By Steve Ritchie
It is customary for an outgoing prioress in the Benedictine community at Queen of Angels Monastery to take a sabbatical after completing the rigors of four or eight years serving in leadership. Sr. Dorothy Jean Beyer, OSB, completed her second stint as prioress in June 2007 and, after serving in this role for 16 of the past 20 years, she was definitely ready for some respite and renewal before assuming a new position as director of Shalom Prayer Center.
Sr. Dorothy Jean did spend some weeks getting some much-needed rest, but she also spent part of her sabbatical time serving the needs of a Benedictine monastery in the Republic of South Africa.
Along with another Benedictine Sister and a nurse friend from Portland, Sr. Dorothy Jean spent six weeks this summer with the Congregation of Benedictine Sisters of Twasana, located “up in the mountains about five hours from Johannesburg, in the heart of Zululand.”
Their trip and volunteer service was under the auspices of the Alliance for International Monasticism USA, an organization of 168 communities of men and women in the U.S. and Canada who follow the Rule of Benedict and more than 300 English-speaking monasteries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Sr. Dorothy Jean’s friend, Deborah Pokorny of Clackamas, who is director of Clinical Services at Portland Adventist Hospital, brought medical supplies for the Sisters’ health clinic and spent three weeks working in the clinic as well as teaching Sisters.
Sr. Dorothy Jean and Sr. Evangeline Bossert, OSB, of Monastery of St. Gertrude, Cottonwood, Idaho, were there to provide educational and spiritual support for the 62 Sisters of the Twasana community.
“I taught nine different groups of Sisters for six weeks,” said Sr. Dorothy Jean. Three of the groups were at the main monastery of Twasana, and the other six groups were at outstations where the Sisters serve.
“Sr. Evangeline focused her presentations on the Benedictine value of ‘Obedience’ while mine was on ‘Benedictine Stability.’ I also helped with computer training and teaching English to the Sisters.”
Sr. Dorothy Jean, who is a native of Mt. Angel and well acquainted with all things Oktoberfest, also taught the famous “Chicken Dance” that many visitors to Mt. Angel learn.
“Sr. Edith, a pre-school teacher, asked me to develop a program for the parent night at the preschool, so Deborah and I taught the children the Chicken Dance, the Hokey Pokey and a few other simple dances. The Chicken Dance was so popular that we ended up teaching it to the community’s candidates and postulants. Later I taught the dance to the 12th-grade students at St. Victor School upon the invitation of Sister Benedicta, their teacher.”
The experience of living and working with Benedictine women in a very poor area that has been ravaged by AIDS and poverty was an amazingly rich one, according to Sr. Dorothy Jean.
“I very much appreciated learning about the Zulu culture and how they view the world. There was certainly a great deal of culture shock for me, but I learned to respect another way of doing things. The people were very hospitable, forgiving and accepting.”
What seemed at first to be disorganized or chaotic to her was just a different approach.
“The favorite saying of our (volunteer) team was ‘Go with the flow,’” she laughed.
“I was impressed with the simplicity of the Sisters’ lifestyle. All their cooking is done on an 8-foot x 6-foot wood stove. They grow incredible vegetable gardens, raise cows and chickens, bake bread and make wine and jams. They are a talented and industrious community as well as being very devoted to living the Benedictine monastic life.”
However, the image of peaceful pastoral life is tempered by the suffering created by poverty and the AIDS epidemic, as well as the constant threat of violence.
“Some of the students who attend the Sisters’ schools are AIDS orphans and they live with relatives in tiny and very basic huts. The potential for violence and for theft is always present because of the poverty there,” she said.
Sr. Dorothy Jean is very happy to speak about her experience and about the work of AIM USA in third-world countries to any group that is interested. She has already spoken at St. James Parish in McMinnville as well as the parish missions there and said she received a “great response.”
Sr. Dorothy Jean can be contacted at Shalom Prayer Center at 503-845-6773 or at [email protected].
