Dial-A-Nun For Years, Sister Judith Brower Split Her Time Between Teaching At Nic And Her Beloved Monastery. But Thanks To A New 900-Number; She’s Returning Full Time To Her Spiritual Home

Home calls to Sister Judith Brower every time the Monastery of St. Gertrude’s bells peal across the rolling Camas Prairie.

The ringing carries with it the warmth of Sister Edith’s fresh bread and the consuming silence of the chapel just before prayers.

It tugs Sister Judith 175 miles south, from Coeur d’Alene’s sparkling lake, past Indian casinos, belching sawmills and a corral full of leggy ostriches. It pulls her along a curving country road to the magnificent stone monastery that towers over endless fields of grain.

It woos her home - and she thinks she’s found a way she can finally stay there.

“I really believe I’m called to lead a life that balances prayer and work,” she says. “And I find that hard to do on my own.”

Until June, Brower, 51, was a stalwart fixture in North Idaho College’s math department. Behind the big glasses, quick wit and peppery tongue is a computerlike brain and a gift for teaching.

The Coeur d’Alene job seemed heaven-sent when Brower arrived at St. Gertrude’s 12 years ago. The Benedictine monastery supports itself. The Catholic Church offers only spiritual assistance.

Brower started at NIC in 1986 and joined 45 of her Benedictine monastery’s sisters already working in the lay world. Their region’s tiny population and agricultural nature force the nuns to scatter throughout the Northwest to find jobs that fit their educations.

“If I worked there, then someone else might be able to work in a poor parish,” Brower says.

For 11 years, Brower kept a part-time relationship with St. Gertrude’s. She returned to the monastery on weekends and during school vacations and summers.

It wasn’t the balanced life she wanted, but she wouldn’t stay at the monastery year-round until she could pull her own weight. Contemplation led her to the solution this year.

“Dial-a-nun,” an NIC colleague cracks.

Exactly. Brower proposed to her sisters last winter that St. Gertrude’s offer daily gospel-based, inspirational messages through a profit-earning telephone line - 1-900-U-Thirst.

She plans to charge a flat rate that will net the monastery about 90 cents per call. Thirty-five calls a day would cover St. Gertrude’s costs to operate the line - $625 a month. Brower’s optimistic enough to expect 100 calls a day within a few months of starting.

“There’s a spiritual need in our society,” she says, ignoring for a moment the raunchy reputations associated with 900 numbers. But Sister Barbara Jean Glodowski’s giggling presses Brower to address the issue.

“I think we can milk the reputation,” she says. She’s so intense that it’s obvious she’s wrestled long hours with this problem.

“The 900 number has been abused. We have every right to redeem it. We’re offering people an honest sharing of ourselves in the same way we would if they came here.”

Her sisters gave her the go-ahead. The line will open on Monday.

“I think there’s potential,” Glodowski says. “Look at the psychic hotlines. There’s a real thirst in the nation from people who want to improve their spiritual level.”

Brower understands that thirst. Her own pulled her to St. Gertrude’s after 22 years as a Franciscan nun.

“I don’t think I was here three days when I felt as if I’d awakened from amnesia,” she says.

She is as Catholic as it gets, from the school uniforms she wore for 12 years to her large South Side Chicago family. Two of her aunts were nuns.

Catholic schools were in their heyday when Brower attended, and they made a good impression on her.

“Most of my teachers were nuns, and they were caring, friendly, excellent teachers who cared for each other,” she says. “That stirred things inside me.”

By her 1963 high school graduation, Brower was certain she wanted to dedicate her life to God. Her teachers were from a Franciscan convent in Wisconsin, so that’s where Brower headed.

The Franciscans embodied everything young Brower associated with the pious life. They sacrificed for each other and served the poor. They prayed together and modeled life according to the Gospel.

They also encouraged education. Brower earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics in Wisconsin, then a master’s degree at Stanford University.

While she taught for 14 years in Wisconsin and Nebraska, Vatican II’s changes were sweeping through Catholic communities. Nuns began wearing street clothes instead of habits. English replaced Latin at Mass.

Some Catholics balked at the changes. Brower found her own order dissolving into turmoil by 1981.

Some sisters clung to tradition. Others embraced progress. She wasn’t sure where she stood.

Anxiety drove Brower to Spokane’s Immaculate Heart Retreat House in 1984 for 10 weeks of solitude and prayer. Only one other nun was there - a Benedictine sister from St. Gertrude’s.

She captivated Brower with the story of her community.

“We (Franciscans) took vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, but she used words like ‘common life’ and ‘stability,”’ Brower says. “They struck my soul. I liked the idea of being willing to change.”

The Benedictines follow the teachings of Benedict, a sixth-century monk. He was disgusted by the excesses he saw as a student in Rome and decided to live alone in a cave beyond the city.

He found balance in a simple life of prayer and work. That balance became the foundation of the Order of St. Benedict.

Centuries of contemplation and interpretation of Benedict’s rules matured the Benedictines into the progressive order that excited Brower.

She knew she couldn’t return to the Franciscans. Months of research and questions led to a visit to St. Gertrude’s in 1985.

The stately monastery marked Idaho’s one Catholic pocket. It was built by nuns who immigrated to the United States in 1882 from an 11th-century Swiss Benedictine order.

The nuns specialized in teaching in needy areas. They traveled across the country from the East Coast until the population thinned and the need for teachers was evident.

They taught in Oregon and Washington before Midwestern Catholic immigrants wooed them to Idaho’s Camas Prairie in 1905. The area needed a school, and its remoteness offered the sisters seclusion.

With jagged, blue porphyry stone they found in a Cottonwood hillside quarry, the sisters built their eye-catching edifice in 1920. They opened an academy next door in 1927.

The area stayed predominantly Catholic, but interest in costly parochial education began waning in the late 1950s as free public schools multiplied. The academy closed in 1969, forcing the Benedictine sisters to find other ways to support their order.

Behind the fortresslike monastery walls, Brower found a spiritual sorority she could embrace. The sisters operated like a healthy family.

Some held jobs to support others who maintained the home. Everyone cared for the elderly.

“I saw people here trying to live out what they said they would in a reasonable way,” Brower says. “I felt much more peaceful here.”

But the monastery’s need for support pushed Brower back into the working world and away from the bliss she’d found. She was only 40.

St. Gertrude’s population was aging, and fewer nuns each year held paying jobs.

At first, Brower had no reservations about working at NIC. But years of school politics and the distractions of life in the lay world chipped at her spiritual soul.

St. Gertrude’s bells called more insistently to her every year. Her challenge was to find a way to slip into home waters without causing a ripple.

There was much to consider.

Of St. Gertrude’s 90 sisters, eight are older than 90 and 25 are older than 80. Some, like 89-year-old Sister Edith the baker, still work. But about 10 nuns can’t anymore.

Eight wheelchairs line the chapel aisles at prayer times. Younger sisters in T-shirts and Birkenstocks aid the aged nuns, who still cloak themselves in black and white habits. Headphones connected to a sound system enable the older women to hear and participate in the Bible readings.

Only five nuns at St. Gertrude’s are younger than 50, and the number of women who dedicate themselves to Catholic orders drops every year.

Most sisters choose to live out their lives at the monastery, which includes an infirmary and a cemetery.

Brower considered all this along with St. Gertrude’s recent history. Since the academy closed, the monastery has raised some money offering public spiritual retreats on its grounds.

All these elements filtered through her brain and produced the evangelical hotline project she calls “From the Monastery Well.”

Brower predicts 1-900-U-Thirst will awaken souls, earn money and raise public awareness of Benedictine women. Just talking about its potential animates her.

“If this makes money, it could underwrite other programs,” she says.

She explained to her sisters that the monastery phones won’t ring. The U-Thirst calls will go to an automated center in Denver, which will play Sister Judith’s recorded messages.

Every day will feature a new two-minute reading and no live conversation. Brower began writing the messages months ago, intent on challenging, inspiring, provoking thought.

She moves through life with enviable confidence, but this new endeavor has unnerved her a degree.

“How does this sound?” she says, reading her opening-day reflection and looking up periodically for feedback.

Some sisters who live at the monastery earn money by binding books or selling candles. Brower’s technological approach is far from traditional, but it fits with these modern-minded women.

“I hope it will build a future,” says Sister Mary Kay Henry, St. Gertrude’s soft-spoken prioress. “Women will listen, like, want to help. And we’ll grow.”

No one wants success more than Brower.

If U-Thirst works, she can pray in St. Gertrude’s cavernous chapel whenever she needs to. Maybe forever.

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