AI Summary
5 min readA former nun on why she ran away from her 'Cloistered' life
"Words are absolutely woven through the texture of your life because you are either chanting or reading or meditating on the Psalms," Catherine Coldstream told Terry Gross, explaining why life in a silent Carmelite monastery was not actually wordless. Coldstream spent twelve years as a cloistered nun in northern England before leaving—first by running away one night, then returning for two more years, and finally departing for good. Her memoir Cloistered: My Years as a Nun is now out in paperback.
What drew her in
Coldstream grew up in a bohemian artistic family in London—her father a painter and art professor, her mother an actor and opera singer. She studied composition in Paris, played viola in experimental music scenes, and was deeply into Stockhausen, John Cage, and Boulez. Then her father died after a painful four-year decline when she was twenty-four. Her family disintegrated. She was "utterly thrown and completely bereft."
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:19) **Life Before the Monastery** - Catherine Coldstream’s background as a musician and her path to rock bottom after her father’s death.
- 2 (01:49) **The Culture of Silence in the Carmelite Order** - How silence functioned not as an absence of words, but as a different kind of internal dialogue.
- 3 (03:45) **What Drew Her to a Life of Isolation** - The psychological and emotional reasons behind her choice to enter a cloistered monastery.
- 4 (07:33) **Daily Life in the Monastery: Structure and Self-Denial** - The rigid timetable and physical austerity that governed every moment.
- 5 (10:08) **The Paradox of a Structured Life for an Artist** - How she reconciled her free-spirited artistic background with a world of strict borders and discipline.
- 6 (12:00) **The Physical Space: The Monastery and the Cell** - Descriptions of the Gothic manor house and the stark, symbolic private cell.
- 7 (15:33) **Putting on the Habit and Taking a New Identity** - The ritual of being clothed and the symbolism of erasing individual identity.
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Guests on this episode
Show Notes
John Powers reviews the series ‘The Hawk,’ starring Will Ferrell.
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