MADreads

Divine mistakes

December 5th, 2008 Katie H.

At the young age of 18, Beryl Bissell took what she thought would be the final, and most momentous step in her life.  When she entered a Poor Claires convent in the late 1950s, she expected to live a long life, but her identity as Beryl had ceased.  She would hereafter be known as Sister Mary Beatrix, and her life would be God’s.

In her memoir The Scent of God, Bissell recounts a life that is as much a coming-of-age story as a search for spiritual fulfillment.  Raised in typical circumstances by a middlingly devout family, Bissell was drawn to a life of poverty and contemplation by a desire to find deeper meaning in a life given to God.  Against her family’s protests, she enters into a life filled with the routine of rising for midnight prayers, raising food for the convent’s needs and trying to achieve a deeper connection with God.  But life within the convent walls proves much more difficult in ways that Bissell could not imagine.  Hoping to be seen as especially devout, Bissell struggles with anorexia, and develops a fixation on the novice mistress that threatens to distract her from contemplation.

After leaving the monastary to tend to her ailing father in Puerto Rico, Bissell meets Vittorio, a charasmatic priest who stirs her interest.  As the changes of Vatican II begin to relax the routine of the Poor Claires, Bissell begins to wonder if living in the world holds greater meaning for her than what she views as her increasingly unsatisfactory experience in the convent.  Leaving the order in 1972, Bissell returns to Puerto Rico and Vittorio, ready to begin anew.  But life outside of the convent proves to be a greater challenge, testing her faith beyond anything she could have imagined.

The emphasis here is more on how Bissell’s religious search shaped her relationships, rather than a meditiation on her spiritual quest.  She shapes her true story almost as a novelist would, recreating dialogue, capturing the atmosphere of her travels in vivid language and creating a sense of suspense when things don’t always go as planned.  There isn’t as much insight into her spiritual path–the question of why she wished to become a nun in the first place is never fully revealed.  Other former nuns and laymen have gone over this ground somewhat more thoroughly (Karen Armstrong’s The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness and Kathleen Norris’ The Cloister Walk being two good examples).  But for a story of a woman coming into her own after a false start, The Scent of God is a gripping account of life’s trials and its ultimate grace.

Entry Filed under: Memoir & Biography