Benedictine
Sisters, Monastery of St. Gertrude, Cottonwood, Idaho
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Iconography Workshop
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Story by: Lorie Palmer Date
Published to Web: 9/12/2006
COTTONWOOD -- What began 25 years ago as a "positive addiction" to help her quit
smoking turned into a life-style for Sister Michelle Bateman.
"That was long before religious life and yoga became a passion for me," Sister
Michelle said. "And since 80 percent of yoga is breathing, I did quit smoking so
I could enjoy yoga more."
Bateman, a member of the Benedictine sisters at the Monastery of St. Gertrude,
recently graduated from the Himalayan Institute in Honesdale Pa., where she
received intensive yoga training for three weeks. Prior to that she completed an
eight-month home-study course.
She will begin teaching classes Monday, Sept. 18, at the American Legion Hall in
Cottonwood. Classes will be offered Monday through Friday at both 6:30 a.m. and
p.m.
"I hope people will understand yoga is a science and philosophy, not a
religion," she explained. "It's the union of body, mind and spirit."
Yoga helps in a variety of areas including flexibility, stress reduction and
"inner healing."
"It's not about athletic prowess or competition, and anyone of any age or
ability level can benefit from yoga," Bateman emphasized.
Bateman asks anyone who attends classes to wear comfortable clothing.
"I will provide mats and can modify the postures and positions to meet each
person's needs," she explained. "It's very individualized and no one should
think they cannot do it. Yoga can be done from a chair, balancing by holding on
to a wall, standing or sitting."
Bateman said yoga is such a passion to her she wants to share it with others.
"It feels wonderful and I want to get the message out," she said. "People will
get out of yoga just what they put into it and I hope it will become a part of
life in a positive way for many people."
Call 962-3224 for registration and prices.
The Sisters at the Monastery of St. Gertrude hosted a group of 24 Benedictine Sisters for the 12th Annual Benedictine Subprioresses and House Coordinators Gathering in September.
Those who attended traveled from 20 different monasteries across the United States, including New Jersey, Florida, Kentucky and more. They were enthralled with the beauty of the prairie, the autumn colors, warm days and mountain views.
The theme for the week-long workshop was Benedictine Leadership and how the sisters' spirituality influences all those people with whom they share their lives and ministries.
Sisters Mary Forman and Barbara Jean Glodowski, both of St. Gertrude's in Cottonwood, made presentations to the group. Sr. Mary Forman spoke on "Ministry of Authority and Consultation: Rule of Benedict and Monastic Life Today," and Sr. Barbara Jean gave a workshop on "The Gift of Wisdom: Deepening Your Spiritual Vitality and Intimacy."
Sr. Carol Ann Wassmuth shared with the group the sisters' Care of the Land Philosophy and gave them a Forestry 101 lesson. Included in the workshop was a tour of the grounds, the cemetery, the forest around the monastery and the upper meadow. Sr. Placida Wemhoff treated everyone who could make it up the hill to a pancake dinner.
By Jodi Walker
OF THE TRIBUNE
COTTONWOOD - Sister Bernadette Stang gently lifts the lid from the official-looking blue box to reveal her prized American flag.
"Senator (Larry ) Craig had this flown in my honor," she says quietly, her humility overpowered by the meaning of the words.
Flying of the flag over the White House was part of the honor Stang, 71, received last month for a decade of work with minority students in southern Idaho.
After being named "Friend of the Farm Workers," Stang was honored with a day named in her honor by Caldwell Mayor Garret L. Nancolas.
But her proudest achievement is not the day or the flag; it is the students in a new tutoring center named in her honor in the Farmway Village farm workers camp near Caldwell. Sister Bernadette Escuelita --"escuelita" means "little school" in Spanish -- is a three-room schoolhouse where children of migrant workers are tutored and encouraged to aim for high achievement.
And succeed they have.
One of her former students, Ydalia, recently received a $30,000 scholarship to Seattle University. Maria, another student, is following her dream of becoming a dentist by maintaining a 4.0 grade point average.
"Another success is for them not to drop out of high school," Stang says, taking a break in a small library in the Spirit Center at the St. Gertrude's Monastery campus.
Stang is home now in Cottonwood after a lifetime spent serving others. She now works with the retreat ministry on site.
But that hasn't always been the way for Stang.
She grew up in central Minnesota and was trained to teach in a one-room schoolhouse. She then taught at a Catholic school in Minnesota before entering the Benedictine order 50 years ago.
After taking her vows, Stang continued to teach across the state, spending two of those years in Lewiston. She then took her teaching prowess to an older audience as part of a religious education team for the state of Idaho.
She did parish ministry in Burley and Blackfoot, as well as a three-year stint in Colombia, South America. She returned to Cottonwood, held leadership positions for seven years and then took a sabbatical.
While in Louisiana on sabbatical, she was in a car crash that killed the priest who was driving. She was seriously injured and, while recovering, suffered a pulmonary embolism.
"The gift of life became even more precious to me," she says, wringing her hands as she remembers those life-altering events.
After returning to Cottonwood, she soon set out again, this time for southern Idaho to help the women and children in migrant families.
"It is the women and the children who needed empowering."
The isolated village five miles from Caldwell has a store, Stang says, but that is all. The villagers speak little or no English and many don't leave the camp. The head of migrant education had dreamt of opening a learning center, she says, and the two teamed up.
The "escuelita" or little school, was born. It started with three children. Soon it had 10. Then 60 and then 80, Stang says. "It was a wonderful setup."
But it was crowded.
"The children hung from the chandeliers, so to speak."
With a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a new three-room facility was built and promptly named after the woman who not only taught, recruited volunteers and kept the facility going but who would visit homes, take pregnant mothers to the hospital and go out on a limb when no one else would.
A year ago she left the camp and took on the challenge of creating a children's center out of the old St. Mary's Church in Caldwell. A parishioner had bought the old church and two other buildings on teh site and donated them. Stang created a youth program that is thriving beyond her time there.
Back in Cottonwood, Stang says she is enjoying being home but is ready to listen if she is called back out to help others.
By Colette Cowman
ICR editor
Many of Sister Meg Sass's life activities have prepared her for her new position as one of three Parish Life and Faith Formation coordinators for the Diocese of Boise.
First, the Benedictine sister's time as teacher and principal at Sacred Heart School, Boise, and at St. Mary's in Boise and St. Maries and in Lewiston were good preparation.
"! still use my teaching skills," she said. "I think everybody ought to have to teach for two years because it teaches you to look at the big picture and then break it down into tiny steps.
What she hopes to do with the parishes and groups of parishes in the Northern and North Central deaneries where she will serve is "help them dream the big picture and then break it down into tiny steps so they can get there."
Sister Meg, who grew up in Twin Falls from about age 10, the oldest of six children, is the daughter of Peg Sass and the late Deacon Robert Sass. She entered her Benedictine community in 1959 and made her final profession in 1967 She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in secondary education from University of Idaho, Moscow, and a Masters Degree in pastoral studies with a concentration in group dynamics and leadership skills from Loyola University, Chicago. Recently, she completed a certificate program with the Center of Organizational Reform (COR) which is affiliated with Gonzaga University, Spokane.
Her long-time interest in "groups" has also been good preparation for her new position, especially the work she will do with parish and deanery pastoral councils and all kinds of catechetical groups. Ever since her graduate work at Loyola in the 1970s, Sister Meg has liked studying why some groups get things done and others spin their wheels.
Her COR courses helped her understand the factors that affect all groups — businesses, civic organizations, religious communities and parishes, and provided information about how to help those groups be more effective.
"First we realize that groups are made up of good people," said Sister Meg, who comes to the Diocese from a job as coordinator of building and renovation and assistant prioress at Monastery of St. Gertrude, Cottonwood. "The reason the group is not effective is not because there are not good people in it. Some factors that affect what gets done in a group are the rate of change — new people moving in and out, new technology, new directions from leadership (people are often asked to do more with less resources) and the complexity of life."
"Sometimes it is just a group's own internal structure that causes a bottleneck," she said. "Nobody intended it to do that, it just does. So we have systems that we need to look at and find ways to change."
Sister Meg feels the other good preparation for her job was that she lived in the North Central Deanery for almost 40 years "so I do know some of the people in the area and some of the things they struggle with — one of which is being so far from Boise."
"I'm really hoping that I will be a resource for them and a connector to help them share with each other as we go to clusters of parishes," she said. "I'm hoping that one of the practical ways I can facilitate that is to share our people resources."
All of Sister Meg's years of working in adult education and adult retreats have given her a sense that "the people in our parishes are really hungry for a deeper relationship with God that transforms their lives." She hopes to mentor people in the parishes to grow in their confidence to provide opportunities for spiritual growth for their parishes.
Her vision of church is that each person, by his or her baptism and confirmation, is an essential tool in the hands of Christ to transform our world. She wants to help people in the parishes do that.
"The Diocese of Boise needs to be complimented on the reorganization (of the education office)," Sister Meg said. "They are honestly addressing the needs of today's church. The reality is that not every parish can afford lots of pastoral help. We have to share and learn and work together. The reorganization also gives validity to the parish clusters around the state and to the deanery pastoral councils. It is a very good structure."
She sees it as a "blessing" that the Parish Life and Faith Formation Department staff can brainstorm together in the office, that no one member of the staff has be an expert in everything and that the coordinators can then go out and share in the deaneries.
Sister Meg said her work for Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Spokane, Wash., for 13 years in both parish social ministry and senior services and her work as a RENEW coordinator gave her a good sense of working on diocesan-wide programs.
Sr.
Jean Lalande and Sr. Chanelle Schuler celebrated their 50th Jubilee as
Benedictine sisters on Saturday, July 8, 2006, at monastery chapel. Before
nearly two hundred gathered family and friends, the women renewed their monastic
promises of stability, obedience and fidelity to the monastic way of life.
COTTONWOOD—Two
women will commit to Benedictine spiritual life and to the monastic community at
the Monastery of St. Gertrude in Cottonwood, ID, on Tuesday, March 21, 2006. The
public is invited to attend the Rite of Temporary Profession at 2 p.m. in the
monastery’s chapel with a reception following.
Completing three years of study and service, Carla Fontes and Mary Mendez have been committed participants in the monastery’s formation program as affiliates, postulants and novices. Surrounded by friends, family and the sisters of St. Gertrude, Fontes and Mendez will promise “fidelity, stability, obedience and to seek God in the Monastery of St. Gertrude until death” during the profession ceremony.
Novice Carla Fontes, 45, began thinking about monastic life years ago after receiving encouragement from her friends at Sacred Heart parish in Boise.
“One Sunday there were cards in the pews at church asking, ‘Do you know someone who would make a good sister?’ Everyone came up to me and said, ‘I put your name down.’”
But it was really a pilgrimage to Rome and Medjugorje that prompted Fontes to seriously consider life as a sister. “I went into the chapel at Medjugorje, and the nuns were there. A feeling came over me. When you walk through the door, you just know.”
Novice Mary Mendez, 59, of Dinuba, CA, understands exactly what she means.
“It just felt right,” said Mendez, a former hospice nurse and mother of three grown children. “I sent my youngest daughter off to college and thought, ‘What am I going to do with my life now?’ I knew it would involve service.”
The answer came to Mendez during a 17-day volunteer experience with a Benedictine monastery in North Dakota in 1999. “I realized I was a mother of three with a Benedictine heart. My kids weren’t surprised. They said, ‘Gee, Mom, it seems like the poorer you get, the happier you get.’”
Following apprenticeships in many of the monastery’s ministries, both women have settled into areas of specialization. Fontes works in maintenance and manages the herb garden. She is studying to be a master herbalist and helps create healing salves, oils and soaps. Mendez, who creates stained glass art, manages the monastery’s Book and Gift Shop.
The main conference area a the Monastery
Spirit Center includes a beautiful view of the Camas Prairie
Cottonwood monastery provides quiet, quality escape. Not everyone welcomes the holiday season. For some, the family and economic pressures are almost unbearable. By mid-January, with anxiety still simmering, they many think, "Whew! The holidays are over. I barely mad it through this time."
Perhaps these traumatized folks need an opportunity to assess and stabilize in a supportive spiritual environment. In other words, they need a retreat. Maybe they would benefit from a visit to the Spirit Center at the Monastery of St. Gertrude, located near Cottonwood, Idaho, 90 miles south of Moscow.
We can almost hear the negative
response to the idea of hanging out with a bunch of nuns and sleeping in a
painfully poor and cramped conditions seeking vague enlightenment on someone
else's schedule.
Those concerns regarding a retreat at St. Gertrude's are misplaced. First, these are fun nuns, and second, these nuns just opened a beautiful $3 million, 22-room retreat center that looks like a cross between an upscale hotel and a college dorm.
Yes, these are fun nuns. Sure, they have a specific religious belief structure. They are committed members of the Benedictine order. However, based on my own experience interviewing many sister from St Gertrude's for various magazine and newspaper articles over the past two decades, these women do not let their own religion get in the way of their spiritual selves. They really do not care if you share their own flavor of Christianity, or if you even are a Christian believer. They respond to the light of your humanity. They are uniformly gentle, sweet, and caring.
These sisters of St. Gertrude do not invite visitors to their retreat center to gain new believers or to change their guests' religious beliefs. Their goal is to enable the guests to attain their own spiritual goals. Their plan is to melt into the background, unless the visitors wish to join them in prayer, n meals, or in conversation. In sum, they are great hosts.
For several decades, the sisters have sponsored retreats, bringing about 10,000 guests annually to the monastery. They have provided the food and accommodations for family groups, organization meetings, and religious gatherings. They have offered workshops for the public on a wide variety of self-help issues.
And they have provided accommodations for those who want to separate themselves from the rest of the world and spend time in quiet contemplation or by walking in the monastery gardens or forestland. The sisters gladly facilitate private retreats by individual or groups of friends or families who need to relax and renew.
What's new about the retreat options available now at St. Gertrude's is the retreat facility. The sisters spent several years in contemplation, trying to decide what they could do, within the goals of their ministry, to bring income to the monastery to keep the facility open. they decided to expand their retreat program by building the Spirit Center.
The new center provides 22 rooms, each with two single beds, a rocking chair an a private bath. Not lavish, but simple, clean and comfortable. The center also houses a meeting room (complete with all the latest high-tech gizmos for conferences and conventions) and a Kitchen/dining hall.
The new kitchen and dining area is designed for use by large conferences. Individual and small retreat groups still will be expected to share in the meals with the monastic community in the main building or to use the kitchenettes available in the lounges located on each floor of the Spirit Center.
The options for retreat agenda are similar. Guests can use the time for private contemplation or study, walking in the gardens, visiting the well-respected museum (the best collection of local historical items in the region) in the adjacent building, admiring the out-door religious statuary, or hiking through the adjacent forest. Or guests can follow a specified agenda created in collaboration with a spiritual advisor from St. Gertrude's staff.
Visitors have been coming to St. Gertrude's for a century to benefit from the peaceful spirituality there and to enjoy rest-full walks around the grounds.
The Benedictine sisters established the convent and school in 1907. The beautiful chapel building, which was finished in 1924 is still a visitor highlight. And now the Spirit Center has been created to provide visitors with comfortable accommodations to retreat from the rest of the world and assess themselves and their future.
The new “Spirit Center” at the
Monastery of St. Gertrude reflects the community’s commitment to environmental
advocacy as well as its desire to provide a contemplative venue for retreats and
conferences.
Completed in June 2005, the 22,000-square foot center comprises a two-story
conference wing and a three-story sleeping quarters wing south of the existing
1920s era chapel, dining hall and other monastery buildings.
“From our very first meeting, it was clear that the sisters were committed to
stewardship of the land and that commitment would need to be reflected in the
building’s final design,” said Ann Schopf, design principal with Mahlum
Architects.
The Benedictine sisters are responsible for 1,400 acres of land, some of which
is leased as farmland and for grazing. Some is also used for a garden and
orchard, but the largest portion, 1,000 acres, has stands of ponderosa pine, fir
and spruce. The forest, a favorite area for retreatants, was named Idaho’s
Tree Farm of the Year in 2001.
The two wings of the building sit on a slope that looks out over the Camas
Prairie and are angled so that those staying in the sleeping wing have total
privacy and a stunning view. The all-wooden structure has hydronic
radiators for heating, a natural ventilation system rather than air conditioning
for fresh air, and operable windows. Each room has an air stack for
release of convected hot air through the roof.
A glass-walled lobby, offices, a workroom and covered walkway connect the two
wings. The conference wing houses four meeting rooms, kitchen, library,
archives and storage room for the nearby Historical Museum at St. Gertrude, one
of the oldest continuously operated museums in the Pacific Northwest.
The
sleeping wing has 22 bedrooms that can accommodate 44 people.
Retreatants previously stayed in the main monastery building. The
monastery annex will be designated for use only by the sisters, providing them
with privacy they previously lacked.
“We wanted a building that blended into the landscape, that didn’t disrupt the
flow of the land,” said Susan Fore, project manager with Mahlum. “We also wanted
to create a structure that allowed for community space as well as some solitude
since the monastery is committed to providing a welcoming venue for retreats and
conferences.”
The exterior colors of the building – reds and greys – complement the landscape
and relate to the striking red bell towers of the historic monastery. The
interior colors are a mix of soft shades of light blues, yellows and greens.
Cost of construction and owner-supplied furnishings was $3.22 million.
Bouten Construction, of Spokane, was the contracting and construction firm.
Others involved included Coughlin Porter Lundeen, civil and structural engineer,
Keen Engineering Co., mechanical, and Travis, Fitzmaurice & Associates,
electrical.
The Benedictine sisters plan a phase two renovation of the historic monastery
building later in 2006. That project, estimated to cost about $1.95
million, will include replacement of windows, installation of a new elevator,
relocation and reorganization of public spaces and offices within the existing
monastery building, and replacement of the organization’s telephone system and
nurse call system in the infirmary.
Founded in Switzerland, the community has operated in the Pacific Northwest for
123 years, the last 98 in Cottonwood. The Benedictine Sisters follow the
Rule of Benedict.
Mahlum Architects, founded in 1938, is a firm of 100 people with offices in
Seattle and Portland. The firm is committed to creating enduring architecture
for the enrichment of the human experience.
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