me. My grandkids can thank me in the future.

My First Affair

 I’ve been carrying on this love affair most of my life. Well, at least starting in grade school. She was a true blue-blood American. No surprise there since my world didn’t really exist beyond the boundaries of my Saint Paul neighborhood. I think we were first introduced on my eighth birthday

Unfortunately, she was rather large and chunky. She even had a funny name. Our affair lasted until eighth grade when other forms of distractions took my mind away from such childish behavior. There wasn’t a lot of emotion attached to her so I wasn’t really sorry to see her go.

My second affair began when I was about twenty-one. By then I was old enough to know better but still brazen enough to think I could handle another love. I did much better this second time around. She was so different from my first. She was French. She was lean and light and moved like a gazelle. She had a very strong and powerful presence about her. I could pronounce her name even if I couldn’t spell it. This second time around, I was truly smitten and real emotion was involved.

That second affair has lasted a lifetime. Granted, my partners have changed over the years but the sheer joy of the act never gets old…even at my age.

My first affair was with a Huffy. The name was so appropriate because without constant practice riding her was just an exercise in huffing and buffing your way up and down the hills. It was more like maneuvering a pachyderm without the elevation. Besides, I always thought she had a sissy name. The cool kids all rode Schwinn’s. Who wants to ride a bicycle named Huffy even in third grade? Melted down today, there would probably be enough heavy metal in her to build a light cruiser.

My second beauty was named Peugeot. A French racing bike that lived up to its reputation in the Tour De France and other international bicycle racing events. Not that I ever got to that level. But it did take me on my first century and my second Tram. The first was a hundred mile bike ride in one day. The second was ‘balls to the walls’ ‘hauling derriere’ across the state of Minnesota and loving every hilly mile of it. My son and I covered over 500 miles in less than six days.

 

At one time, I had a respectable stable of bicycles. I had two road bikes, a mountain bike and a hybrid/city bike plus a couple more bikes in Palm Springs. But one of my racing bikes eloped, went to Denver and never came back. Now my son has his own love affair going on with bicycles. 

But I’ve still got my old Peugeot, a mountain bike and my old reliable hybrid/city bike. And, of course, a city bike in Palm Springs equipped with saddle bags for grocery shopping and garage-sailing, as well as long distance rides

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But road bikes aren’t the only game in town. My hybrid or city bike has taken me on long trips riding the length and breadth of Palm Springs and the Coachella Valley. It’s taken me on long rides throughout Minneapolis and Saint Paul, discovering parts of the city I never knew existed other than from glimpses on the freeway overpass.

My city rides are always the most fun. They usually begin on Summit Avenue very early on a Saturday morning. The first stop is coffee and breakfast at a coffee shop in the Longfellow neighborhood of South Minneapolis. Then it’s off to see the world for at least that Saturday morning.

I used to find inner peace and tranquility on my long distance runs. Once on the road, I was oblivious to my surroundings and awash with thoughts that flowed easily in and out of my mind. It was all about getting lost mentally and often physically and not really caring. 

 

My bike rides now perform the same function. They have become a total disengagement from my so-called real world and have taken me into a state of just being at one with nature. Some would argue that melancholy is incompatible with cycling. It is a kind of meditation on wheels. It’s a free flowing form of yoga that keeps my surroundings swirling in my peripheral vision and yet allows me to be unaware of it at the same time.

 

It is tapping into the spiritual side of my being which, in turn, opens a floodgate of thoughts and ideas and visions. This avalanche of images is often captured by my tape recorder and ends up as treatment ideas, dialogue, scenes and story content. It is a magical, mystical wondrous experience that never ceases to amaze me with its power.

Apparently I’m not alone in my love affair with biking and other activities bicycle-related.  I always go to two web sites on bicycles with my early morning coffee. The first is called Momentum. It’s a web site that focuses on bicycles as transportation.

The second is called Cycle Chic from Danmark. Many experts agree that it really was the catalyst for the whole bicycle movement that is now growing by leaps and bounds in most cities.  The site focuses on bicycles as a fashion statement among other things.

There are a plethora of other sites that cover bicycle-related items

                                               

                                                            Velojoy

                                                            NYTimes article: End of the car culture

This life-long interest in biking has spilled over into my writing. My first screenplay, now in its second revision stage, is called Trans Con.  It involves two individuals caught up at crisis points in their lives while they are in the middle of nowhere, America, crossing the country on their bicycles. I’m looking for a producer to help me produce the movie.

All five of my grandchildren are riding bikes. Charlotte was the last to learn but with her prodigious appetite for besting the others, I expect she will be sprinting ahead of the pack in no time at all.

I may eventually end up in some sag wagon following behind the gang of five as they fade into the distance. But that’s alright.

Seeing them in the midst of their own love affair will bring joy to my heart…as it has for all these many years.