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A Life of Spiritual Solitude

20 images Created 17 Nov 2019

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  • Mother Teresita rings bells from the 1800s behind the Carmelite Monastery in Carmel, Calif. on June 29, 2018 where she has been a cloistered nun for 57 years and serves at the current Mother Superior.
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  • Nuns gather for prayer and song on June 29, 2018—which is typically hidden from the public eye—during one of seven times the 11 nuns gather together daily at the Carmelite Monastery.
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  • The Carmelite Monastery is one of 68 monasteries in the United States. The nuns are part of the Carmelite Order of Catholic nuns, which is one of hundreds of Catholic orders. Most of the interaction the sisters have with the public is through two prayer intention boxes in the chapel, which is open daily for the public and mass. They receive about 20 written prayer requests per day.<br />
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“We read those seriously and pray for those people,” Mother Teresita says. “People ask for everything from family problems and health issues to world problems.”
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  • Mother Teresita walks through the gardens on July 3, 2018.<br />
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The nuns have a big patio and gardens full of bright flowers and thriving shrubs. Outside of seven group prayers a day and two daily personal prayer times, the sisters devote their hours to keeping up their home. Gardeners come once a week to tend the grounds and there is a cook (who is the wife of one gardener).<br />
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“We try to grow vegetables, but we have a gopher problem,” Teresita says with a laugh, holding the gate open for two nuns, “but we (make) worm compost and have got some nice cherry tomato volunteers coming up.”
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  • Two nuns roll a wheelbarrow up a stone path on July 3, 2018, smiling as they carry dark brown soil to another part of the garden. Every sister has a garden in the back patio behind the building.
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  • Sister Ana works on her own plot in the garden on July 3, 2018, wearing a large sun hat over her habit. She has been at the Carmelite Monastery since November 2017 as a postulant, which is one stage in the process of becoming a nun. In June 2018, she became a novice, meaning she was fully accepted into the community at Carmel. Novices go to classes three times a week, studying the Old and New Testaments.<br />
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“I’m a baby in the spiritual realm, but I’m enjoying learning a lot,” she says.
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  • Mother Teresita pauses during a walk through the garden on June 29, 2018.<br />
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She says their lifestyle might appear very solitary or isolated compared to the modern secular world, but in her mind, it’s not so different: “We live as hermits, but we’re not alone,” she says. “Isolation is one of the problems with people today. A lot of people have things going on around them, but they feel alone. You have to find your center and once you do, the rest isn’t so disturbing.”
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  • Crosses hang on a stone wall in the chapel at the Carmelite Monastery. Along with the gardens, it is one of the areas members of the public are allowed to visit.
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  • Sister Immaculata covers books in protective plastic inside the library on Jan. 10, 2019.
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  • Sister Jacinta makes rosaries out of beads to sell on Jan. 10, 2019. <br />
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“We make everything. Some sisters do crafts, like the rosaries and children’s bracelets, which are sold in the front office,” says Mother Teresita. “It’s a lot to keep up, but it’s not too big.”
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  • Sister Rose Mary sews habits on Jan. 10, 2019. The nuns’ lifestyle may seem Old World, but they are not fully cut off from society. They keep up with the news of the outside world and have email to help facilitate monastery business. Visitors can catch up with them for short amounts of time, but Mother Teresita says their days are pretty regimented with their life’s calling to prayer.
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  • The monastery is one of two live-in Catholic dwellings in Monterey County, up the coast from New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur, pictured here on July 12, 2018.<br />
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Deep in Carmel Valley—over an hour’s drive from the coast—is the Tassajara Zen Center where Buddhist monks live among the rolling hills of the Ventana Wilderness. All three institutions create a space devoted to those leading a contemplative lifestyle.<br />
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“A life of prayer is expansive,” Teresita says. “It can be done from anywhere. It’s a whole way of life all the time.”
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  • A sign on the chapel door at the Hermitage. The chapel, along with a bookstore, gardens and cabins for overnight stays, are areas of the property members of the public can openly visit.<br />
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“Silence and solitude are practices. If they don’t end up in love, they’re worthless,” say Father Cyprian, the current Prior. “If you don’t come out of silence more loving and kind, you’re doing something wrong.”<br />
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Cyprian, 60, joined the New Camaldoli Hermitage in 1992 at age 34. He was a professional musician before becoming a monk.
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  • Brother Bryan sweeps the sanctuary during a quiet afternoon on July 12, 2018. <br />
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“What drew me was the routine of the daily life,” he says. “I never dreamed of being a monk or a hermit. That is not what I wanted to do. I just knew I wanted to do God’s will.”
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  • Prayer requests from the public inside the chapel.
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  • A view of the South Coast near Big Sur seen from the outside of the chapel.
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  • A cemetery outside the chapel for monks who have passed.
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  • A bulletin board outside the chapel holds hermitage announcements and prayer requests.
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  • Our main ministry is to people who want some days of freedom from the world,” says 81-year-old Father Robert, pictured here during lunch in July 2018. He first came to New Camaldoli Hermitage in 1959 before going to study elsewhere. “Everyone needs support and we provide a place where people can come and be healed and encouraged.”<br />
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On the property, the monks gather for meals, movies and daily prayer and chanting. There is a vegetable garden and chicken coop that produces fresh eggs. Most days they are above the fog line and the view is nothing but blue skies over the hillside and a two-mile meandering paved road that leads up from Highway 1 below to their solitary world.
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  • Brother Doug (pictured working inside the bookstore) is in his 40s. He says the contemplative life facilitates listening. After a stint in the Peace Corps in Morocco, he worked as a lawyer and legal aid in the San Francisco Bay Area. He came to the Hermitage in 2014.<br />
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“I really value the power of prayer and providing hospitality,” he says as he organizes books on a cart in the public bookstore where the famous fruitcake is sold. “It seems solitude, stillness and silence are undervalued and there is such an emphasis of those ideas here.”
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