Call the Carmelites

Nonfiction by Jane V. Blunschi

 

I started calling the Carmelite monastery with prayer requests when I was twenty-four years old. I knew about the nuns because the woman I was involved with advised me to call them when I was fearful, and I was fearful most of the time. This fear came out as me hustling for love by losing a lot of weight on diet pills and trying to sleep with any butch lesbian who happened to glance my way, which was something I actually became pretty good at. I could not control my emotions at all, and I remember picking fights and crying almost every day because I could not get the filled-up feeling that came from taking downers or diet pills to last, and I was exhausted from my constant hunt for more drugs, more love.

Besides suggesting that I call the Carmelites, my girlfriend would do other things to try and calm me down, like blessing me by making the sign of the cross on my forehead, which I loved and began to ask her to do almost every day. It gave me serenity for a few minutes. I didn’t know that a regular person could give another person a blessing. I thought that only a priest or a nun could do that.

I still call the Carmelites sometimes, or I call that woman I lived with, who is now my good friend, and ask her to call them for me. Sometimes she asks me to call them with a prayer request for her.

Here’s what I do: dial the number, and a woman who works in the office, a regular person, not a nun, answers the phone. I know this because I used to deliver the requests in person when I lived near the convent in south Louisiana. I tell her that I want to make a prayer request, and then say what it is. She writes this request down and delivers it to the sisters somehow. I know that one or two of them is allowed to talk to people outside the convent, but most of the nuns are cloistered and discalced, which means that they only wear sandals or no shoes at all. After I say my request, the lady on the phone will say something like, God bless you, honey, and I say, okay, bye, or, thanks, or, yeah, you, too, and hang up feeling awkward because I don’t know exactly how to answer when someone says God bless you in any context besides sneezing in public.

Here is a list of reasons I have called the Carmelites:

I needed a job.

I was sick. Someone I loved was sick.

I was on drugs and I wanted to stop doing drugs (booze included).

Somebody was dying. Somebody had died.

My  relationship with someone was difficult/a failure.

I hated my job.

Someone was bothering me.

Someone left me. I wanted to leave someone.

I missed God.

I couldn’t lose weight.

I wanted a promotion.

My car was broken.

I needed to sell my house.

I needed a place to live.

Asking the nuns for help with my worries has always felt off, but I believe. All of those situations I was so desperate to escape did release me, even the search for more drugs, more love. I wonder if the sisters ever imagine what it feels like to have some of my dumb, babyish “problems” while they are at work, praying for me. Sometimes I make myself imagine meditating this way for years on end, on my knees in a stiff brown polyester robe and veil, the hot Louisiana sunlight filtering through stained glass windows depicting the gospels: Matthew, a man; Mark, a lion; Luke, an ox; John, an eagle. I make myself imagine praying for another person to find spiritual relief for five minutes, even.

 

 

Jane V. Blunschi holds an MFA in Fiction Writing from the University of Arkansas. Her collection of stories, Understand Me, Sugar, was published in 2017 by Yellow Flag Press, and her work has appeared in Cactus Heart Literary Review, Catahoula Zine, Paper Darts, SmokeLong Quarterly, and SunStar Review. Originally from Lafayette, Louisiana, Jane lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas.