Episode Two - Sister Chanelle Sings A Song

In this episode you’ll hear from Sister Chanelle. If you’ve ever had the opportunity to stay at the Inn at St. Gertrude’s you probably met Sr Chanelle there. She makes amazing chocolate cake for dessert for visitors! She also had a long career as a nurse and then a hospital chaplain. She and I sat down to talk in an cozy office full of couches on the second floor of the Monastery. I was a few minutes for our appointment, and when I arrived Sr Chanelle was just coming back in from the 2nd floor balcony. She explained she had stepped out to admire a particular pink rose bush that she can only see from that balcony. It’s down a set of stairs that she can’t get up and down any longer, so she satisfies herself by taking a moment to admire them from the balcony whenever she can. We settled into the couches, and you’ll occasionally hear sounds of the Monastery around us in the background, including one of the other Sisters practicing an instrument in an adjoining room. Our conversation ranged widely from her trip to the motherhouse in her youth to her work as a nurse in the 3-story converted house that served as a hospital in the small town of Cottonwood, Idaho where the emergency room was on the third floor and she spent her nursing shifts running up and down 3 flights of rickety wooden stairs. This episode is a few minutes from that conversation that I hope is as moving to you as it was to me. I don’t want to give away too much, so I’m going to let this episode just speak for itself.