Water Pipes

The three postulants made it to Marbury, water or no water!

In the past year, we have gone without water briefly on numerous occasions, as the 50-year-old pipe system for our local Marbury Water is in the process of breaking and being replaced. As inconvenient as this is, it reminds us of the early days of our foundation, when no one had dreamt of “Marbury Water,” and our Mothers and Sisters had to depend on their well and pump.

On one occasion, there were three friends from Chicago who were all planning to enter the monastery the same summer of 1951. As their entrance day approached, they became increasingly apprehensive. (In those days, many young women entered sight unseen.) After all, didn’t the packing list include a flashlight? Well-meaning friends had advised other future nuns, “Don’t you know what that means? An outhouse!!” When a friend of theirs who was a student brother took a trip down South that spring and stopped by Marbury, they had a burning question for him on his return: “Do the nuns have running water??” Truth be told, during Brother’s visit, the pump at the monastery was on strike, as happened too often in those early days, and there was no running water. His politic response: “They have pipes!”