Back when we first heard the Lord’s invitation to consider a building and renovation project, to help our monastic home better serve the needs of our community, one of the first places we decided to re-imagine was our recreation room.

First, a clarification - the term “recreation room” has a slightly different meaning for nuns than for the world at large! While a “rec room” in most folks’ minds involves pinball, table tennis, or arcade games, for religious Sisters it refers to our community “living room” space. In our Cherish the Flame project we’re referring to this as the “community room” to better underline this dimension.

If the chapel is the soul of a monastery, the recreation/community room is, in a sense, its heart. Here we gather each day for lighthearted Sisterly companionship and conversation, seeking to build one another up as we spend time just enjoying one another’s company. In a multi-generational community such as ours, it can be a challenge to balance the enthusiasm and energy of the younger Nuns with the quieter style of the elder Nuns. Our former recreation room exacerbated this problem by its high, echo-y ceilings and cramped space, amplifying the noise and making it difficult for many, especially our older Sisters, to hear well.

Thanks be to God, our new community room is both spacious and acoustically improved, and it is already proving itself as an excellent space where all generations of Nuns can enjoy recreation together. We’ve even begun using it for our “Gaudeamus” meals, special occasions where our usual mealtime silence is replaced by talking and laughter.

Enjoy some snapshots of the new community room, and join us in giving thanks to God for the gift of this new space to gather as Sisters in Christ!