A Sand Springs monastery's spiritual journey continues as it evolves into a lay prayer center.

SAND SPRINGS -- A Benedictine monastery that for 28 years has been a place of rest and spiritual renewal for people of all faiths came to an end this week, but its legacy will continue.

All but one of the nuns has left Osage Monastery, Forest of Peace, nestled in 45 wooded acres four miles west of Sand Springs.

The final Catholic Mass at the monastery was celebrated Sunday by the Rev. James Conner, a Trappist monk who celebrated the first Mass there in 1978 on the forest floor, and lived at the monastery for its first 10 years.

A Tulsa businessman who has been a part of the Osage Monastery community has purchased the facility from the Benedictines, and is determined to carry on its spiritual legacy.

"I feel so strongly about the vision and the mission here that I want it to continue," Bob Doenges said over lunch Wednesday in the main building.

Doenges is an oblate, a lay member of a monastic community.

"When I first opened the door here 20 years ago, I knew I was home," he said.

"This place is such a gift to the world. What comes forth here you can't understand, you can only experience."

He described the monastery as a place that people are drawn to, a place with no agenda, but attuned to the Spirit.

Doenges said when he was approached about the buying the prop erty,

With the Benedictines officially gone, the monastery now will be called the Osage Forest of Peace, a lay prayer center, or contemplative ashram.

"Everything is in place for it to continue," Doenges said.

"The Osage Monastery is not going to a higher level, or to a lower level, but to the next level."

Osage Monastery was founded by Sister Pascaline Coff, a Benedictine Sister of Perpetual Adoration.

She will continue to live there for one year as spiritual director.

From the beginning, the monastery has brought together the spiritual traditions of the East and the West.

Sister Pascaline spent a year at a Benedictine ashram in India, which merged Hindu and Catholic practices. There she sat under the teaching of Bede Griffiths, a Benedictine monk who inspired her to start a Benedictine ashram in the United States.

Her small community of Benedictine nuns was welcomed to Oklahoma in the 1970s by then Tulsa bishop Eusebius Beltran, now archbishop of the Oklahoma City Diocese.

They bought the land and built a central building with chapel, kitchen and meeting areas, surrounded by a cluster of small cabins for the sisters, and another cluster of cabins for guests. They carved walking trails through the rugged terrain, and built a Zen garden.

The monastery was named after the ashram in India, and often is called an ashram, a Sanskrit word that means a place where people live a simple lifestyle, welcome all religious traditions and practice intensive spiritual disciplines of prayer and meditation.

"Our vision was to create a place where people could come and pray, . . . develop a monastic prayer rhythm . . . find their real selves," said Sister Pascaline, a slight, white-haired woman with a quiet voice and a tender smile.

The sweeping reforms of Vatican II made the Catholic-Hindu cooperation possible, Sister Pascaline said, by allowing nuns to sit on the floor during worship, wear prayer shawls, and participate in "aarti," a Hindu fire ritual.

"Our purpose is to enable the divine to manifest itself in us," she said.

Over the years, many people have come to the monastery, some staying a day or a week, others staying a year or more.

They came from around the world, sometimes for specific events like Christian-Zen retreats, other times just to get away from the busy-ness of the world.

Among them were Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims, in keeping with the Benedictine principle of offering hospitality.

Daily prayer times and Sunday Masses were Catholic-based but might include readings from Rumi, a Sufi Muslim, or Hindu or Buddhist scriptures.

Her greatest joy, Sister Pascaline said, is to see God change lives.

"This is God's place. This is the work of the Holy Spirit," she said. "It's been such a joy to see God at work. . . . The Lord has touched them in such ways that life is different for them."

Emily Cox, a non-Catholic who has lived at the monastery since last fall, will serve as coordinator of Osage Forest of Peace.

She is a Tulsa native, University of Tulsa graduate and two-year veteran of the Peace Corps, serving in the Republic of Georgia.

Cox said the idea of the ashram is to develop a lifestyle in which people can bring "presence" to everything they do: working, eating, walking.

She said the center is Christian, with Hindu cultural elements.

"People are so busy and so stressed," she said. "They need balance; they need some way to keep sane.

"That's easier in a place like this that's less busy."

Some visitors to the monastery just need sleep, she said.

Osage Forest of Peace will not be a retreat center in the traditional sense, where churches can rent cabins and hold retreats, but will be a community where individuals or couples can seek renewal in quietness, solitude and spiritual disciplines, according to Cox.

Bill Sherman 581-8398
bill.sherman@tulsaworld.com