Odell Public Library, 307 S. Madison Street, Morrison, IL, has hosted a well-attended, winter life-long, learning series, “Calming Your Mind.” Sessions are sponsored by the library and Odell Public Library Friends. On Tuesday, March 15, 2016, a new sponsor was accessed–the Illinois Humanities Council.
The IHC is an independent, nonprofit affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, dedicated to fostering a culture in which the humanities are a vital part of the lives of individuals and communities. The IHC creates programs and funds organizations that promote greater understanding of, appreciation for, and involvement in the humanities by all Illinoisans, regardless of their economic resources, cultural background, or geographic location. The IHC is supported by State, Federal, and private funds.
For the latest “Calming Your Mind” session, the Program Room was transformed into a sanctuary, complete with hushed, dulcet female voices chanting in Latin. Instead of chairs at tables, eight black chairs per “pew” filled the room and were split by a center aisle. One processed into the room and faced the screen and podium, where a rare individual waited to speak.
At 6:30 p.m. Abbie Reese, before the screen, presented “Monastic Silence and a Visual Dialogue: Life among the Poor Clare Colettine Nuns.”
Members of an exceptionally strict religious community, Poor Clare Colettine nuns make vows of poverty, chastity, obedience, and enclosure.
Reese is a writer and documentary filmmaker whose work draws upon oral history and ethnographic methods. She has conducted years of research with a community of 20 Poor Clare Colettine nuns in Rockford, IL. Her work resulted in a book featuring 13 of them, Dedicated to God: An Oral History of Cloistered Nuns (Oxford University Press, 2014.) A copy is available at the Odell Public Library.
Reese’s collaborative film-in-progress, “Chosen,” will tell the story of a 27-year-old former blogger and painter, who is now a cloistered contemplative nun-in-training. Shown on the screen, this young woman is a member of the Corpus Christi Monastery in Rockford.
The self-selected subculture of cloistered contemplative nuns is facing the possibility of extinction. Through photographs, audio, and video, Reese shared aspects of the hidden monastic life, the nuns’ motivations, and their internal journeys. Individual nuns, such as “Sister Nicolette,” were noted; she considered becoming a pilot or airline attendant. “Claustrophobic in an elevator” and proficient in Latin, Sister Nicolette worried how she would adapt when she first felt called, because “cloister” shares the same root as “claustrophobia.”
Laura Demanski, editor of the University of Chicago magazine, wrote this about the program: “Reese is an exceptionally thoughtful narrator of a compelling story: how she gained the trust of the sisters of the Poor Clare Colettine order and what she learned over the eight years she talked to them and observed their everyday routines. …Photographs from the monastery are striking…most absorbing…is the audio…from her interviews….talking about their lives before they were called—which they mostly describe as ordinary—these women are at once riveting and disarming. They found an ideal historian in Reese, without whose work, their experience would have remained hidden.”
Reese, who grew up in Lanark, IL, is an independent scholar and interdisciplinary artist. She received an MFA in visual arts from the University of Chicago and has been awarded numerous fellowships, scholarships, and residencies. She has worked as a newspaper reporter, a newspaper editor, and as a media handler for the BBC in Sierra Leone. She has traveled to approximately 40 countries in Europe, Asia, and Africa. Her projects include Faces of West Africa, a traveling photographic exhibition, Untold Stories: Freeport’s African American History, an oral history and traveling gallery exhibition; Erased from the Landscape: The Hidden Lives of Cloistered Nuns, another traveling exhibition.