Adjusting

Kopper did settle in to the convent, not easily, but she did settle. She was delighted that Sister Agatha turned out to be none other than Aspen from her youth. Aspen did fill her in on what was going on as much as she needed, but also knew quite distinctly that Kopper didn’t want to know everything. One of the things that Kopper didn’t get used to was her new name. She was given the name Mary. She despised Mary. Not the mother of Jesus, she admired her and thought she was a woman very worthy of respect; she despised the name Mary. It sounded so, well she didn’t know exactly, but it seemed that the old “Mary, Mary quite contrary; how does your garden grow; with silver bells and cockle shells; and pretty maids all in a row,” somehow seemed to sum it up for her. Kopper didn’t want to be either the angelic Mary who could bear the burden of a holy child nor did she want to be the contrary Mary. Sisters Agatha and Martha learned to just call her by Kopper when there was nobody else around, but the strict rules of the convent required that Kopper discard her old life and old name.

The convent was named Nimbschen and was of the Benedictine order. What this meant to Kopper was that the winter was cold and she had arrived in the fall. She did see the trees in good color, but the cold soon set in; the only good thing about arriving at this time was they hadn’t traveled during this time. Kopper had forgotten how cold cold is and the blankets at night were not thick, though they were of the best wool that the abbey could afford. This also meant that they went to church seven times a day. Kopper did learn what to do reasonably quickly, but her heart wasn’t in it.

Father Matthew was rewarded for his work and coincidentaly was named bishop of the area which included the convent. His diocese was located at a place called Wurzen, which was about a days walking away. He visited the convent regularly the first few months, and Sister Martha suspected rightly that it was due to Kopper’s presence. Sister Martha took it upon herself to protect Kopper and the convent so on one visit she took the Dear Bishop Steadfast aside and told him that he should correspond with Kopper and not visit Kopper. He realized how close he had come to losing his newly won post and ceased to visit. Instead he wrote long, very appropriate letters of council to Kopper. He tried to be the guiding bishop he was supposed to be and tried valiantly to put aside all of his feelings.

Aspen explained to Kopper what was going on when the first letter arrived and Kopper burst into Aspen’s prayer session with a loud, “What is this?” First Aspen quieted Kopper and reminded her that the sisters were encouraged to be silent most of the time. They would talk about this the next morning while they were doing embroidery since Aspen knew that they were the only two scheduled for that duty the next morning. Then she pulled Kopper down beside her and told her to pray.

One of the ways that the sisters earned food for their table and wood to heat was to do some of the embroidery for the cloaks of church officials. It was tedious work and they had to dye the thread themselves, but it meant that the winters were bearable and that they were even able to purchase enough apples to make sauce and jelly’s that provided some sweetness over those bleak months. Kopper had learnt the skills of embroidery well enough to do many of the dull gray threads while Aspen did the highlighting, so they frequently worked as a team. Kopper had shown almost no ability in copying the sacred texts on paper or illuminating, so she was pretty well banned from the scriptorium. She did find her handwriting interesting enough that she stole some paper to make her journal. Paper was reserved strictly for sacred texts and so Kopper had to find ways to make her own paper quietly while making paper for the sacred texts. Mostly they bought the paper for the copy work that the convent was required to do, but occasionally they needed a high quality paper that they made themselves. It was this paper that Kopper stole in small quantities along with some ink. Since the quantities were small she learned to write very small and in a shorthand of sorts.

Kopper found life as a nun tedious. Surprising since she had spent thirty years doing tedious work, but perhaps she had been expecting to do something exciting on earth and couldn’t adjust to the contemplative life among other people. The most Reverend Matthew Steadfast, Bishop of Wurzen encouraged her to seek God in her life and to use self punishment as a means to purge herself of the evil which distracted her from her sanctified work at the convent. The first several letters that she read of this type made Kopper want to throw her pad across the room. But she didn’t want to break it since she knew she would get no other. Fortunately, the Dear Bishop Steadfast sent along a power allotment with his letters so that Kopper would not have to dip into her meager ration to read the letters and reply.

The first few letters she thought that he was just writing to spite her; to show what a good position he was in and how she, as a woman and because of her history, would never achieve such a position. Then she thought that he was trying to say that she could achieve a better position if she dedicated herself to God. Finally she realized that after a few months he had changed. As Father Matthew he had doubted some of the things he taught Kopper for her trial, but now, Kopper could see he really did believe that he was a spiritual leader of importance, not just here on earth, but also in heaven. He believed he was saving souls and that God had given him this opportunity.

Kopper looked around and her sisters and realized that she could not expect more. She was a woman in a society that had no women leaders. She was a “sinner” in a society that required “saints.” She asked Martha and Aspen how they dealt with this and they both sighed at her questions. Of course they didn’t think that this was really how it was supposed to be. God had created man and woman equals in the Garden of Eden and what made people saints was a relationship with God, not acts of penance. But they couldn’t avoid the fact that they were born at a time when those truths were ignored so they had to live within societal constraints. They encouraged Kopper to find joys in her life that transcended the situation. Aspen was delighted that she could help others sort out their feelings and problems. Martha was happy to protect and lead the women of the convent.

So Kopper tried to make friends and enjoy what she could. She did enjoy looking at the subtle art that her embroidery needle produced, even if she was frequently interrupted by the calls to worship. The company of the other women was enjoyable too. They were all well meaning women who realized that they had to do the best they could with life. Although most of them held a view that the men did know what they were doing and that their duties in this society were just. Between the other women and the letters from the Bishop, Kopper found herself falling into the view that her previous life had been evil and that she did need to redeem her life through penance. Aspen and Martha tried to catch her from falling, but it was hard to do since they rarely had moments alone with Kopper. At first, Kopper did try to catch herself and ask God to keep her from falling when Martha or Aspen pointed out her proximity to the hole. Later, she put off Martha and Aspen with quotes from the Bishop or from texts she had memorized that the other sisters had suggested as good reading.

Kopper knew she was sliding down the slippery slope, but she enjoyed being a part of a community and being accepted. She liked having a friend in a high position which she could ask for advice and then take the advice without having to think deeply about the problem or solution. It was easy. Kopper justified her thoughts and actions by saying that even Martha and Aspen had told her to find something to be happy about. Mentally, she saw a red fish fly past when she used this justification, but she ignored it.

Her time became pleasant as she ignored the problems of the society around her. The nuns concentrated on alleviating pain and suffering, but not on eradicated the causes. Prayer times were cherished times where Kopper told God how much better she was doing and how much bad she had eradicated from her life. When the community gathered for the office, she checked off a mental list on how many things she was doing right and was gratified at how the list was growing.

Meanwhile, Martha and Aspen were bothered by Kopper’s lack of true devotion and her concentration on rules. It seemed to them that Kopper also recognized this, subliminally, since she still would not let Aspen or Martha call her Mary. They tried to talk with her as often as possible, but more and more they found that Kopper preferred to be in the company of many, even if silent, rather than with just one or two people. Aspen guessed, correctly, that this was a compensation of sorts for all those years that Kopper had spent alone.

One afternoon Kopper and Martha were weeding the garden and Martha managed to get the truth out. It was just the two of them in the squash field because there was a high demand for the embroidery recently since a council at Trent was scheduled in a month so all the officials wanted a new cloak or two. The convent could not afford to not make their quota of the desired garments so everyone was working on them whenever they weren’t needed at critical duties. Martha had even gone so far as to require the meals to be absolutely simple to free up some of the part time kitchen help for embroidery. The squash, their main vegetable in the winter months, was in desperate need of weeding or else the squash plants would be stunted in their growth and they could not afford a low yield. Even though they sowed more cloaks they would get no more support from the government; their contract was to supply a quota each year that the government deemed reasonable and in exchange they were provided with some grain in the winter. Martha was never told what the quota was until the end of the year and even though they had never received more orders, they were always told they hadn’t provided all their quota and so they never quite recieved all the grain they needed in the winter. But they couldn’t make cloaks without orders and they couldn’t do without the cloak business; it was a messed up business for them at best. So Martha had chosen the two slowest embroiderers to weed, while the rest stabbed their fingers in haste. Martha and Kopper were more careful than some of those now sewing, but they were not as quick so they weeded.

While they were weeding, they talked as Kopper wanted; Martha knew better than to push Kopper into a corner right now, which would scare her away forever. The last day of weeding Kopper finally talked to Martha openly.

“Martha, am I weak or just stupid?”

Martha looked at Kopper carefully and wished she had sent Aspen out here with Kopper, but Aspen was fast and accurate with her needle so Kopper was stuck with Martha’s slow responses, “What do you mean, Kopper?”

“Well, now that I have spent almost an entire week working and talking with exclusively you I realize how much I have depended on the others. Everyone is quiet when we come in from weeding because they have already talked their allotment for the day and so I haven’t had their verbal support. The Bishop hasn’t written in a while, I suppose because he is getting ready for the council meeting, so I haven’t had his written encouragement. You seem to have your own internal faith that doesn’t need support or speaking. So in the field these last two days I have been wondering to myself if I am weak for not being able to have my own faith that God is controlling everything without the support of the sisters or the bishop. Or am I just stupid for not being able to see God’s working and will without others to point it out to me?”

“Oh Kopper. You know you are neither. Instead it is I who have been weak and stupid. I knew that you needed to have some space to observe this culture before you were immersed in it, but the only time I gave you was our trip from the council to here and you were still tired and awestruck from the trial. I was too weak to order that your life here be in strict silence, for you and those around you, even though that would have given you time to form your own opinions. You were young when you left earth and you didn’t have time to formulate your own ways to deal with society and people so the easiest way you knew to fit in was to do what you did as a child. I failed to make you grow with God as your guide instead of people; in a sense I have been a poor parent.”

Martha hugged Kopper who at first was resistant. Martha had called her a child and told her she was stupid! But then as she thought about the last two years she had been at the convent she realized how much she had wanted to just fit in, regardless of what that cost her. She had behaved like a teenager among peers, something she hadn’t been for thirty years and had never really finished being. She collapsed into sobs of regret about the life she had lost and the things she had missed and the things she now did not understand. It was quite late when they finished the weeding by moonlight and then went to bed without dinner. Martha had wanted to get the field done so badly that they had even skipped several offices. Despite Kopper’s needs, the community still needed to get things done. But after the rush she would consider Kopper more carefully.