Carmelites will consecrate new Stella Maris shrine at monastery.

On a hill at the end of a long driveway off Highway 1 just south of Carmel, a large structure looks out to the ocean beyond Monastery Beach. A cranelated belltower can be seen from the road, peeking over a grove of trees. This is the church of Our Lady Mediatrix of All Graces and St. Therese. It is the monastery home of Carmelite nuns, women who have retreated from the world to dedicate their lives to prayer.

Their lives are well ordered. It was the death of three elderly sisters in 2005 that troubled the Reverend Mother Teresita, in charge of the monastery and the sisters who live there. For 75 years, the nuns who had lived and died there have been buried there in consecrated grounds. There was no more room in the crypt.

Meanwhile, Patricia Golmon, a local landscape designer, had just lost both of her parents, who died within a few months of each other. Her mother and father had been devoted Catholics with a special relationship to the monastery, where they attended mass. As a memorial, the designer decided to donate a pair of large antique wrought iron gates that had belonged to her parents, and spoke with the Reverend Mother about her donation.

Accepting the donation and discussing the placement of the gates, the Reverend Mother told the designer about her dilemma and showed some preliminary sketches of a new burial area that could be created in the cloistered courtyard within the monastery. Soon, Golmon was involved with a project that would change her life and deeply affect many others.

A large courtyard within the cloistered area now is a lovely setting where their future burial sites are integrated into pathways and flowerbeds where the sisters walk and pray. Golmon used decomposed granite to create the pathways and found that there was enough left over to use in the public area at the front of the monastery, where the original grottos and walkways had become a tangled undergrowth after 50 years of neglect.

Working with Pedro Valencia, the monastery gardener, and his men, Golmon cleared the undergrowth, found and renovated a path created decades ago, pounded the golden decomposed granite into walkways, and created seating areas with shrines where visitors can sit and pray in the lovely surroundings.  John Clark, a local contractor, donated his time to work with them. Arborist Peter Quintanilla volunteered to thin and trim the trees, opening the monastery to the ocean view.

This reconnection with the ocean sparked an idea.

 ~ ~ ~

Mary Star of the Sea, Mary Guide of Mariners, North Star, Guiding Light, Our Lady Help of Sailors, Stella Maris…people who are lost at sea, or have somehow lost their way, long have asked for her intercession, whispered her name. Century upon century, billions of prayers have entreated Mary, mother of Jesus, to guide a poor soul to safe harbor.

The original Carmelite monastery, Stella Maris, is situated on Mount Carmel, overlooking the ocean in Haifa, Israel. (It was the resemblance between Point Lobos and this Haifa site that caused the Carmelite friars on Vizcaino’s expedition in 1602 to propose the name Carmel for this area.) Golmon was struck with the idea that a shrine to Stella Maris belonged in this place.

She found a very old statue of Our Lady adorned with abalone shells in a neglected area of the monastery and brought it to the front, near the entrance where visitors pass to reach the church. She needed a little fishing boat and called around and Robert Lewis, of Quarter Deck Marine Supply in Monterey, found her an old one. The owner donated and delivered it.

Golmon searched for pylons and hemp rope to surround the shrine and found a local source—Tom Nason and his family, of the Ventana Ranch Company.

Tom Nasons, who is a member of the Essalen tribe, described to Golmon how his family lived and fished on what are now the monastery grounds. She realized the abalone shells the sisters often found in their gardens were from Nason’s ancestors.

The Nasons brought a big boom truck to move the boat into place, donating this labor as well as pylons and rope, and brought large rocks from remote areas on tribal land. Declining an invitation to enter the church, Nason acknowledged the spiritual nature of the monastery but stretched his arms to the land and sea, his sacred place.

Now the public grounds invite exploration, teak benches and large pottery donated by other generous people offer a place for meditation.

This Sunday, a priest will bless the shrine and the grounds. For many, especially Patricia Golman, the blessings have already been evident. “This has changed my life,” She says. “There is so much giving and so much love in people.”  

A NEW SHRINE TO OUR LADY, STELLA MARIS protector of mariners and fishermen, will be blessed following a procession on Sunday, Nov. 19, just after 9am mass, at the church of the Carmelite Monastery, a quarter mile south of Rio Road on Highway 1. The grounds are open to the public daily until 4:30pm.