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SAN ANTONIO • It started as a barn, became “ReBARN,” then spent a decade as the Center for Spirituality and the Arts (CSA). And on Jan. 29, several hundred persons whose lives had been touched by this unique facility — artists, musicians, writers and poets, admirers of the arts, volunteers, staff members, students of art and spirituality of all ages and their teachers, religious and laity — turned out to say goodbye at the center’s closing celebration.
A ministry of the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word and located on the motherhouse grounds, the center’s mission was to foster a contemplative attitude toward life by affirming and encouraging the creative spirit that resides in each individual and allowing persons of all faiths to explore and experience the relationship between art and spirituality. It accomplished this over the years through a wide-ranging variety of classes, exhibitions, lectures and artistic performances.
Originally a stone dairy barn, the structure that became CSA and was said to have been built in the 1930s housed dairy cows for the nuns when Alamo Heights was still a rural area. The cows resided there on into the 1960s, when city regulations necessitated the sisters giving up their livestock.
Diana Roberts, director of the center for the past seven and a half years, recalls hearing stories of the nuns and the barn. “A lot of sisters remember when this was sort of off limits,” she said, “sort of a ‘back 40.’ ”The persons running the dairy had a custom of playing music for the barn’s bovine inhabitants, as it supposedly improved their milk. However, the area adjacent to the barn was where the then-cloistered nuns did their laundry — and some enjoyed stealing away to secretly listen to the music themselves.
After the cows headed off into the sunset, the old barn spent several decades as a storage building for maintenance equipment until being reborn as ReBARN, a center for spirituality and art, in 1991. This followed the construction next to it of the Incarnate Word Retirement Center in the late 1980s. “Michelle Belto Schraub was ReBARN’s first director and she had a wonderful talent for art, as well as the gift of spirituality,” noted Sister Alice Holden, CCVI, the center’s spiritual director since 1992 and director herself for two years following Schraub’s departure. She remembers Schraub, who was a nun at that time, holding painting classes for the sisters and starting a quilting circle.
Roberts related that, at the beginning, the spiritual arts center “was much more tied to the retirement center and to the congregation in terms of its programs.” Over the years, as people learned of it, more programs were established and its following grew. Roberts noted that a number of the nuns were personally or professionally involved in the arts in the early days, including Schraub, who had strong interests in liturgical dance and drama, bringing these talents to her work at the center.
“I think initially the idea was to engage the sisters, as well as the artistic and creative community,” said Roberts, “with the idea of nurturing the artists, with the idea that the artists are sort of the visionaries of the community.”
In 1994 Sister Holden moved from being director to programs coordinator, a position she held until 2001, when spiritual direction became her primary focus at the center. (She is a certified spiritual director.) She also taught and continues to teach “centering prayer,” a method that facilitates the development of contemplative prayer, and Tai Chi Chih, an Eastern form of movement meditation.
For two years following Sister Holden’s directorship, the center was headed by Sister Juanita Albrecht, CCVI, who eventually left to work in the congregation’s ministry in Peru. When Roberts was hired as director in 1997, the center’s exhibition program had already begun to grow in prestige. Under Roberts, whose background is in ethnographic art and music, CSA attained even higher pinnacles of artistic recognition — on a par with the best art galleries in town.
“What really interested me about the place,” said Roberts, “was the fact that the core mission really is to look at the relationship between art and spirituality and to integrate those things, integrate art and spirituality, in today’s life.” She noted, “I was very much intrigued by the notion of looking at the spiritual capacity of the arts.”
The center’s programs came to include a diverse smorgasbord of artistic and spiritual offerings. What was once a hayloft became an upstairs art gallery, hosting approximately six exhibitions yearly by contemporary artists, with occasional ethnographic or historical exhibitions as well. These were usually accompanied by a series called Gallery Talks, featuring the exhibiting artists. (That the loft’s acoustics were phenomenal was an added bonus for music performances there.)
There were art classes and workshops, readings of poetry and prose by local writers (also with classes and workshops), book discussions, and lectures on spiritual thought, including the Contemporary Spirituality Lecture Series and the World Mystics Series. And there were classes in Tai Chi Chih, Hatha Yoga, individual and group spiritual direction, meditation, reflexology, retreats and other workshops and demonstrations of holistic healing methods. Programs in music, theater and dance were also presented.
Downstairs, the covered cow troughs became display areas for original works of art and fine crafts available for sale, and a small library was added that included books on theology, world religion, general spirituality, world culture and the arts. An annual spring fund-raiser, “On the Lawn,” took place on the lovely Incarnate Word grounds and became a popular local event, featuring live music, good food, a silent auction and art sale.
People from all denominations were welcome at CSA, as part of its mission of inclusivity and presenting programs incorporating diverse religious, cultural and historical contexts. Roberts fondly recalls a shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute) performance in the sisters’ chapel with a visiting pair of Buddhist monks present. “At one point I kind of looked around the room and there were probably 150 people in there and every one of them had their eyes closed and was in a peaceful state,” said Roberts. Looking across the room, her eyes met those of one of the monks, she said, “and we just looked at each other and both smiled.”
Of the center, Roberts noted it drew people from varied backgrounds and walks of life. “It really has been a place where people felt comfortable and nurtured and safe,” she said. “It’s one of the few places I know in town where people come in and every topic is open for discussion — daily discussions about spirituality or religion or theology or the arts or politics, relationships or flowers or food.” She added, “To me, that was the beauty of. It was all about the dialogue, whether it was about art or spirituality.”
Sister Holden remarked, “Most significant for me, I think, is the individuals whose lives turned around because they found a deep meaning in their own faith, in themselves, and in God. And they found that through art and through workshops and through spiritual direction.” She has been amazed at the number of persons expressing the difference the center has made in their lives.
With so much to offer and a significant following, why did the center close its doors? Sister Holden sums it up in a nutshell. “We don’t have the money to continue doing it the way we were doing it,” she says simply. “I guess the big disappointment,” says Roberts, “is that in its current manifestation it wasn’t financially viable. … But the bigger issue I think is the lack of appreciation and understanding in the society at large for the arts. All arts organizations are struggling.” With fewer nuns and limited resources, the CCVI sisters were struggling as well to discern the best use for the facility in view of the good of the congregation as a whole.
The announcement of the center’s closing was handed down by the CCVI in late October, after much deliberation. It was not a total shock to those running the center, who were aware their status was under scrutiny and CSA’s finances shaky. Both Roberts and Sister Holden are philosophical about the outcome, though it is not what they would have wished.
Roberts will continue to pursue her arts interests, having the opportunity now to do more writing in that area and also doing curatorial work. Sister Holden will continue her personal ministry of spiritual direction, retreats, Tai Chi Chih and the like. Both hope to be involved independently in various projects in the arts and spirituality.
“Overwhelming, at our assembly meeting, which was in January,” said Sister Holden, “the sisters spoke about wanting a ministry of spirituality and art. Whether it will be here or elsewhere is up to the creativity of the sisters and the laity who are interested.” She continued, “Those who are interested need to contact the sisters and say what they want to offer — of their time, talents, creativity, their space.” She paused to reflect. “I think it’s time for us to move beyond the confines of the barn.”
The center’s closing event was called a celebration in recognition of all that CSA had accomplished — a significant accumulation of spiritual and artistic experiences and friendships formed. “We had a remarkable run,” mused Roberts. “It was an amazing run.”
With food provided downstairs by Aldaco’s Mexican Cuisine and music offered in the upper gallery by the Regency Jazz Band (where a final art exhibit, works by Dennis Olsen, were on display), approximately 300 persons involved in CSA over the years packed the barn. In denim and velvet, Latin American ponchos and oriental silk jackets, they came to celebrate a transformational place in their lives in a more spiritual, but just as animated, variation of an old-time “barn raising.”
At one point, a special prayer service was held in the upper gallery, led by the center’s first director and current head of its advisory board, Michelle Belto Schraub, who offered a prayer on behalf of those present “for the years and years of holy moments that we have known in this holy place.” Attendees were then given the opportunity to remember and name specific events at the center that had impacted their lives, as well as how they planned to continue the center’s mission on their own — and the lists were long and varied.
Schraub presented Sister Holden with the lit candle that she herself had received as a “barn-warming” gift 13 years before. On it was a depiction of the Visitation and Schraub remarked, “As the barn waits for its new incarnation, we ask you to accept its light and hold it safe for all of us.” Roberts was then recognized and presented with the ikebana floral arrangement that had been slowly created during the earlier portion of the service. Said Schraub, “The community, the programming, the exhibitions that you have created and nurtured throughout these many years are your work of art among us.” Attendees were invited to take the remaining flowers with them as a reminder of their own spiritual and creative mission.
Schraub concluded: “Good and gracious God, provide the support for each of us to take the mission and the spirit of the center into our homes, into our lives, and into our own tomorrows. Heal what is left undone in our hearts. Provide new open windows for those doors that close behind us. Provide new spaces for us to be nurtured and recreated. In faith, with hope, we bless all that has been. We bless all that is now. We bless all that will be.”
In conclusion, the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word U.S. Province Leadership Team, represented by Sister Carol Bird, CCVI, recognized, thanked and presented gifts to Schraub, Roberts, Sister Holden and board member and former chair Dr. Bernadette O’Conner.
Said Sister Bird, “There must be always remaining in every life, some place for the singing of angels; some place for that which is breathless and beautiful. And I think that the center has been a witness to and encourager of a finding of those places that allow us to have what is breathless and beautiful, that we might truly hear the singing of the angels in our lives.” |