Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

  I learned after I had been married that Andree, my wife, had spent some time in retreat at the The Benedictine Abbey of Regina Laudis  in Bethlehem, Connecticut. Her time there had left a deep impression upon her. She spoke often of the nuns she heard rather than saw. Occasionally, one would catch glimpses of them through wooden gratings, but their singing drifted out into the chapel, and from there plunged a dagger of beauty into the heart. The Gregorian chant of the nuns is a prayer sung. Plainsong, the official music of the Catholic Church, predates both harmony and polyphony. Andree, I should mention, was a singer, and music for her even now sets her soul aflame. And so, here was this cleansing wave of beauty washing over her, the poetry of the texts in Latin informed with the inexhaustible and numinous mysteries of Christ’s birth, passion, death and resurrection. Later, we visited The Abbey of Regina Laudis together. No doubt Mother Delores Hart was...

Delores Hart, now a cloistered nun at the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Connecticut, moved from Hollywood to the Abbey in 1963. Although she played in movies with famous Hollywood stars of her day -- perhaps most notably, Elvis Presley -- she described her time in Hollywood in the short clip below as being "wounded with life." My wife Andrée spent some time at the Abbey around the time when I first met her, and we have visited it several times since. It is not only a refuge from a wounded and wounding world but a reservoir of religious and spiritual energy. This, no doubt, was part of the lure that drew Mother Delores away from the hurly burly of Hollywood towards the very heart of the Christian faith. It has made her wise, as is evident from the interview above. The story here in The Day of New London   is well worth reading. “Bethlehem (AP) — In the little town of Bethlehem, a cloistered nun whose luminous blue eyes entranced Elvis Presley in his firs...