Eating, Talking and Sleeping With the Sisters

William Moyers
Fri, 12 Sep 2014 21:00:00 -0700
Lifestyle

For the first time in my life, I slept with a bunch of Dominican sisters the other night. The next morning, there were no regrets.

I was their guest at the Motherhouse on the campus of St. Catharine College in central Kentucky. It's a small campus of about 850 students in what's known as "Kentucky's Holy Land" for the Catholic immigrants who settled in the region in the early 1800s and never left. Later on, the area became known for tobacco fields and whiskey distilleries. Somehow faithful reverence and the products of vice have found room to coexist. Or maybe they do precisely for that reason. After all, faith is bolstered by a "higher power."

I was invited to bring my story of addiction and redemption to the college students, the sisters and their larger community. My book "Broken" was selected as the required reading for the incoming freshman class, and students wrote personal essays reflecting on what my story meant to them. In small group discussions and one-on-one conversations, what I quickly realized is that most of them had never been asked or given the opportunity to share the swirling emotions of addiction's impact on their own lives until now. And out they poured.
Updated: Sat Sep 13, 2014

For the first time in my life, I slept with a bunch of Dominican sisters the other night. The next morning, there were no regrets.

I was their guest at the Motherhouse on the campus of St. Catharine College in central Kentucky. It's a small campus of about 850 students in what's known as "Kentucky's Holy Land" for the Catholic immigrants who settled in the region in the early 1800s and never left. Later on, the area became known for tobacco fields and whiskey distilleries. Somehow faithful reverence and the products of vice have found room to coexist. Or maybe they do precisely for that reason. After all, faith is bolstered by a "higher power."

I was invited to bring my story of addiction and redemption to the college students, the sisters and their larger community. My book "Broken" was selected as the required reading for the incoming freshman class, and students wrote personal essays reflecting on what my story meant to them. In small group discussions and one-on-one conversations, what I quickly realized is that most of them had never been asked or given the opportunity to share the swirling emotions of addiction's impact on their own lives until now. And out they poured.

But it wasn't just the students. In a community forum the night I arrived, a diminutive nun wearing a black habit stood up in front of several hundred people and shared her plea. Later, she followed up with this email to me:

"My great-niece has been addicted to God knows what for at least four years. She has a son whose dad was deported after spending four years in prison in Texas for drugs. My worry is that my niece will be unable to pay for rehab. She can only afford to go to a clinic that keeps her on methadone. What can I do?"

She added: "P.S. — My prayers are constant for all people addicted to anything."

I spent all of 21 hours on the St. Catharine campus. In that short frame of time, I was asked repeatedly for help, heard strangers tell me intimately how addiction had hurt their families, was queried about my own faith journey and even was challenged (respectfully) by a few people who aren't sure addiction is anything more than sin. Mine was a grueling schedule the ambitious planners had put together for my visit. On the flight home, I was exhausted. But I didn't nap, because I could not stop asking myself why, in my 18 years of carrying the message on the road for my employer, I haven't found more of the satisfaction that was mine at St. Catharine College.

Maybe it was the enthusiastic interest of the students, the welcoming embrace of the college administration and faculty, and my special friend and fellow traveler there, Sister Mary Louise. I know a bonus was the simple, nurturing menu of grilled cheese and tomato soup served at dinner with the sisters in their dining hall. It was an affirming surprise when the student leader introduced me by opening with the universal Serenity Prayer and that my talk that followed was bathed in sunlight flooding through the stained glass in the great chapel. And when it was time to leave, I lingered a few minutes at the gate of the cemetery of simple crosses marking the final resting spots of generations of Dominicans who died living their commitment, and my faith was bolstered. Also, there's no doubt that sleeping with the sisters at their big stone house was the icing on the cake. I can't wait to use it as an opening joke in my next speech.

But perhaps more than anything, what struck me is that in this confluence of higher education and faith deeply grounded, aging sisters and fresh-faced students, community leaders and a few solitary still-suffering souls who showed up looking for something, I was included — in a dialogue that's never easy until we have it, and then we discover we aren't alone. Sure, I've had plenty of opportunities to be among the masses these past 18 years, talking and listening and sharing in all sorts of venues. Never quite like this one, though. I'm already hungry to eat grilled cheese sandwiches and sleep with the sisters again. (With my own room again, of course.)