Dust
Visitation, Sister Mary of the
DUST By SISTER MARY OF THE VISITATION THIS morning's mail brings a packet of cards post marked Gulmarg, June 21; views of Himalayan passes, white peaks looking down on rope-bridges spanning...
...Last night I was given to see a little of what that must mean to the angels...
...I brush the outside of the shutter and then the inside...
...back and forth I trot emptying and refilling the basins, washing and rewashing with growing disgust the same grimy green slats, always dripping with brown nastiness, never for all my work seeming the cleaner...
...Those two and the fanlight above the great front door made movable will give a better upper ventilation when the hall is used for sports...
...I get an old whiskbroom and some clean cloths from a nearby cupboard, fill a couple of white, enameled basins with warm water and begin...
...During this time workmen are busy in our old music hall, washing the walls preparatory to painting them...
...I go at it again and again...
...it is lucky the wind blows from me, otherwise I should not be fit to go to the refectory...
...I have spent half an hour washing half the shutter...
...For some hours each day I am doing light tasks, stringing seed pearls for a precious embroidery to go in the tabernacle, or weeding the garden walks or sweeping the porch—gathering thoughts, as Abbe Dimnet would approve...
...July 23—that was yesterday, my fourth day in retreat...
...At this rate suppertime will be here and the window itself not touched—and I was to have washed two...
...I must stop now...
...Then follows swift the realization of reeking, interminable murkiness, persisting, triumphing over purifying waters, earnest labor, advancing twilight...
...the rest of the nuns are in the choir, and I can do it quietly...
...I am very conscious that I am no longer young...
...still the fine dust is flying...
...I glance at the nearest shutter before unbolting it, and decide to brush off the light dust before washing the window itself...
...it is time they were washed indeed...
...I have a new understanding of whiteness, and I know a little better what it means to be made of dust...
...There remains patience—a dogged, determined dipping and scrubbing and wiping and carrying water...
...The minutes slip away into an hour or more when the Angelus announcing the closing in of twilight bids me pause...
...That night as I lie long hours awake, Jesus-Hostia speaks clearly through the single wall that separates my cell from the sanctuary...
...I have read, too, what the saints say of imperfections...
...A carpenter has hinged the lunettes above two of the stage windows opening on the second porch...
...They have been sealed for many a year, inaccessible behind screwed-down, green-slatted shutters...
...As the walls are being washed inside (the workmen leave at half-past four) it seems well for me to wash those two semicircular windows within my reach...
...As if that thirty minutes' work had never been done the water is darkened once more at the first touch of the rinsed cloth...
...For years she had read of the far-off shimmering peaks and their shadowy slopes, and now she was seeing them in the starlight...
...A complacent stroke of the brush...
...perhaps tomorrow I may see it through...
...A good piece of cloth goes into a basin of water and is applied dripping to the top of the shutter...
...views of Himalayan passes, white peaks looking down on rope-bridges spanning mountain torrents that cut their way through sombre gorges—the road to Leh, Ladak...
...I must try other tactics...
...mercy, what a cloud of dust...
...amazing that just a little dust, not even apparent without close examination, should look like that...
...A little dust ignored, let be through the passage of years...
...I recall many more things I have heard and read about venial sin—how it disfigures the soul as dust begrimes and disfigures the face...
...Not looking at the cloth I dip it again into the basin...
...It did not look so bad before I touched it...
...My task is still unfinished...
...Yesterday afternoon our Holy Father, Saint Francis de Sales, quoted to me, "Blessed are the undefiled in the way who walk in the law of the Lord...
...that except being sin-stained, the worst thing that can befall a soul is to be devoid of virtues...
...A pencil note on one card of a rugged, awe-inspiring steep reads: "Where I'll bivouac July 23, Sunmarg, Kashmir...
...My wrists are tired...
...But three such dips and the water is pitchy black...
...One whom I love bivouacked last night in a pass in the Himalayas...
...I can return after supper and finish the rest, and the window too— perhaps...
...I may as well make perfectly sure that the first part is entirely clean before I proceed to the other half...
...After supper, better equipped with a big gingham apron, more cloths and a scrubbing brush, again I seek the lunette...
...I have half an hour before supper...
...There seems to be just as much of it each time the brush passes by, no matter how often the movement is repeated...
...what a pretty dark green shows up where the wood is wet...
...The second window no longer impinges on my consciousness...
...He opens my eyes and shows me many things through the darkness...
...then a partial enlightenment, a glance of attention, an effort toward removing the little unsightliness...
...a murky black comes from it, instantly clouding the clear, pure water...
...I am concentrating...
...I must leave it so...
...My arms ache, my heart works a bit uncertainly...
...Nothing remotely suggesting the real offensiveness of decay or disease...
...Yet—a little dust—what does it amount to...
...Still over the deep green comes that revolting brown ooze, the dust of decades quietly defying my repugnant efforts...
...I go at it vigorously...
...The other basin, quick, and let us have done...
...Imperfection—the lack of perfection, perfection being pure whiteness—the sum of rainbow splendor...
...the air is brown with dust...
Vol. 12 • May 1930 • No. 4
