The Monastery Gift Shop: Opening doors and hearts

This story was produced through a partnership with Visit Dubois County

Sister Rosa Lee Koch likes to remember those moments of prayer that occurred in the monastery gift shop when she managed it.

There, among displays of crucifixes, ceramic sculptures, scented candles, rosaries and handmade items, she remembers taking visitors’ hands and praying with them.

“I considered it a ministry because you wouldn’t know how many times we had somebody come in and then ended up crying on our shoulders,” Sister Rosa Lee said.

She believed these guests had something on their hearts aching to be released, and the doors to the gift shop may have been easier to open than the ones into the sanctuary.

The shop began as a fundraiser. The lay board wanted to raise money for retiring sisters, and Sister Rosa Lee was appointed its first manager, though she had no retail experience.

“They were trying to imagine different ways that we could raise money for our retirement for our sisters because we had so many who were getting to that age,” she recalled. “We needed to set up some kind of endowment or something. So they came up with the idea that maybe we could start a gift shop.”

Experienced retailers helped her launch it. Joseph Story, a Dillard’s executive based in Louisville who served on the Sisters of St. Benedict board, helped create the new shop, which was located on the lower floor of the Event Hall.

Sister Rosa Lee worked with several business people who ran gift shops to help stock the new shop. Before leaving on her first buying trip, a lay committee member advised her. “Be sure to get some tasteful things,” Sister Rosa Lee remembered him saying.

“Since it was called For Heaven’s Sake, we kind of had an angel theme when we first opened,” she said. She came back with ceramic angels and other Catholic items, which joined stained-glass angels made by one of the sisters.

Most early stock came from the sisters themselves. “Sometimes as sisters would pray they would do things like pottery or make wreaths or something like that,” Sister Rosa Lee said.

One older sister, 95, raised and sold African violets in the shop. “She would write a little note, and we would stick that in the pot with the violets,” Sister Rosa Lee said. “And people just loved her African violets, and they loved her because of what she did.”

Sister Rosa Lee had worked in missions for 16 years and served in Guatemala and Peru. Through those connections, she brought handcrafted items from there to the shop as well.

Over the years, the items came with stories. Eventually, the shop started adding small cards with a saying or a signature from the sister who made them. “The people appreciated that,” Sister Rosa Lee said.

The Monastery Gift Shop, as it is now known, recently moved into the monastery building, providing a more direct connection to the monastery. A ribbon-cutting celebrated the new location on October 10.

Lay employees now run the shop day to day, though some sisters still volunteer. Angi Seffernick, director of monastery goods and services, oversees the gift shop and the bakery. She has managed the gift shop for 12 years and previously worked 16 years in the monastery’s communications department, where she worked hand in hand with the gift shop to develop advertising and create the catalogs.

The core Benedictine value of hospitality continues. “It’s part of our training for the clerks,” Angi explained. “One of the things we say is that this is the Sisters of Saint Benedict gift shop. We’re Benedictine, so we’re welcoming. That is the first kind of rule of being Benedictine.”

When conversations run long, no one is hurried along. At the entrance, a basket with blank cards welcomes visitors to add their prayers or concerns for the sisters to take up. They empty it daily, adding the requests to their prayers.

If someone needs a direct connection with a sister, the clerks can also help make it happen.

“It is definitely a mission,” Angi said about being there for anyone who walks through the doors.

The Monastery Gift Shop still carries many items made by the sisters. There are paintings, photographs, cards featuring their artwork, books, knitted items and more. The big sellers these days are the baked items from the monastery bakery. And the prayers continue even through packages of cookies, pretzels and fruitcake.

“We put on all of our bakery packages ‘Prayerfully prepared by the Sisters of Saint Benedict,’” Angi said. “There’s just a different mindset here compared to like, a business that’s just churning out loaves of bread. We really don’t do that. I mean, we’re very mindful about how we make things.”

Prayer is part of the process, whether before baking begins or at the end of the line, when the packages are sealed.

“We had a sweet sister who, for years and years, would say a little prayer as she was sealing up every package,” Angi said. “Very short, very to the point, but every package that she packaged had this little extra sentiment.”

The shelves also carry goods from other religious communities to support their ministries. Trappist jams from St. Joseph Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts, rank among the store’s top sellers, and soap from a Benedictine community in Clyde, Missouri, sells well in the shop and online.

Angi said many shoppers buy with gifts in mind, and that Catholic customers in particular respond to products connected to religious life.

The gift shop serves a dual role: sometimes it’s the monastery’s welcoming committee, and sometimes it’s where visitors stop to remember their visit as they are leaving.

Angi says it’s always fun, though. “The people that come in are delighted to be here, and so it’s fun to meet them and find out what brought them in,” she said. “We ask that question all the time. Where are you coming from?”

They come from all over. A pair from Ireland stopped by recently while touring churches and monasteries in the United States.

But the spirit of the Benedictine way of life that includes hospitality, listening, respect for others, stewardship and above all, an awareness of God, continues.

Sister Rosa Lee once held visitors’ hands in that small shop. Today, the shop’s welcome still reaches visitors at the door, and for some, it may be the first step inside.