Do you want to introduce this, Father Martin? Well, yeah, I just asked, just had a conference, or has a conference, we'll get to that later, but we just thought maybe since it's the last night that Sister Kathleen and Brother Nathan are here, that we might open it to some questions about some practices that they have in Mississippi, or the other sisters in politics, or what they have found itself for in I think that have that mouthful. There's a lot of things that you have a lot of work to work on. Does anybody have any questions? Maybe if there's any particular thing that you're interested in, any particular practice or aspect of life that you'd like to ask about first, that might help to get us started. One thing is the famous meetings. What kind of meetings do you have?

[01:01]

Community. You don't mean in the order. Within the community. Okay. Well, we would have, there's a variety of kinds of meetings. We could have a chapter meeting and that would only be for something very serious like voting for a new member to make profession or spending a lot of money or something like that. We don't use the chapter a lot. We have community meetings more. I have a council, and I meet with my monastic council every week for approximately an hour. If we don't have business, we just don't meet, but the meeting is on the books for every week. We are 24. Five, I believe. The prioress, the novice mistress, and the seller are by office.

[02:07]

There's one elected member by the community and one appointed member. Five. And the appointed and elected change every two years. then the most frequent meeting that, well, no, the council meeting would be the most frequent, but we have a community dialogue. If we're having a series of dialogues, it would usually be once a week on Saturday afternoon, and we would usually run it for maybe, well, as long as we need. maybe three weeks, four weeks, depends on what the subject matter is. And then we would take a break. So we don't have a community dialogue every week throughout the year. Do you do the dialogue for taking care of some problem around the culture? Yes. Like dying along the way to sing the songs or stuff like that? Well, what, okay, usually what we use the dialogue for is deciding policies, community policies.

[03:16]

If we want to have a particular, if we're dealing with a particular question, like now I just mentioned we're going to change our salter and we're going to go into a different size book and so forth, usually what we would do in that case is I would just have a very informal meeting of the community just to kind of pull ideas, hear where people are on the subject, then probably call for volunteers for a committee. And the committee would study the question, get further along on the ideas, and then present a suggestion to the community. That's usually what we would do for a specific question like that. But for, well, for example, two years ago, We had a series of dialogues. One was on renovation of our church. We did not have enough places for the community, so we had to decide whether to do a major renovation, which was to break through a wall and build, or use the space we had better.

[04:24]

It would mean that we would have to be a little bit closer together and get new stalls, but to use the space we had. So that was a very serious dialogue and took quite a while. It was a serious question. And what we did with that was to use a process of discernment that we have learned with Brother Ronnie Fogarty. And maybe you'd like to describe that. Do you want to go into the description of the process without too much detail? The whole process, but just kind of briefly. As I recall. First of all, we would sometimes, it's most helpful if we can come with, even on something like that, there's generally a great deal of preparation. There'd often be a committee formed to prepare stuff for the dialogues of that nature.

[05:25]

We would have a couple of meetings, probably, just again to toss around ideas, to see where people are on the subject. Then the committee would do something to try to organize after that step. That was a problem, too. Yeah, that's right. Actually, what we did at that time was then try to... We do certain things with questionnaires, for example. At that time, when we did the chapel renovation ones last year, we had a bunch of questionnaires out for people to check off different things. These were rather quite concrete details in this particular case. Do you like the present size of the altar? Would you want it smaller? You know, yes, no, this kind of thing. We went through a lot of that to get a feel for where the community was on different issues. They weren't votes of any sort. They were to sort out what were the hot issues from what were the issues in which there already was a fair deal of consensus.

[06:32]

And we spent quite a lot of time then trying to work through all of these ones, dialoguing, and when Ronnie came, he wasn't convinced that had really been the best procedure. And what he did, of course he has a very great gift for this sort of thing, In just the space of about one dialogue, really, he tried to sort out what he felt were, what's the thing in which were obviously fairly agreed needs to be done, and obviously something needed to be done to make at least more stalls, you know, to make more room in the church. There was some hope of doing, which was rearranging the sanctuary, mostly for liturgical reasons. And what would be nice, but was really sort of the lowest priority, which was doing things with our guest chapel, which was the most difficult for a number of reasons. So, his suggestion in retrospect was that it would be helpful to have something like that where you can try to get a feel for what are the most crucial, what's the community's real priority on it.

[07:40]

And he's always very insistent that whoever be moderating, or especially all the people on the committee, really, would really be listening for where is the whole community on this question? What do you really hear the group saying on a particular issue? moderating the meeting itself, or overseeing the whole process with the forums and questionnaires? Usually that would be the same person for us, I think, most of the time. But we do have a moderator for the dialogue itself, and that person A dialogue could be a series of meetings on one particular subject. And it would be the same moderators. We have a group of moderators, about five, but the sisters take turns moderating because it's a hard job and I think we don't want any one person, and not all people have skills for it, so we want to do it. develop the skills of a few people. And usually for the really important ones, Gail would not moderate because we need her to do other things.

[08:45]

But that moderator would work with the committee in the preparation of the dialogues, but then in the dialogue, the moderator. Yeah. And it depends, too, for some topics. Like some it winds up being the moderator having more to do and others the committee does more. It just seems to depend on the topic. And then from that, what did we do next? And we went into the actual discernment on some of those questions, I think, which Well, one method of discernment that we've used a few times that Brother Ronnie recommended to us, and this is after you already have a fairly good feel for what is the real question, you know, what's the concrete question we need to ask. And one method that we've used, that he suggested to us, was you have We had very short sessions. I don't think we did this on the chapel renovation one. Which one was it? The foundations question, we did this one.

[09:48]

The general chapel renovation. The general one, okay. We'd have a series of actually quite short meetings. It was amazing how quickly we got this done. Quite short meetings where everyone would have to come with reasons for, let's say, for doing a major renovation, for example. And everyone would have to come with a list of, either mental or written, although we found it often worked better if they were written out ahead of time, of reasons. And then the floor would be open. Now, he stressed that this was not opinions, this was not feelings, this was not any of those sorts of things, but just real good reasons for doing this. And it was all right, and then it was pretty much open to whoever wanted to mention reasons until all the reasons were exhausted. Now, we asked him, you know, is it good to say a reason more than once, you know, supposing someone else has already said a reason that I have, should I repeat my reason?

[10:51]

And he was rather discreet on his answer to this one, he said, If you feel it's already been heard, then don't say it again. But if you feel that in some way, you know, and by being heard, he doesn't mean, he wouldn't mean that, well, you know, convinced. Not that people aren't convinced by it, that's not the question. But if it's once it's been clearly heard, whether people agree or don't agree, then that's sufficient. So actually, those only took about 10 or 15 minutes, really, to do that. And then we'd come back at another time and do the opposite side of the same question. The person says, then makes a statement, and that's it. Not necessarily. It might wind up being that only 8 or 10 people would speak at a meeting like that sometimes, because... I would just like to add a reason for this. The reason is that we all try to understand everyone's points of view, understand the reasons behind.

[11:58]

So if, for example, I really feel that the church renovation should go on, And I know that there are several people who think we shouldn't have any church renovation. He wants me to understand why those sisters don't want to have a church renovation. So when we come to do the pros, we call them the pros, everyone hopefully will be able to give prose, even if my own position is against it. And that's the value of this session, that I hear everybody speaking for this thing, knowing that not everybody really is for it. And it causes a great deal of peace and calm in the community when we do this. And we're not perfect at it. There are things that we don't do exactly right. But I do think that if we keep working at this particular aspect, it's very helpful. Then you're supposed to do the cons first.

[12:59]

You begin with the cons. And hopefully everybody would have several reasons against this particular proposal. and you verbalize it. And it's good that those who are for it especially would verbalize a con. So that you just feel that people are not fighting, that I'm able to even express honestly a con that I see to this proposal even though I personally am for it. So you go through those two sessions Pardon? Who was this information? Brother Ronnie Fogarty. He's an Australian Marist who's helped us a good deal with dialogues. I keep hearing this sometimes. Yeah. One quick question. In the description of the short length of time, it makes me think that they were not using those so-called reflective listening techniques, or somebody else.

[14:01]

Not in this, no. Strictly you say it out. And there's no dialogue on it. This is a very specific kind of a thing. That kind of thing would have ordered it to happen, where you're dialoguing, talking back and forth, listening to each other, and so forth. But this is a very specific session, where it's only set out. That's all. And nobody comments on anything. In fact, that's very important that you don't comment on what people say. The questions for clarification are fine, of course, but that's not the same thing. Then from there, we would just come together for an actual vote on it. Before taking the vote, which actually I don't think Ronnie likes the word vote at all, and he's oddly enough not that much – he doesn't encourage using the word consensus either. The way he sees it is that it's corporately making a decision.

[15:03]

And what would happen would be each one is expected to prayerfully discern what she feels the Spirit is saying to the community at this time on this question, on the basis of what she's heard to date. So when we would come then to do this Well, let's say at the meeting where the decision will be more or less made. I mean, the superior takes the final decision, really. But insofar as the community is coming to this final point, the way we've done it is to pass out pieces of paper which just say on them, the proposition is stated rather clearly. And then we just say, having prayed and discerned, or something like that, my opinion at this time is, and it's yes or no, quite simple. So then we just collect all the votes, and this is actually one of the trickiest parts of it, really. Collect them all in one place, and then The person just opens them all and reads them out, yes, no, no, yes, and so on.

[16:12]

And they're not counted, and that's part of it. The notion is to get a feel of where the Spirit is moving the community at this time. And after the first one, there would be just usually a couple of minutes for people to pray for a few minutes and just hear what, you know, reflect on with the Spirit with what they've heard in those reading those pieces of paper. And at that point, then we would hand them out again another lot a second time and do it over again, always at least twice. And the point is to see if there is movement in the community the second time around, and if so, what direction it's going in. That can be quite tricky for the person doing it, to discern where is a good point to stop with that, where it's clear that things are still moving or are not still moving. And then sometimes, depending on the question, it can be up to the superior to decide, yes, I have enough information to go on, or no, I don't have enough information to go on. I should add that we'd only do this process for very important questions.

[17:16]

I mean, it's a long process, as you can see, so it's for those questions that really affect our life. But for other questions, we would probably just dialogue, And then depending on the tone of the dialogue, whether it's strongly divided or quite simple, we'd either just have a checklist or... Well, yeah, usually we don't have show of hands if it's of any importance, but sometimes we do. But very often a checklist afterwards, after the dialogue. We try not to make decisions at the dialogue. Usually if we dialogue something and there's a full discussion, we wait for a few days or at least 24 hours before taking a vote. So, it sounds very complicated, but it's not for the more normal questions that we're facing.

[18:17]

But if it's an important question, we usually give a good amount of time to it. What was the initial question, sir? You mean, how do we know that we have to face this? Who brings this to be accepted? Well, there's different things that can happen. Like the church renovation, I mean, we just knew, everybody knew we had to do something. And so I would probably formulate the question, well, what should we do? But we all knew we had to do something. Questions can arise. We do one thing that I could describe, and this will answer part of your question. We have a house meeting four times a year. And that house meeting is supposed to be a time when we can look at our various practices in the community and kind of revitalize, see how we're doing. And it's not quite the same as the Speech in Silence Revision.

[19:21]

And the way we set it up is that I usually choose the topic, but I often ask the council for input if it's not clear that there's a topic we need to talk about. Or I could ask the community to just jot down anything they have in mind and let me know. So then I would choose the main topic of the House meeting, and we would put out in our common rooms some papers, and anyone can write any question about that particular topic that they'd like us to talk about. And then there's another set of papers put out where people can write anything at all about any question that they're finding difficulties with. And it's from that, if things may emerge on those papers that indicate that we need to dialogue something. And that's one way that things would emerge. Would a blank piece of paper on that? Yeah, it would be as if you put a couple of pieces of blank paper here.

[20:24]

People just hand in what they would like to have talked about. Yeah, yeah. Or some of it can be pretty, you know, we handle pretty trivial stuff too in Dean's House meetings, you know. A reminder that we do not run water in the dormitory after 8 at night, you know, it can be, it can be something. And we wouldn't dialogue that. But there are, some things can come up that would be of more importance. Or people would write notes to either Gail or the council and ask the council, you know, I'm concerned about a flood theme that's going on. Have we talked about this with the community sometime? So that's about it for meetings. We try not to have meetings during our fall. September to December, we're very busy at Candy, and people find that it's too much. You need a little break on the weekends. And so we try not to have dialogues, because they are draining.

[21:25]

They take emotional energy. One thing maybe that I'd add, too, is there's a great deal of work goes into preparing them, a lot, really, the way we do it, at least the major ones. Our more major dialogues take a great deal of work on the part of the moderator and committee ahead of time and discerning where the community is and where to go with that. So what actually happens there is really only part of it, really. Well, just formulating where to go because, for example, at the dialogue itself, we wouldn't discuss where do we go from here on this question. That kind of procedural question is very much left up to the moderator and committee. So, you know, it can happen, of course, as I'm sure you all know very well, it can happen in a dialogue that things go in a completely unexpected or different direction, you know, or something breaks open at the meeting that you never expected to happen or come up. Well, then it would be the committee would have to decide, all right, you know, now this has happened, what do, except for things that you'd have to handle on the spot during the dialogue, which can happen too, and then it's just the moderator's ad hoc decision.

[22:37]

But other than that, You know, it may be quite unclear where things are or where they're going at the end of the meeting, and it would be up to the committee to decide, well, okay, what do we do to handle all this stuff that we have now? That's right. But anybody would be free to write them suggestions too, yeah, or comments. Sometimes people do, but really not a whole lot. Or a special topic, it would be a special community, right? It's a committee where you select people. I mean, you ask people who want to be on it. Yeah, sometimes I might ask somebody, especially if nobody volunteers. But it's better to have people who want to, you know, be involved in that question because they're going to be more interested in.

[23:39]

So you want to be comfortable. And then about four times a year... And four times a year, a speech in silence revision, which is different. We described that the other night. And then these other things... That's right. That's right. And we've got our daily meeting. No, we don't. We used to. We used to have what we called strike of work. Did you have something like that? Strike of work? Active crime, right. The distribution of the daily work. I think they did have strike of work at Rentham for a long time after that, which was a very handy thing. It used to be like right after the mass, when people would be going out to work.

[24:50]

And they'd all just gather in, like for us, it was our column room. And if there were any announcements to make, or just changes in the work, or something, you could verbally do that very easily. But at Mississippi, we never inaugurated that. So there isn't any daily meeting. So if I have something I really want to tell people, Either I'll ask them to come in to chapter room after Mass for a few minutes, or I might just do it in the factory, or I'll put up a note. We write a lot of notes. We're having a guest reading. No, we don't. One thing you might, maybe I mentioned this the other night, we do have a long-term guest program. Did I mention that? And that's been a very fine program so far. We're running out of space in our dormitory, so we may not be able to continue it too much longer. But any woman

[25:52]

a religious or a lay woman, married, whatever, may come and live within the community, we prefer that it not be less than four weeks, preferably more, and not more than six months. And she lives totally integrated into the community, comes to everything. She may come to choir. If she prefers not to, that's fine, but she's welcome to. So far, no one has chosen not to. The long-term guest works in the morning. We work for a long period in the morning, and then several days a week for two hours in the afternoon, and other days no work in the afternoon. The long-term guest only works in the morning. And we do have the provision that if she doesn't want to work, you know, someone might be wanting to write a book or just not do anything, then we'd have to ask them to give us, to have some little stipend for that.

[26:57]

But otherwise, they don't, there's no money exchange. So far, well, we try to have only one at a time because the community is rather small and there is a certain amount of caring for the person and just checking to make sure she's okay and so forth. So we feel we can't handle more than one. but we would overlap if one has been there three months and she's coming to the end and someone else wants to start. We'd overlap, but we usually don't have two straight at the same time. So those women would be present at chapter. They come to everything. They wouldn't be coming to dialogues. They wouldn't come to those kinds of meetings. Our postulants don't come to dialogues, and first-year novices We kind of discern towards the end of the first year with the novice whether she's ready to come into the dialogues, because some are dying to, and some don't want to get near them, so it depends on the person.

[28:03]

Your visitors come to your... your long-term guests come to your chapters? Yes. You... you... you... not... by chapters you just mean your chapter talk, not when the chapter will be... The community chap... yeah, chapter talk. Oh yes, excuse me, not a chapter meeting. Oh yeah, yeah, excuse me. How long has this been going on? What is the origin of it? Of what? The whole... this whole dialogue process, is it... No, it's not unique to our monastery. I would say it's been going on for us, well, really, since Vatican II. We started it probably four years after Vatican II, and we started with a professor from a local college coming out and just helping us with group dynamics or just the basics of dialogue. She was the first person that helped us. Because it seemed as though the Church was asking us to change our structure of how we made decisions in a religious community, and to involve the whole community in that decision making.

[29:19]

And so we needed some help in going about that. And since then, we've worked ourselves, and we've had different people help us. I would say Ronnie Fogarty has been the most influential. But we had already been dialoguing before he started coming to us. And I suppose the tension in dialogue and in relation to our understanding of authority in the role of St. Benedict is, well, just how does a dialogical process, which is more democratic relate to the understanding of obedience and the place of the abbot or abbess in the rule of Benedict. And that's why Kathleen made the distinction, and Brother Ronnie is very strong on this distinction, that we dialogue and really try to involve, that everyone in the community is involved in trying to listen to the movement of the Spirit within the community.

[30:28]

And we come to a certain point in that. And then in most cases, the abbot or the abbess makes the decision, takes the decision. Sometimes you could dialogue a question up to a certain point and then have the chapter vote, formally vote the decision. There are different ways that you can actually come to the decision making. But it's been an important way for the community to take responsibility for itself. And so that's why we've started it. What you're saying is the community could dialogue the point and then the doctor is Salome professed could actually vote, if it was a question that, there's some questions that the chapter has to take a vote on. Expenditures of a certain amount of money, for example. What are some others the chapter has to vote on? Yeah, well, we'd never dialogue that question.

[31:31]

Foundation. Yeah, foundation would be another very good example. And that's one that will be coming up for us pretty soon. So we would never just discuss that question or decide it within the chapter. we would have the whole community dialogue that question. But then at a certain point, that question has to be decided by a chapter vote. You see what I mean? The relation between the two. Something else just came up that you might be interested in. Oh yeah, I know. It's the way we handle formation decisions or the process of community involvement in formation. Are you interested in that? Do novices come to the Council?

[32:35]

Do novices have a Council interview? I think we do. The postulants don't meet anyone except the novice mistress and abbess and we make the decision as to whether we have a council vote on whether they will go on to receive the habit. Novices have a year and a half novitiate, and at the end, they are interviewed by the council. and the council can ask them anything. It's a friendly interview. It's not, you know, you have to come up with all the right answers. It's more, how are you, and how are you doing, and how are things going for you? But it's to give the council a chance to get to know the novices. Yeah. And then that's a chapter vote on whether the novice goes on to profession.

[33:39]

Then at the end of the first year of profession, meeting with Chris before the lecture. The chapter? Yeah, chapter meeting. Oh, maybe that's what we changed. It used to be the council. Okay. So, at the end of the novitiate, okay, the novice has the first meeting with the chapter. It used to be the council, but we changed it. And so it's the same idea. The chapter meets with the novice, and it's the same atmosphere. It's friendly. The novice is nervous usually, but they never get... They always come out feeling okay. This is for the chapter as a group. Yes. Yeah. Okay, formidable. Yes, it is, in that it gets the novice used to meeting with the group, because as we go along, they get a little bit more serious, so that that meeting before Sahelan Profession is quite important.

[34:44]

But the first meeting is more that the professed get the chance to talk to the novice in a way that we don't usually. But it also gives the novice the feeling of meeting with the group. Oh yeah, they do at work and all around. They don't have the freedom to have long conversations with the professed. Pardon? Yeah, just, you know, brief little exchanges, and the novices and professors all work together. So there's a lot of interchange, but you don't have a long, serious conversation with the professor, usually. It could happen, but not usually. Oh, okay, then we'll move on. So that's okay. After she's professed, the end of the first year after profession, that when we have the evaluation.

[35:49]

I have a secretary who takes care of all these things. But anyway, either after their first year or their second year. We have a written evaluation, and many monks monasteries in the States are doing this. Not all, but that's where we got the idea. And we have a questionnaire that the professed herself fills out for herself, and then we give to all the other professed. And there are questions like, Does Sister seem to be functioning well in community meetings? Is she able to contribute to community meetings? Is she generous at work? Is she joyful? Does she seem to have good health? And then there are questions about, would you name what you feel are Sister's strongest points? Are there areas that you feel Sister needs to work on? This is not a meeting, this is a questionnaire.

[36:56]

It's filled out in private and it's given to me. I'm the only one that sees them. And people do sign their names so that it's not, it's not, what's the word I want? Anonymous, yeah. So then I collate the whole thing. I read them all, and I fill out my own, and then I collate it. Then I meet with the person, and I go over it, but I only give her a feel for what the responses were. I don't say, now, 17 people said this and 10 people said that. I would never do that. But I say, it seems as though this has gone pretty well. And I usually take her own, the one that she filled out, and hopefully it's going to be pretty much like what the ones the professor filled out. And if it isn't, if she thinks she's doing terribly in this area, and everybody else or most of the other sisters think she's doing real well, then I'd be sure to point that out to her, or vice versa.

[38:04]

And it does give people a good feel for how they're doing in community and kind of explicitates the expectations that the community has. Then, before Solid Profession, that's the last interview. Is there another interview with the chapter before Solid Profession? Maybe there is. No, I'm mixed up. There may be another meeting, I'm not sure. But anyway, when a person asks for solemn profession, then they would come to the chapter again. And that interview is quite important, and I think there are two, because what we've said is that the second of the interviews with the chapter is the one where people should verbally or publicly or at least

[39:09]

person to person, mention things that they may feel are difficulties. They don't do that with a novice. They don't point out any problem areas. It's simply to get to know them. But at that second one, if there's something that's still troublesome, then it should be brought out. But we meet first, I with the chapter, and they would mention that if they think they need to do it. And if I or the junior mistress feel that it really would be very bad to bring that up at this point, then I would just say that, and they wouldn't. But otherwise, and also it gives the other sisters a chance to say, well, I really don't see that. And if you have a lot of people saying that doesn't seem to be a problem, then we might say, well, maybe this isn't the time to mention it. Just one other thing about that, too. At least I know I would expect you. At least a lot of times you would expect that there's not going to be a whole lot of shock, so presumably this is something where people have had the courage to say to the sister already on a one-to-one basis.

[40:18]

You know, it would be pretty strange if all of a sudden she heard from ten people about some major difficulty that nobody had had the nerve to speak to her in person. And then the last one, it's not supposed to be a time for bringing up a whole lot of problems. They should have been brought up a long time ago. But it is the actual preparation for the voting for solemn profession. So do you look at how we make a chapter where either amongst your sisters talk about how Well, in those brief moments before she comes in, they could, but it's only in view of preparing for meeting with her. It's to get away from that, that we do it the way we do it. Because in the old days, the chapter did meet to talk about someone before profession. And that became very odious, at least in our order, that they wanted to do away with those meetings of talking about persons.

[41:27]

So that's why we changed to this system. Because there seems to be some kind of a need to come together before you take such an important vote. so that you'd have the opportunity of voicing a concern or of hearing how others are viewing this person. The questionnaire process is not the only one. Only once, yeah. It could, in some instances it was, in my experience it wasn't, but I'm talking about the order at that moment I was talking about the order. And just the whole idea of talking about a person who's absent became problematic in our order anyway. After the person has had her interview, don't we often stay and talk? Yeah, for a couple of minutes at the end. But that's not quite the same as having a full meeting. So I can't tell you too much of what other communities do.

[42:34]

Every community is very free to set up their own way. But that written questionnaire is an idea that came from several monks' monasteries. And the meeting with the professed, I gleaned from the first general chapter that I ever went to, I asked a lot of abbesses all over the world, really, that I could manage to communicate with, what they do. And many of them were doing something similar to this in France and in other parts of the world. Maybe a questionnaire being on the line? Yeah. By Quandu Avenue? No, no. It's at the end of the first year that we do the questionnaire. And then at the end of the second year, we have a second interview. And then before solemn confession, we have the third interview. There's one interview at the end of the novitiate. That's in the journal, correct?

[43:42]

That's right. And then she makes a profession, and then after a year is a questionnaire. And then after another year is another interview. And then it could go on for two or three years before the final interview. OK. And now, because you have a two-year mandate, you have an interview. At the end. Who's going to be interviewed? The chapter? Yes. The chapter. And the novice. That's after the first year. At the end of the initiative. Oh, at the end. There's another meeting with the council. No, no, no, don't confuse. It's confused. Maybe I could just write it out. It would be. Another question here. I mean, do you have anything, those of them? Yes, yeah. I don't know how much they are the same, but we drew up ours, basing it on two others that we had seen. What if the dog has lanced it, and made it for duty to its mouth?

[44:52]

During the novitiate? Yeah, during the novitiate. Well, the whole basic formation. Well, if he, if there is... Okay. Well, basically, a novice master's job would be teaching and individual personal formation, which I suppose you can call spiritual. She has qualities in rule, the vows, history of the order. No, excuse me, that comes later.

[45:55]

She doesn't teach that. She teaches, yeah, just a simple liturgical formation, not a real course in liturgy. And then during the novitiate, the noviceness just doesn't teach it, but there's also basic introduction to the Psalms and history of the order. And let's see, anything else? They meet once a week. I think as postulants and first-year novices with the novice directors alone, once a week. And I think, yeah, individual. And I think in the second year, depending on the person and on her needs, the novice mrs. tries to kind of move it into a once every other week.

[47:09]

But sometimes, you know, the young person really needs a little more, so she would continue on. She's very flexible in that, but that's what we felt would be a good thing is in that second year of novitiative, she would stay in there every other week. But she's always around, you know, they can always ask to see her. but for the regular meeting. That's what it would do. Yeah, very much. We look more towards the juniorate as the time for more serious study. And the novitiate, it's more the formation of the individual and just a kind of an introduction into certain things like scripture and liturgy and things like that. But it's definitely not an academic approach. How would I define?

[48:10]

Formation. How would we define formation? I think I'm going to ask Fr. Martin to answer that one. Yeah, and... in the assimilation of monastic values, personally assimilating monastic values. So the formation is the presentation of the monastic values as values, and then helping the person to actually integrate those values into her life, personally. And it's a lifelong process, but that's where I will see the beginning. That's the Milky Way. Some are and some aren't. We have an age limit.

[49:26]

I think 23 is our bottom and 40 is our top. Now at 23 they may be real mature and some aren't or they may be mature in some areas and not mature in other areas. So part of this whole formation is also going to be basic human development and that's a big part. And that would be more on the individual, one-to-one level, dealing with the person. We don't have any classes, though it might not be a bad idea, on maturity and things like that. But it would be more dealing with the person and how she's dealing with life and with the other novices and her ability to take responsibility at work and things like that. Are you going to go out to the youth again? Yes, I'm supposed to. I got real bad about it for a time.

[50:41]

I try to meet with the novices together once a month and have a class, some kind of a class. I usually just spontaneously decide what the class is going to be about. For several years, I would give a course or a series of classes to the novices on the Psalms. And, you know, it would be maybe six weeks, seven weeks, eight weeks. And I really like to do that, but I sometimes get too tied up and I can't do it. So then I just meet with them and talk about anything. But then I meet with them individually once every three weeks. I usually see all the sisters. I'm available to see all the sisters, but I try to see the analysis at least once every three weeks. Yeah, well, we have a junior aide.

[51:42]

Now that's something that we hadn't always had. Usually the monks always had that, or I guess they called it the scholastic aide or something like that. But as nuns, we didn't really, when I left the militia, we were just kind of plunged right into the professed community. But we've realized that people need a transitional time. So we've established, and I think most of our monasteries have a junior aide. We have a junior director. The junior director is not the same as the novice mistress. She doesn't have the same kind of a responsibility for the professed sister. That sister is professed in the community and she's responsible to the community. But the junior director is responsible for the study program for each individual. And we worked as a formation team to set up the study program. She also is available to see the juniors.

[52:43]

I think it's like every two weeks or maybe less for the older juniors and more for the younger juniors. It depends. Sometimes it's tutorial, depending on how many juniors we have at a given time needing to study a given subject. Or sometimes it could be two or three in a class. It just depends on how many we have. because we, you know, as I'm sure with you, people enter at staggered times, so we don't always have a group. And some teachers are better at tutorial. We have one sister who's a very good teacher of the Tristics or the Cistercian Fathers, but she teaches best tutorial, and she doesn't do well in the big class. So, you know, it'll depend on what the subject is also. But we do have a series of subjects that everybody is supposed to study at one time or another, in one way or another.

[53:51]

There's another thing that I would see as very important in doing the coordination with the staff at NALIS, professors, members of the community. People are free to approach them with corrections, which normally we wouldn't do with NALIS, as long as NALIS is the human arts director. But that's just for interaction and handling contact with the community members. I think that's the crucial part of Judith's information. And one thing our Judith director said to me lately, that's what she considers one of her tabs. to help the junior come to a good relationship with the superior. And she has to kind of be weaned from her relationship to the knowledge director. I don't know if you were aware of that. But she felt one of her responsibilities was to foster a good relationship with the superior. So they tend to be, of course, who are accepted to be tied into the knowledge director. The martyr of the community.

[55:01]

That's the hardest job. Oh my, that's hard. Well, Kathleen was doing it for a while. What we used to do was to have a work secretary, and she used to have to work out the work schedules for everybody. and post them like weekly. So just last year, we tried very hard to move into what we call a stable work chart, which was a chart that has all the things that have to be done and the people that can do them, and it has to be on a daily basis. So it worked out for a week. And Kathleen has a wonderful mind for doing things like that. She and another sister are the ones that that got it started. And we're in the, actually we haven't been in it a whole year yet. We're still in the, you know, trying out stage. But I think it's going to work. But we still have to have a work coordinator. So when people are sick or going to be away for a while and need a substitute, that work coordinator has to make the adjustments on the work chart.

[56:10]

So that is just, we have about three that change off during the year to take that job. Yeah. It's for the entire season. We do it seasonally. But it's in the weekly chart. This is how it's going to happen every week for the next four weeks. But also, I would say we tend to be very Whoever's in charge of the work, we're all pretty dependent on what their decision is. There are very few people who have the sorts of jobs in the community where they will just ordinarily necessarily be doing their job.

[57:21]

Most people are relatively dependent on not being involved in the work situation and not being able to do that. And there's some jobs that get spent time going insane that people try to avoid doing when they do want to do it. Yeah, they're really the bookkeeper and the cook. And the seller, the housekeeper. But even the housekeepers do things. Yes, but in terms of the work assignments, for example, well, she may have to cook candy once a day, and she may have to work in the production another day. In that sense, people with other jobs, partly because I guess of the nature of our candy industry, that requires almost everybody to help. No matter what your responsibility is, you just may get asked to do that. But there are quite a few people who on the work chart, you'll see next to their name, your work, your work, your work. Quite a few people that will happen. No, those jobs would change life often.

[58:23]

The novice mistress. I haven't changed the novice mistress since I've been novice. It's hard to change that particular job. The other jobs would change often. What? No, they change, but not real often. We had to change ours recently, but the other bookkeeper had been in for many years, and I presume this one will be in for many years, because it takes a long time to learn that job. She was the first bookkeeper, and she's still involved with the books, but she's not the actual accountant now. It's a new one. Yeah, that's right. Now, what kind of work are you all supposed to do on the farm? Not entirely. We're not actually working on the farm, but we are running the farm.

[59:24]

So it requires management. And sometimes there are jobs that we have to do fencing and cleaning out a certain pasture or something. We have the candy. We have maintenance of grounds, which is pretty vast. a lot of lawn mowing, we have an orchard, tree trimming, garden, yeah, several big gardens, and then the normal housework, liturgy, and those things. I don't think we need this on the...

[60:01]

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