Brenham - I drove up to the Monastery of St. Clare on a beautiful morning. I was early so I parked outside the entrance for a while, not wanting to be early and interrupt the sisters in their prayer. A few minutes before my appointment, I began to drive slowly up the little road to the monastery. A field full of their famous miniature horses grazed to my left, dogs frolicked and lazed around the grounds, but nowhere did I see a human being.

I passed a small house, a large barn and some other outbuildings and drove right up to the monastery itself...still no one. It was perfectly quiet. Only the rejoicing birds disturbed the silence. I waited in the car until it was time, then walked quietly towards the building, looking for some sign of an entrance. No sign. No entrance. No people. I started to worry.

The truth is, I was a little nervous about the interview. I was an acolyte when I was a kid and though I'm not Catholic, my experience carrying a cross had instilled in me a respect for the wrath of God that had not dissipated with age. I kept thinking about the consequences should the big guy upstairs decide I had done a shoddy job of interviewing one of his special friends. Now, I hadn't even started and I was already messing up. I called the office in a panic and asked my wife to call the monastery. A few minutes later Sister Angela came out to get me. She didn't look scary. She was barefoot and had a nice smile. I decided that maybe things were going to work out.

The Monastery of St. Clare has an interesting history. Most of it is known through the exploits of the previous Abbess, Sister Bernadette, who was immortalized by the book, The Cowboy Nun. (Mary Bernadette Muller and Elizabeth Harper Neeld, Centerpoint Press, Houston, 1991)

Sister Bernadette was in a New Orleans monastery in 1960 when a crisis came to the "Poor Clares"

In Cuba, Fidel Castro decided he wanted the Poor Clare Monastery in Havana for a school. The soldiers moved in and the sisters moved out. Sister Bernadette felt that she was called by God to help the Cuban Sisters, none of whom could speak English, to create a new life in Corpus Christi, Texas.

For years, Sister Bernadette was the Abbess of the Monastery in Corpus. It was through her leadership that the Monastery became involved in breeding animals of all sorts, including miniature horses.

Later, when the Navy decided to reactivate an air base next to the Monastery, the sisters were forced to sell and seek a new home. In 1985 they found it on a hill not far from Brenham, Texas. Sister Angela, the current Abbess, who was a young volunteer for many years in Corpus Christi before becoming a contemplative, helped set up the new monastery in Brenham. In 1992, Sister Bernadette died suddenly and Sister Angela assumed the role she holds today.

Tell me what your role is here at the monastery.

My basic role in the monastery at this point in my life, is that of Abbess. Just making sure that everyone's taken care of, especially on a spiritual level. On a more practical level, I might be doing anything from cleaning out stalls, to working in the gift shop.

What are your primary responsibilities?

As an individual, I have a responsibility to prayers; both community prayers and private prayers, so that takes on precedence over everything.

We pray together about seven times a day. We have Mass together every morning, then we each have our time of private adoration in chapel. We each have our times of spiritual reading and meditation. That takes precedence over everything. A close second to that would be... my role as Abbess. I'm responsible for the Sisters, both their physical and spiritual well being.

Everyone knows that this monastery is a place that raises miniature horses. What is the real primary function of the monastery?

We're contemplatives. We're here to pray. That is our primary function.

That's the whole purpose of the monastic life. Raising miniature horses, making the ceramics...those things can, and do, change over the years. Because...we have to support ourselves. We don't get paid for living here and praying. Besides being contemplatives, We're also cloistered, which means we don't go out and get jobs. We...do whatever work we can do here to support ourselves, here in the monastery, on the grounds.

What our group here has always liked is animals and the outdoors, and we've always done something along this line. Not only is it something that we enjoy and are good at, we also feel it's very Franciscan. We're getting close to the Earth, and enjoying creation. God has given us the plants and the trees and the horses for our pleasure, as well as our health.

When this group first started out, they were actually raising birds for sale. We raised parrots, parakeets, cockatiels, love birds, finches, I mean, you name it. If it had wings and flew, we raised it, and we We're shipping to pet stores all over the country. At some point, one of our neighbors introduced us to Persian and Himalayan cats. So we got a few, and were raising cats on the side. At the time, we also had our milk cows and chickens.

We gradually started raising...cats, and we ended up completely selling out of the birds. We had probably about a hundred breeders of the cats. That business was so successful ...one of the pet stores that we sold to in Florida came up, looked over our cattery, and offered to buy it out. So, we sold out that business.

Right about that time, Sister Bernadette, who was the Abbess of the monastery at that time, saw an ad for miniature horses, and her first thought was she'd get one for a pet. She just thought it was neat. We'd never heard of miniature horses. So she called these people in Ohio that had placed an ad, and talked to them for quite awhile about them. At the end of the conversation, she found out that they (the horses) were costing around $3,000, so she was very apologetic for taking up their time. That's a little bit expensive for a pet.

But as she hung up, you could see the wheels turning. "Why have we been raising birds and cats if you can get $3,000 for a horse?" You'd have to know Sister Bernadette; she had a lot of gall. She called the lady back and said, "I'm sorry. I still can't afford $3,000 for a horse, but if you'd like to donate one, maybe you could take a tax write-off, or something." And surprisingly, they said "Yes, we'd be glad to do that."

And, so...we decided to go into it as a business. We took out another loan and Sister Bernadette flew up to this place in Ohio, and picked out eighteen more of their show string as our foundation herd. And we've been raising horses ever since.

I went out yesterday morning, and there was a new foal there, and... just seeing new life... there's an interaction. They're an animal, and you can really interact with them and get to know them. It doesn't take away from our prayer...It just kind of flows, from one to the other...we go outside and we are carrying the spirit of prayer with us. We're working with the horses in that light, and it just kind of becomes praise and joy and thanksgiving to the Creator..

Your order is very old. Clare of Assisi founded the Poor Clares of St. Francis back in the early 1200's. Tell me something about the history of your order.

St. Francis... was so wrapped up in God, that he saw all creation as being something that God had given to us, and these (animals) are our brothers, and sisters on this earth. He wrote this gorgeous canticle of the creatures in which he praises God for brother sun and sister moon, and brother fire, and mother earth, and the water, and just all the living creatures, because he saw them all from the hand of God. And so, our spirituality is very much wrapped up in this type of feeling.

St. Clare was a contemporary of St. Francis. She heard him preaching, and she was from a very rich family. She ran off in the middle of the night to join his order. She wanted to live a life of poverty....in the sense of giving up everything to find God.

It's easy to give up material things. I mean, when we come to the monastery, we leave everything behind. That's easy, but then you find that on a deeper level, you have to give up yourself. Living in a community with the same people, twenty-four hours a day, every day. You might have thought you were a very patient person, and all of a sudden, you find out you're not. To live together, in charity and mutual love, it's... a real giving up of yourself, and that's where our greatest poverty is. It's trying to give up ourselves, in order to let God fill us.

The message that Francis and Clare sent to the world...it has endured for about 800 years now.

I had the chance about 8 years ago, to spend a month in Assisi, and the surrounding places where Francis and Clare had lived, and their presence in Assisi is still very much alive. Their spirit, it's almost tangible there.

Although We're connected with monasteries around the world, and nobody really knows how many there are. We meet other Franciscans, and we are instantly brothers and sisters.

You live the life according to who you are, and where you are and the circumstances, and obviously the monasteries in the United States are very different from the ones in Africa or New Zealand.

Yet, when you go to another monastery, there are certain elements that are just the same, there are traditions that have been passed down from one generation to the next..going back to St. Clare's time...from one generation of sisters to the next, from one monastery to one that they founded.

St. Francis is always associated with the love of nature, and joyous religious fervor. It seems appropriate that you support yourselves by raising animals. For you, personally, how is your faith expressed or empowered by your experience with living things?

I guess for myself, when I read scriptures, and especially... Genesis, and meditate on God and His works... It's just seeing how God has planned everything to work together...just seeing how He's pulled all the details together that make life possible on this planet. He didn't just make a functional planet, he made it for us to delight in. He made things that...are just for our pleasure. Just the beauty of the sunrise and the sunsets, and the flowers, and our rapport with the creatures; all that didn't have to be there.

I see God as a loving father. I think a father, or any parent delights in seeing their children happy. They don't just give them food, clothing and shelter and ignore them.

I think most parents like to give their kids things just for the sake of seeing them happy. This toy or that baseball bat, or doing something with them, it just adds to your own delight when you can make somebody else happy. Especially if you're intimately linked with that person. I think that's how God's relationship with us is. I think He goes out of His way to do things just to give us pleasure.

To me, it feels like part of my job is to notice those things, and say, "Hey, thanks, God. This is so neat, and you did it just for us or just for me." To me, that's really the main part of my life, is discovering all these things that God has done for us, and I think it makes Him happy when we notice and take pleasure in them and enjoy them.

I think we have a responsibility, not only to live, but to take care of the world that God has given us.

We see God as the owner of everything. People can amass a small fortune, but they can't take it with them. It's that simple.

I just think that He's given us responsibility, and He's made it not only a responsibility, but a pleasure.

We've got tiny baby chicks, some bunnies, and the donkey, and a deer, and an emu. I could spend all day just watching them as I go about feeding and giving them water and hay and things like that...to just sit there and enjoy them. I think how they are giving glory to God just by being themselves.

It's reflection on how so many times we are not ourselves. We put on masks, and we put on different clothes to meet different people. We sometimes build an image out there. Getting back to what God created us to be... you have to strip all that off and get down to the bare bones...to really be yourself. And I think just watching the animals being themselves helps. It's a reminder and a reflection and a help for me to try to learn how to be who I am..the person that God created.

Tell me about the miniature horse operation.

We've been raising horses since 1981, that's about 16 years now. And when we first got into the business it was really kind of new. The miniature horse was only recognized as a breed back in 1978. Up until that time, it was like any horse that was under 34 inches was a miniature horse. They were bred down from larger horses.

People had read about the prehistoric horses being...12 inches high. Over the years they evolved into the large creature we know as the horse. They were bred to be... larger for things like carrying knights with their heavy armor into war, for plowing fields... you needed big strong horses for things like that.

Taking the smallest horses of different breeds... the breed wasn't important, after generations and generations of selective breeding, they got the horses down to around 34 inches. When we first started raising the horses, most of them were around 34 inches and there were quite a few throwbacks.

Every few years, the average size jumps down an inch. As I said, when we first started raising, most of the horses were around 34 inches, which was the height limit. They had just been recognized as an official breed in '78. I mean, if you had a horse that was 30 inches, it was a gold mine at the time, but I've seen horses now, we've had a few that matured at 26 inches. I've heard of one that matured at 24 inches.

We held a few shows at our monastery, but, in more recent years, we've never really had to do advertising because of just getting so much media attention. We've had everybody from National Geographic to Dan Rather to PM Magazine. We lost track a long time ago. Just a few months ago, we had a group from Italy coming over and doing a story on us...before that, it was an Australian group, which I think is still airing on the Discovery Channel.

Because of that, I guess just the novelty of nuns raising miniature horses, which are, in themselves, kind of a novelty, we never really had to advertise.

The local Chamber of Commerce started bringing tour busses out. And, all of a sudden, we were just overwhelmed. We've had as many as a dozen Greyhound buses out there. It's kind of funny... because they'll come up and say, "Oh, itís so peaceful out here. It's so quiet out here," and we think, "Yeah, and you should see it when all of you people go home."

In Round Top, we have 81 people in town. When we have these antique events where 50,000 come, we always think, "Thank you for coming, now go back home."

We...decided it must be God's hand...because a lot of people... don't know what the monastic life is about, I mean, we've had workmen come up here in fear and trembling. Somebody set out to work on the phones or the electricity, or whatever and they're terrified when they come, because they don't know what to expect.

We realized that all these people coming out to see the horses, they would never come out just to see the monastery.

But, they come out to see the horses, and we meet them on a very non-threatening level. We're showing them the horses, telling them about them, and you notice that, somewhere during all this... they realize they've been talking to a human being who has a sense of humor, and is very normal and natural, and then they get curious about us, and they start asking us about our life, what We're doing here...what we believe in.

I want to talk about the contemplative life. Many people do not understand why a person would choose such a life. Why did you and the others in your order choose to live in a monastery and pursue this goal?

I don't think any one of us strictly chose the life. You really, I think, have to be called by God to do this. If you're called, it's a very easy, enjoyable life, although it does have its difficulties, as I think any life does. But if you're not chosen, if you're not called, I don't think you would ever make it. So, basically, it's a response to God's call. He's given... everybody a vocation. He has called everybody to different lives. He may call you to be a husband, a wife, a parent, an accountant, whatever. Whatever He calls you to, He expects you to use His gifts. I think there are certain ones of us that He has chosen for Himself.

It's like...God is worthy of praise and undivided attention, and how often does He get that? People are busy with their jobs, and their families and their lives. So, to us, it only makes sense that He would choose certain people...that would be free just to focus on Him...giving Him praise and glory. I think He put that

into our hearts.

We were all basically people that wanted to do God's will and were looking for it.

You look at the community and you realize that He called you to live with a certain group of people that can rub off the edges.

Like sanding a board and getting the rough edges off, when you finish it's beautiful. It's very abrasive, but the end product is beautiful.

What events in you life do you feel led you into the convent?

I grew up as a Baptist, but I had always, since I can remember, wanted to do God's will, and so, my goal in life was to find that. However, as a teenager, through various circumstances, I ended up working at the monastery after school and on weekends. I guess it took me years, but I could just see how beautiful the life was, how peaceful it was. I just loved being there, and I think that's an attraction that God had put into my heart.

The sisters were my best friends. I decided that, if I wanted to really and truly be a friend to them, I had better find out what it was that they believed in, and live so wholeheartedly. So I started reading Catechisms, and books on the Church, and... it lead to me becoming a Catholic and entering when I was 19.

So, it was always there. You just found then it kind of took you a while to kind of make it formal.

Yes, I was always searching to do God's will, and it was a while before I recognized it. But He lead me there in His own good time, and in His own mysterious way.

People have long sought peace in this sort of setting. In fact not just in Christianity, but almost all of the religions, or traditional religions, have had a long tradition of monastic life. Why do you think that's so?

Well I think, God...created us for His children. He's put in our hearts, a hunger for Him. And I think, everybody has that hunger. A lot of people don't recognize it for what it is.

They fill it up by trying to accumulate riches, or material goods, or power, or whatever. A lot of people look in the wrong places, trying to fulfill that hunger, and it never satisfies them. So, that's why we take three vows: poverty, chastity, and obedience, because those are the three areas where most people go astray in trying to fill that hunger. So we give those three things up in order to focus... our attention where the hunger really is. So, I think it boils down to the ones of us that recognize it's a hunger for God, and a longing to be reunited with God, would be the ones more likely to search out a monastic life. Although I'm sure God doesn't want everybody to be a monastic or the world wouldn't go on..

I think that's why monastic life has gone on across religions, because God is God and different religions call Him different things, or believe different things. I think we still all have the same God, and He has put that hunger and thirst in us.

What are the rewards that you personally find in this monastic life?

On a human level... a very deep personal satisfaction and fulfillment. You can spend your life searching, and being depressed, and just looking in...every nook and cranny and not finding what you're hungering for, deep down.

(At the monastery) you're fulfilling what you've been created for. That's the ultimate satisfaction that you can have.

Do you thing God has lost relevance in the modern world?

I don't think He's lost relevance, I think He's more relevant than ever. I think some people just don't understand that. I don't think that has anything to do with God. I think it has a lot to do with modern society and modernism. The fact that people are making gods of other things, and losing the focus on the true God.

You can make little idols of yourself, or your money, or your work, or whatever, and that becomes your god. I think things go in cycles, and I think what We're living in now, is a down cycle, but when you hit bottom, that's when people start really seeking God most. I think before long, we will see people turning to God, like they never have before, recognizing that He's the only one that can get us out of this mess. It always happens, and I think it will again.

What does a relationship with God offer a human being?

The ultimate love and companionship. God created us with human needs and longings, and I think most of all, just wanting to be...loved by someone else.

No one else can ever know and love us as much as God does. Because He created us. He knows us inside out and He loves us more than any human being possible. So, I think the ultimate fulfillment is just knowing that He knows you inside out, and loves you.

Tell me about Sister Bernadette.

(laughing) Tell you about Sister Bernadette? She's someone who sought God from a very early age, and found Him in the monastic life, and would not let Him go.

She was very much a character, and I think, a lot of that stemmed from the fact that she knew who she was before God. She knew she was a child of God, very much loved by God, was very spoiled by God, and could get away with anything because of God. If she wanted something, or needed something or thought something would be good for the monastery, she'd say, "My Father's a millionaire, He owns everything. I want it, he'll give it to me, I just have to find the person that He's gonna give it to me thought.". She kind of lived life with that attitude.

She... was the main influence, I think, in my becoming a Catholic, and a nun. She believed in me, tried to make me believe in myself, and pushed me to do things that I would have never have. You wouldn't know it meeting me today, but I was very shy, intimidated, introverted, wouldn't talk to anybody, wouldn't look at anybody...and she pushed and pushed... when you have a vow of obedience, you can't say no when she wants you to do something.

She made me do a lot of things that I would not have been able to do on my own, and so I feel that I'm, in a large part, the way I am today, because of her influence.

In all the things you do, what do you think is personally the most rewarding part of your life here in the community?

I guess the most rewarding thing is just being here. I can't put my finger on any one thing. It all is. The hardest thing, is that there's only 24 hours in a day, and you can only do so much in a day. I wish that you could put in 80 hour days, just to make room for it all.

So is that your greatest challenge in your life here?

The greatest challenge is being faithful. Sometimes, you wake up and you think, "Everyday for the rest of my life, I have to get up at 6 o'clock and go to prayers, and there's never gonna be any change." Just remaining faithful is the greatest challenge day after day after day, just because we are human.

What do you feel will be your greatest contribution as Abbess?

...(It) would probably be that if the other sisters endure me, they will be great saints. (Laughing)

That's good, but come on--

I'm serious! (More laughing)

Okay, the second greatest contribution.

I guess I've always seen my role as kind of being a bridge. Between the old community and a new community. We are expecting some new people, and praying for a lot of new people, and right now, I'm the only one here that's bi-lingual. We have the Cuban sisters, we have Americans that have joined us. The Cubans don't speak English. The Americans don't speak Spanish. So, I guess I've always seen my role as kind of a bridge between the old and the new, trying to pass on the traditions and the customs, and to give a sense of identity to a newer group.

St. Francis exemplifies for many people the love of poverty. That is something very difficult for people in the modern world to imagine. What are the joys of poverty?

Freedom. Freedom. Like St. Francis once said, "If I had a nice house, then I would have to defend it" You'd worry about somebody breaking in and stealing what you have.

There's just a great sense of freedom, in knowing that nothing is yours. Just knowing that, by giving up everything, renouncing things... that God does supply your needs, through various ways, through various people, through various circumstances. He supplies everything that you need.

I don't know. It's just so different, I don't think I could have ever punched a time clock and worked from 9 to 5, or 8 to 5, or whatever, and then try to go home with my paycheck and make it stretch. I don't think I could do that. To me, that would be just working and surviving. And in this way of life, I'm not surviving, I'm living. It's just the greatest freedom.

Many people thing contemplatives are different from regular people. There can be a distance there. What about that?

I think that's just a very human response to the unknown factor. I can feel the same way going into a lawyer's office. I mean, heís more educated than I am. Heís knows what heís doing. Iím on very uncertain ground because legal things totally escape me. I think anytime We're faced with an unknown, and with people who are maybe better or more experts in their field than we are, we can feel that way.

It reminds me of Sister Bernadette. We were at a horse show one time. We went to nationals to try to sell a few horses after they were shown, and Sister Bernadette and I were setting up and talking...and there were two ladies sitting in front of us. One of them finally turned around and she looked at Sister Bernadette, and said, "You know, my, in the past four years... you sisters have really become human."

Sister Bernadette's response was "Lady, I was born that way." I thought, "What do you think... I was born with a habit...A little cross or something?" We come out of the human race. We weren't born as little nuns or anything, we lived the same life, and went to the same schools, and got into fights with our brothers and sisters...and entering the monastery did not change that. It did not take away our human nature. We still struggle very much with that human nature. Maybe people are intimidated because we are struggling with it, and they're not..when they feel that they should be. Which maybe is a good thing, you know, maybe something for them to reflect on.

This is the last question. If you had one message that you could have everyone on the planet read and understand, what would that message be?

I think Jesus said it best, "Love one another."