Forever and Ever, Amen: Becoming a Nun in the Sixties
By Sister Karol Jackowski. Riverhead Books (New York, 2007). 288 pp., $23.95.

Don't Chew Jesus! A Collection of Memorable Nun Stories
By Danielle Schaaf and Michael Prendergast. BenBella Books (Dallas, 2006). 225 pp., $20.

For many readers it will be a walk down memory lane as they open the pages of two recent releases.

In "Forever and Ever, Amen: Becoming a Nun in the Sixties," Sister Karol Jackowski chronicles the first seven years of her life as a Holy Cross nun, beginning in 1964. In this poignant and witty memoir, she describes how she left her fun-filled days of high school for a rigid schedule that began with prayer at 5 a.m. and ended with silence at 8 p.m. and lights out at 9 p.m.

It was a life that Sister Jackowksi acknowledges was one of "total self-denial" and very different from that of her fellow college students on the campus of St. Mary's in South Bend, Ind.

When she entered religious life, she did so with 49 other young women. When she professed her final vows in 1972 there were seven. Today, that number is down to three.

Her book details what it was like for her community to experience all of the upheaval of the Second Vatican Council. "These were revolutionary times in the sisterhood," she writes. "Voices wrapped for years in silence suddenly began to speak; sisters wanted freedom to make personal choices and decisions about where to live, who to live with and what work to do."

She adds that some sisters formed new communities such as the Sisters for Christian Community, to which she now belongs.

Readers might want to know more about this change in her life after being a Holy Cross sister for 33 years, but that is not the focus of this work. Rather, she uses the pages to describe a mysterious life from a bygone era.

She portrays it with a sense of humor as she describes one postulant using up all the cream at the table and another, after enduring it for four days, calling her, loudly, a "cow." The sisters had to maintain silence for the rest of the day.

However, this isn't just a diary of misdeeds and mess-ups. Sister Jackowski shows some beautiful moments in religious life as she writes about being able to appreciate silence and prayer. She also writes about the joy of sisterhood, noting "Even those who drove me crazy felt like sisters, and when the first ones decided to leave, or were sent home, we mourned the loss."

The beginning of Sister Jackowski's religious life was turbulent and difficult, yet filled with funny and beautiful moments. She does a lovely job in describing them and making readers appreciate the many women who joined religious life. And she creates a very deep appreciation for those who stayed.

"Don't Chew Jesus! A Collection of Memorable Nun Stories" is a fun book with a clever cover. It is made to look like a black, marbled composition book. And it is filled, like a child's diary, with tales of Catholic schoolchildren.

Danielle Schaaf and Michael Prendergast were classmates in a Catholic grammar school in Florida. After an evening of shared stories they decided to seek out other memories from the "baby boomer" age bracket. This led to 400 submissions from men and women who attended Catholic schools before 1970.

Their book is organized into 10 chapters with such clever titles as "Knuckle Cracks and Group Slaps" and "Eyes in the Back of Their Habits."

There are some stereotypical stories, and the various typefaces sometimes confuse. One is left wondering who is telling the story at times. Still, the stories themselves delight and hearken back to a day that anyone who ever sat in a desk in a Catholic school in that era will recall vividly.

For example, they write about school fundraisers and that "teaching children how to sell World's Finest Chocolates was as natural to sisters as explaining how to diagram a sentence."

This book certainly shows some of the lowlights of that era when students were mocked as "babies" and humiliated in front of their classmates.

However, the book mixes in several fond memories of teachers who made a difference in the lives of their students.

The authors describe this book as a "link to our heritage" and a way of preserving "the dedication, passion and influence" of the sisters who taught them and thousands of other children.

It is a memory book that is sure to bring a strong response from the reader and a chance to look back at another time and way of life.

---CNS Peggy Weber is a columnist and reporter with The Catholic Observer newspaper in Springfield, Mass.