RIVES JUNCTION, Mich. -- The beaded eggs made by the nuns take about four hours to complete; the beads are affixed to plastic eggs dipped in beeswax.
Mother Irene Obreja has no e-mail, no swing dances on Saturday night, and no TV or radio blasting presidential impeachment news.Instead, she has beads. And silence.
"All you here have so many things in the stores, and you can all afford to buy," she says shyly, concentrating on the meticulous task of pressing shiny red and green beads onto a beeswax egg, inventing a flowered pattern as she goes. "But here you are always rushing, no time to enjoy or stop to smell the flower."
The immigrant from northern Romania, 28, has an uncluttered life at the only traditional Romanian Orthodox monastery in the United States. Nestled on 50 acres of farmland in Rives Junction north of Jackson, Mich., the Dormition of the Mother of God Monastery is home to nine nuns and two priests. They maintain strict Romanian culture, religious life and language. There is no vow of silence, and the nuns have some free time, but they shun most modern distractions like radio, TV and computers in order to focus on the two most important tasks in their lives -- work and prayer.
They also preserve traditional craft-making skills like creating the intricate beaded eggs, which take four hours each to make. In Romanian Orthodoxy, nuns are called "Mother," use no last names and live in monasteries.
"We live in an orthodox way," says Mother Gabriella Ursache, who helped found the monastery in 1987. "It is a very disciplined life, but it is more relaxed than some orders."
And more famous.
The monastery is featured in "The Whole Heaven Catalog" by Marcia and Jack Kelly (Bell Tower/Harmony, $18). The new book gives a rare glimpse into communities where cooperative living has flourished. It profiles products and services from fruitcake to software, including the sisters' made-to-order $20 beaded eggs.
The monastery also makes candles, priestly vestments and prayer ropes used in religious services, icons and bread. It also offers spiritual retreats. With an estimated 50,000 Romanians living in southeastern Michigan -- the largest concentration outside New York -- they have plenty of visitors. They also appeal to Michigan's large population of Orthodox Ukranians, Russians, Serbians and Greeks.
The eggs, it turns out, are only part of the story.
Thrills in Rives Junction have been few since the 1960s, when the train route through town dried up. The monastery and nuns in their black velvet caps are by far its most exotic feature.
"I sometimes see them down at the post office," says Kay Coley, who's lived here 30 years and is co-owner of Red Barn Auction and Furniture Sales. "This town's in a time warp; we're back in the '50s, but we don't mind the sisters."
Tom Hosler, owner of Rives Quality Meats just down the street from the monastery, knows Mother Gabriella and occasionally gets business from pilgrims and visitors (though seldom from the vegetarian sisters). Town residents often see the nuns working in their garden along Rives Eaton Road, and their chiming chapel bells ring into the distance.
The monastery is tax-exempt, says Linda Moore, Rives Township treasurer, but she has heard no complaints about the sisters, except once.
"When they put in their cemetery, a few people didn't want to live next to it," she says. "But the people in a cemetery are going to give you less trouble than somebody else might."
How did the monastery end up in tiny Rives Junction, a zillion miles from . . . most places?
"God brought us here," Mother Gabriella says.
Shut your eyes, and you could be in Romania.