tried to provoke disagreements. “We all know what American TV wants— scandal—but this wasn’t Survivor. There were only internal battles being fought at the abbey.” In fact, Alton and the four other outsiders formed their own mutual support system. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt as close with a group,” Alton recalls. “Mount Holyoke prepared me to relate to people very different from me on so many levels. Still, I never thought that, less than one year after leaving MHC, I would find myself once again in a singlesex environment, surrounded by ‘sisters.’” New Habits, New Thoughts If Alton was unprepared for life in a religious setting, the nuns were equally unused to having strangers living with them. Many had voted against allowing the visitors, and sometimes their attitude showed. And disagreements occurred despite everyone’s efforts to adjust. Take, for example, the clothing clash. The nuns wore traditional habits; the visitors didn’t. What Alton described as “normal clothes” were considered too tight by at least one sister, who repeatedly lectured Alton. And her assigned mentor, Rebecca, challenged her by saying that Alton needed to “find her true self.” “The whole experience was trying to make me understand that I’m not my accomplishments or what I look like. I was very proud of all that I had achieved at MHC and Stanford, but monastic values do not place any weight on past achievements or future aspirations, so it was a challenge to define myself at the abbey,” Alton admits. “It was a very humbling experience.”
Katie Alton ’05 (front, in purple) spent forty days in an abbey to study monastic life from the perspective of a scientist.
Alton was the youngest of five participants who spent January and February 2006 with the abbey’s thirty sisters. Practically nothing about the experience was as Alton anticipated, and it changed her life profoundly.
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Traditional Life, With Cameras Although she’d pictured the abbey as a European-style stone cloister, she arrived at a farm amid rolling hills on the banks of the Mississippi River. The abbey’s sisters follow the Rule of St. Benedict, which has guided religious lives since the sixth century. Alton described the day-to-day experience as “really intense, even though it didn’t appear so.” A buzzer woke the community daily at 3 a.m. and everyone prepared herself in darkness and silence for the first of the day’s six to eight religious services. “The point is to sit with yourself and let the morning take your thinking where it needs to go,” she explains. After the 6 a.m. service, they read scripture in the library. “I was used to fast academic reading. But they wanted us to read just two paragraphs in an hour and a half, and to meditate on every word,” Alton says. “That was
totally frustrating, because to me the subject matter was foreign and not all that meaningful.” Everyone gathered at mealtimes, but ate their vegetarian fare in silence. The rest of the day, everyone worked on the farm or helped with the chocolatemaking operation whose profits support the abbey. People worked silently, “to encourage awareness of the impact of our actions on ourselves and the world.” Abbey life wasn’t entirely quiet however, and a camera crew from The Learning Channel was filming conversations practically around the clock. “The all-female crew was great, but it was horrible having cameras around,” Alton says. “People didn’t act the same. And since the sisters weren’t used to any outsiders, it was even harder to interact with them with the cameras nearby.” Alton says the TV crew, apparently looking for drama,
photos by k at ie alton
The neuroscience major’s job at the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics exposed her to many cases involving conflict between patients with a strong religious faith and healthcare providers with a strong faith in science. So when the opportunity arose to audition for a Learning Channel reality show—The Monastery—that brought five women to Our Lady of the Mississippi Abbey in Iowa, Alton applied. “I wanted to study monastic life from the perspective of a scientist confused about how people could hold onto what I saw as antiquated religious beliefs in the light of amazing scientific discoveries,” she explains.
Alton had intended to interview each nun about how her views on medical care interfaced with her religious beliefs. “They didn’t want to talk about it. One nun told me, ‘Whatever God wants, that’s what doctors implement.’ But that didn’t answer my questions.” After a few such maddening conversations, Alton dropped her quest. Instead, “I started thinking more about religion and trying [Catholicism] on for size.”
A television camera crew found little external drama in monastic life.
All those hours of silent contemplation and active worship had an effect on the agnostic Alton. “I did ask myself if I wanted to spend the rest of my life searching for the ‘right’ religion for me and then striving to live by those guidelines. At the end of six weeks, I had a profound respect for people able to stick to religious beliefs.” After leaving the abbey, she attended church for about two months. She’s still searching spiritually, but that’s a big change from her pre-abbey views. “I always thought people looked to religion because they didn’t have anything better,” she admits. Postlude More than a year later, what resonates with Alton? She’s more self-aware, whether savoring the taste and texture of food or feeling more certain that her tentative life goals are right for her. “And I’m more settled, more confident, and much calmer,” she notes.
first-century life. “I want to develop my true self, building on the foundation I started at the monastery,” she explains. “One of the big things I learned at the abbey is that I crave community, something that was stripped from me when I left MHC, moved to a new area, and dove into a job where I was focused sixteen hours a day.” Post-abbey, Alton quit that “toxic” job and found work in a supportive community of bright, wellrounded young colleagues. “Being able to leave my life [for the abbey] and then come back and see it through a new lens was amazing. I know that what I really want to do—become a doctor—I can do, and that I can be patient until the opportunity arises. (She’s applying for fall 2008 medical school admission.) “I had goals before, but now I have a sense of purpose too.” Note: At our press time, The Learning Channel had not set a broadcast date for the series in which Katie appears.
She’s also trying to carry the abbey’s contemplative mindset into her twentyMou n t Holyok e Al um na e Qua r t e r ly
Summer 2007
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