Stone Yard Devotional

The protagonist wakes early and attends Lauds. It lasts for a half hour, and the protagonist feels an overpowering emotional upheaval as she listens to the music. Lunch is take-away style, and dinner is whatever can be found in the cabin. As the protagonist looks through her cabinets, she begins to cry over the individually packaged foods she sees, finding them lonely.

At Vespers, the sisters, “pray for a marriage that is breaking down,” and “for all those who will die tonight” (19). The protagonist thinks of Alex and then her parents. When she learned that her mother’s sickness was incurable, the protagonist went to her doctor and broke down. Her doctor allowed the protagonist to discuss her pain and suggested a bereavement counselor. The protagonist refused the counselor but cherished the doctor’s advice about tragedy.

On the third day, the protagonist begins to worry about how relaxed and comfortable she feels doing nothing. She attends Lectio Divina with Sister Bonaventure to have something to do, and there she finds herself among other guests. There are some women from Melbourne and a man named Richard, whom the protagonist finds familiar.

In Lectio Divina, the group reads a paragraph of scripture aloud and silently reflects on it before discussing what they take from it. Sister Bonaventure reminds them that if they do not understand a passage, they can hand it over to God. The protagonist silently scoffs, not believing in the exercise. Later, in her cabin, the protagonist realizes that the man is Richard Gittens, a high school classmate.

As she adjusts to the abbey, the protagonist thinks of how she failed with her work at the Threatened Species Rescue Centre. Every action she took, in the context of technological modernity, only furthered the destruction of habitats and endangered animals. Now, isolated at the abbey, she feels she cannot do any harm.

The protagonist wakes early and attends the morning service. She follows the directions of the sisters and finds herself taking communion for the first time since childhood. After this, she shakes hands with the nuns around her during the sign of peace.

The protagonist is moved to tears at this unearned kindness, and she remembers how her mother would visit a blind woman named Denise. Denise lived in a caravan outside of town, and the protagonist joined her mother for visits. People always complimented the protagonist’s mother for her kindness to Denise, though some wondered why she did it. The protagonist believes that no one simply trusts kindness.

At Vespers later that day, the protagonist is moved by the singing and feels love when an elderly nun smiles at her. Back at her cabin, the protagonist decides to leave and begins packing.

Before leaving, the protagonist watches a lyrebird. It does not notice her.

Years later, the protagonist walks across a lawn through frost, leaving prints in her wake, reveling in the sound of the ice breaking. After many stays at the abbey over the years, the protagonist has finally decided to join it, though not as a sister. On the protagonist’s final drive to the abbey, she stopped at her parents’ graves to leave a pot with succulents, hoping they would spread.

When the protagonist looks in on the chickens one morning, she finds that mice are eating the poultry feed and that a chick has died from the frost. She takes the tiny corpse and buries it. As she pushes the dirt over it, the protagonist thinks of the many “illegitimate” babies that sisters of the Catholic church buried over the years.

The silence of the abbey is what draws the protagonist in. She loves that while she is in church, she can only see the outside through the door, as the stained glass windows are too distorted to see through. She feels as though she can rest in their colorful light. The abbey struggles financially, and the protagonist suggests they begin buying their food in bulk to save money.

She is assigned responsibility and soon finds herself tending a garden and cooking meals. At first, others do not like the menu changes, but the protagonist wins them over with fewer spices and more potatoes. She begs Sister Simone not to sell their cattle again for money, still haunted by the lamentations of the separated calves and mothers. It reminds her of a schoolmate of hers who lost his mother suddenly, as well as of losing her own father.

The protagonist reads of a Holocaust survivor in a magazine who says, “What is most striking to me today about the diary I kept seventy-five years ago is what I left out” (49). The protagonist knows no one will read what she writes, but believes she also leaves parts out.

Simone comes to the vegetable garden while the protagonist works with Sister Bonaventure. Simone tells Bonaventure that “[t]hey’ve found her,” and the two leave, crying (51). The protagonist returns to her work in the garden and reflects on how embarrassed she was of her mother’s compost pile, as it was considered eccentric at the time to keep rotting food in the yard.

That night, Simone and Bonaventure explain that Jennifer Tully, who joined the abbey in 1983 alongside Bonaventure, left six years later for Bangkok. Sister Jenny felt a calling to attend to the poor and established a shelter for battered women despite massive pushback. An American Catholic priest, David Strang, sometimes visited the shelter. One day, Strang’s housekeeper told Sister Jenny that he had assaulted her. When Sister Jenny confronted the priest, he dragged her away. David Strang was found hanged days later, and Jenny was never seen again.

Presumed dead, Jenny’s remains were recently uncovered after heavy rains uprooted a tree in Strang’s old neighborhood. After recovering bones, jewelry, and DNA, the remains were confirmed to be those of Sister Jenny, and they are now en route to the abbey. Someone asks if burying someone on the grounds is allowed. Everyone wonders how Jenny’s remains will make it through the lockdowns and travel restrictions in place because of COVID-19.

The protagonist receives a postcard from an old colleague, Deb, to whom she has not spoken since moving to the abbey four years ago. The protagonist reflects that her tendency to isolate herself is a trait she shares with her mother, who isolated herself in her garden to be alone and at peace. When the protagonist finally decided to stay at the abbey, she told no one. This hurt her friends and Alex. Deb and others were angry that she had abandoned them and their work. The protagonist does not know how to explain to them that she never meant to stay.

When the protagonist tells others that she saw a mouse in the laundry and that it, “frightened the bejesus out of me” (61), Sister Dolores looks on disapprovingly. This annoys the protagonist at first, but when remembers how much the young woman misses her family, she feels guilty. While the protagonist brings a sheet down off a line, she sees a pelican glide down to the dam. Sister Carmel bends down to pick up dried sheets, and the gracefulness of her movements reminds the protagonist of the pelican.