Sinsinawa
Spectrum
A Congregation News Magazine
BINGO!
by Anne Marie Mongoven, OP
Sr. Anne Marie Mongoven, OP
Last October as I went to the Mound for medical rehabilitation, I wondered what it would be like to live in such a large community. Would I be able to mix with over 150 other Sisters? Would I be able or want to participate fully in community life? I have led a sedentary life. How would I ever be able to do “all that walking?” Could I ever feel at home at the Mound?
It was at a Bingo game that I knew I was really at home. Not having played Bingo in about 50 years, I was a bit rusty about the latest intricacies of the game. Whatever number the leader called I filled in the spaces whether they were part of the game-design or not. After a few such calls, Theresa Palmisano [OP] who was at the table with Helen Daily [OP] and me, looked at me with an expression of exasperation and said, “You may know how to write, but YOU CERTAINLY DO NOT KNOW HOW TO PLAY BINGO!” It was then that I remembered the words of the poet, Robert Frost, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in.”1
I was now at home, welcomed as family by Theresa.
Technically the Mound could be described as a home for adults, mature women who are committed to the Gospel, but it is much more than that.
It is a home where questions are shared, books are read, where we gather for good conversation and common study. Recently we enjoyed reflection on poetry and poets under the leadership of Cecilia Carey [OP]. Cecilia arranged for Sisters from the missions to come and share their own poetry or the works of their favorite poets with us.
The Mound is a house of prayer, liturgical prayer, where each morning and evening we gather to sing our praise and love. On the mission where I lived with one other Sister, it did not seem realistic to chant Lauds or Vespers. At the Mound we have all the time in the world and all the voices we need to chant, and so in both body and spirit we lift up our hearts in prayer, both at the Eucharist and at the liturgy of the hours.
The Mound is a place where you answer the phone and hear the voice of a friend whom you have not talked to in months, like Marie Janet [Meis, OP], who called me from the Villa. When I asked how she was, Marie Janet replied, “I have never been happier in my whole life. I miss Marie William [Cahill, OP (1911–2009)] a lot, but I am happier than I have ever been.”
While living at Sinsinawa I have discovered that before I came here, I knew very little about the nature of this Mound community. I have found a loving community full of life and holiness. Our Sisters live with a serenity deepened by their generous care for and love of one another. It is a privilege to live in this community. It brings forth the best in each one of us.
One day I met Pat Powers [OP] in the hallway and she asked, “Are you happy here?” I replied, “Yes, I am, very happy.” She then said, in a soft voice, “It is a foretaste of heaven, isn’t it.” “Yes,” I said, “It is a foretaste of heaven.” That is, I think, as good as it can get.
1 Edward Connery Latherm (ed.) “The Death of the Hired Man,” in The Poetry of Robert Frost, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975, 34–40.