The sisters changing the habits of a lifetime

Facebook, tweets before Matins and a true zest for the modern world. Meet the nuns who live anything but a cloistered life...

‘Mindfulness has exploded into the

mainstream’

ICE CREAM cones held aloft, three young women on a beach laugh heartily, the sky behind them miraculously blue for a chilly afternoon in the NorthEast. ‘Happy Easter from Scotland!’ reads the caption on the picture, which has attracted 183 Facebook likes and several admiring comments.

Indeed, with their cheeky grins and stylish sunglasses, the trio look like any other group of girls having fun in the sunshine on a blustery weekend – except, that is, for their long, white nuns’ habits.

The Dominican Sisters of St Cecilia represent the modern face of nuns in Scotland. They hold spiritual retreats for teenagers and coffee mornings for mothers and babies, all within the walls of their modernised convent in Elgin, Moray.

Their Facebook page, where they post excitably about trips to the Isle of Skye and hiking in the Cairngorms, has more than 1,000 fans. Even while trudging up snow-covered mountains the women sport their distinctive habits, complete with black Gore-Tex jackets and white hiking boots. For these nuns, the hills truly are alive.

The sisters hail from the United States, mem- bers of an order in Tennessee that dispatched the women to Scotland in 2013 to spread the Word and perhaps even sign up new recruits.

It is an intriguing turnaround. Once, Scotland sent religious missionaries across the globe. Now, the missionaries are coming here.

Last week it was revealed the number of women in England and Wales joining Holy Orders has reached a 25-year high. The Catholic Church described it as ‘a gap in the market for meaning in our culture’.

But the picture in Scotland is very different. Here, numbers are declining. In 2010, there were 447 religious sisters. By 2014, that number had dropped to 391.

Convents and monasteries have closed down, others have amalgamated and some nuns, many of them elderly, have simply died.

The Scottish nun in her billowing habit, once a ubiquitous part of public life, is becoming an endangered species. And those who are left face a fight for survival.

Meanwhile, the first tweet from the Carmelite Monastery of Kirkintilloch, Dunbartonshire, comes just before 8am. It is from the book of John – a passage describing Jesus washing the feet of his disciples.

The second, a quote from Saint Teresa, who founded the Carmelite Order almost 500 years ago, appears just minutes later.

‘People were telling us, no one is going to read a pamphlet nowadays, no one is going to read a tome about religious life,’ explains Sister Marie Helen, prioress of the monastery which is home to 14 nuns.

‘This is the way people communicate today, and we need to be able to communicate with them. So we decided to tweet.’

Half-an-hour later, in an unremarkable modern building off the B8048 in this commuter town near Glasgow, a candle flickers and a soothing trickle of water echoes off the modern, rainbow-coloured glass windows.

Wimples aside, it feels like the sort of meditation room that could be found in any yoga studio or fashionable gym on any high street across the country.

‘Mindfulness has become a really big thing for people lately, it’s exploded into the mainstream,’ says Sister Marie Helen, adding drily: ‘We’ve been doing that for 500 years.’

As well as the 14 nuns who live in the monastery, around 20 members of the public turn up each day for early morning Mass, before rushing off to jobs and families.

‘We’re always amazed at how many members of the public come for Mass with us,’ says Sister Marie Helen.

‘But we are here to serve the world, not ourselves, so we see this as a very good thing.’

A nun wearing a long, brown habit and a pair of trainers pops up to switch-off the electrical water fountain and Mass – led by a priest – begins.

Despite the service’s number of visitors, the monastery’s attempts to integrate with the modern world have yet to yield results.

It has been ten years since a new member joined the Order.

‘Not many people are called to this life,’ says Sister Marie Helen.

‘It is difficult. It all seems quite nice until you get here, but it is a rare, contemplative life.’

To stem the flow, the Order has joined a number of convents in flinging open its doors to young women attracted to the religious life.

The monastery runs Come and See weekends, where prospective novices can try out the life of a nun for a few days and see if it might, in the longterm, be for them.

‘Come and See weekends are a great way of giving women an insight into what life is like for us here,’ says Sister Marie Helen. ‘It gives them a taster of what it could be like.’

And it has become an increasing trend. The American sisters in Elgin run something called an Encounter Christ Retreat, where groups of inter- ested young women can spend a ‘quiet weekend’ with the sisters, praying, talking and eating plenty of ice cream. And it’s not just restricted to convents. Last month, the famous Pluscarden Abbey, also in Elgin, home to a group of Benedictine monks, opened its doors to women for the first time for retreats.

It is part of a restoration of the Abbey costing £ 4million, which suggests it now views itself as much as a commercial enterprise as a house of the Lord.

Still, there’s a big difference between switching off your iPhone for two days and dedicating yourself full-time to God.

Life at the monastery in Kirkintilloch is certainly rigorous. The nuns rise at 6am for prayers, before an hour’s meditation and breakfast. After early morning Mass they work, making greeting cards or altar breads to sell to the local community.

The rest of the day follows a similar pattern – prayer, meditation, work and, says Sister Marie Helen, ‘not too much talk’.

In a world where young women’s lives are dominated by communication via social media and the web, and where noise – from TVs, iPads and mobiles – is endless, it is perhaps unsurprising that they struggle to recruit new members.

‘Religious life is the harder choice,’ says Liz Leydon, editor of the Scottish Catholic Observer. ‘It involves sacrificing so much, particularly in terms of not having a family life.

‘Modern life has given us infinite options so people are making decisions later in life than they once did. In the same way that people are getting married later, people are also postponing decisions about vocations.’

The Catholic Church in Scotland, however, says the figures are not as bleak as they might seem.

‘We understand that some of the women i ncluded i n the English figures are actually from Scotland, albeit they are beginning their religious life in England,’ says Erin Byrne, a spokesman for the Church.

‘Over the past 20 years, a number of religious orders who previously had convents or houses in Scotland have closed them and moved to England. This means that a woman from Scotland wishing to enter religious life with one of these orders would have to relocate to England.’

In Fife, the Carmelite Monastery in Dysart, Kirkcaldy, another Scottish convent that usually struggles to find new members, is bursting at the seams with 27 women – but only because it has taken in 11 nuns from a convent that closed down.

‘Having 11 new nuns is the dream,’ laments the monastery’s Sister Francis. ‘Our youngest are in their fifties.’

Miss Leydon says: ‘ Many religious sisters in Scotland have, in the past, been involved in palliative care and elder care and that has benefitted Scotland hugely.

‘Now we’re finding that sisters who offered elder care are now requiring it themselves.’

She is not downhearted, however. ‘The Church is always optimistic,’ she says. ‘ Young people with infinite options need to be reminded that it is an option and a respite from the modern pace of life. It’s a different way to serve.’

One woman who made that choice is 29-year- old Theodora Hawksley, who, until recently, was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Edinburgh. A smart young woman with a bright academic career ahead

of her, she chose to join the Congregation of Jesus, an order in North London, several months ago.

She is now taking her first steps towards making vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. ‘Entering religious life was a decision borne of love,’ she says.

‘It was an acknowledgement that my life has slowly and concretely rearranged itself around the love of God and around that relationship as the one I prize above all else.’

Miss Hawksley’s Order is a little more f ree and easy than the Carmelites in Kirkintilloch. The nuns don’t wear habits but their own clothes and they are not ‘indoor penguins’, as Miss Hawksley describes them, but work in full- time jobs. One of her fellow sisters is a psychotherapist working for the NHS. Miss Hawksley is working on a book about peace building.

In the evenings she cooks recipes from trendy young chefs, such as Thomasina Miers and Allegra McEvedy, in the convent kitchen.

She admits she has had relationships in the past and is aware of what she may be giving up in the future.

‘In the same way, when you’re getting married you’re not dwelling on the fact that you’re giving up all the men or women in the world apart from this one,’ she says.

‘When you walk towards religious life, what it is you’re giving up isn’t the first thing on your mind.’

The American nuns in Elgin are a case in point: their Facebook page portrays a life that is exciting and f un, action- packed and, well, glamorous.

‘Look at the pictures of our last retreat,’ requests a poster for an Evangelisation Retreat for 15 to 18year-olds, featuring a succession of smiling teenagers playing pool and climbing ropes. ‘Who wouldn’t want to join this group?’

Sister Marie Helen, the prioress of Kirkintilloch monastery, grew up in the south side of Glasgow and came to the monastery 48 years ago at the startlingly early age of 18.

Now aged 66, even she is shocked at how young she was when she devoted her life to God. ‘We wouldn’t think of taking anyone at that age now,’ she says. ‘People tended to do things at a much earlier age then.

‘I didn’t want it before I came in, but when I did, I realised that this was the right life for me.’

Sister Marie Helen is positive about the future, despite the decline in numbers.

‘Our youngest is in her forties, so while we may have to think about a smaller group in the future, we haven’t reached that point.’ She laughs. ‘We’re not at death’s door yet.’

‘Modern life has given us infinite options’