Sister Janis Haustein, 91, recently celebrated 70 years as a School Sister of Notre Dame. The Red Wing native — who taught science and became an accomplished organist — resides at the Benedictine Living Community in Shakopee. She plays organ at nearby St. Mark for 5 p.m. Saturday Mass and heads over to practice a couple times a week.

“Age is just a number,” Sister Janis said. “I feel young at heart. I like to get involved and do a lot of things.”

Q) You entered the convent right after high school.

A) It was an easy path to follow. The only difficulty was the fact that my mom was a Lutheran and remained a Lutheran her whole life, and I think she found it hard. This was pre-Vatican II. We were only allowed four home visits during our lifetime. But whenever there was an opportunity, my parents came and visited me. Over time, it got to be better.

Q) When did you first learn to play organ?

A) As a teenager, I joined the choir and sang for Mass up in the choir loft, where I watched Sister play the organ. I got curious how the thing worked and started taking lessons when I was a sophomore.

The only time I could practice was the noon hour, so I would go over to the church and practice and get so carried away that I came late for school in the afternoon and (would) get a detention. But it turned out right because on graduation day, I got to play the organ processional for all the classmates to walk in, down the Sheldon Auditorium, the big theater downtown, and they had a master organ. That was the joke: You had to live through a detention or two but then could play at graduation.

Q) What do you like about the instrument?

A) It’s like having a whole orchestra in front of you. You can create different songs and different moods. There’s so much you can do with it.

Q) But it’s difficult.

A) You’ve got to have your hands and feet working together. This afternoon, when I was practicing, it was behaving very nicely. You feel like you’re making a lot of noise. It’s nice to just open up the pipes — the expression that we use is “dust the pipes off.”

This Sunday, I’m playing a prelude written by a French composer and based on the Magnificat. It’s kind of like my prayer to the Blessed Mother.

Q) You’re pouring everything into it. That’s a prayer!

A) That’s what I want it to be.

Q) What’s your secret to aging well?

A) Being active and doing a lot of things. Curiosity. Getting involved, working on environmental projects. Ninety-one doesn’t sound like how I feel. People who look at me say I must be late 60s or early 70s.

Q) What’s something you’re curious about now?

A) How to grow some plants! Somebody gave me one of these early plants that bloom in the spring, and I saved the bulbs, so I’m learning how to take care of them so maybe they’ll grow again.

The other big project in the plant area is the landscaping here. It wasn’t completely done, and the inspiration came to go to the administrator and ask: “Is one of the possibilities to make a butterfly garden?” I do butterfly monitoring.

That got approval, so next spring we’re going to start planting for a butterfly garden. Now I’m studying up on what plants are good, what kind of soil, what time of year, what colors will be suitable. This will be my winter reading. I read online, but I have a really good book that will have to go back to the library soon. I’m taking notes. We have several people involved in this. We call it the Butterfly Garden Committee. I guess I’m the organizer.

Q) Tell me more about butterfly monitoring.

A) Back when I was in Chicago, we had a certain Republican who was elected president, and he was not much of an environmentalist, and it made me angry, so I decided I would see what I could do that would help the environment. It turned out that there’s an environmental center through the Forest Preserver District in Chicago, so I spent time there and heard they needed somebody to monitor the butterflies. There is a national database where you go out and you identify them and count them and submit your data so they can keep track of what’s going on in the butterfly world.

Q) You countered your political rage with butterflies.  

A) I also monitor the nests of the Eastern Bluebirds. The environmental center had a couple dozen nests for the bluebirds, so I got a portion of them to take care of, and watch, and count when the little characters hatched.

Q) How lovely! You never became a mother, but you’re a caretaker to the bluebirds and butterflies.

A) It’s my meditation time, when you go out in the woods, and you see these little things and you marvel at them. I’ve been doing it in Mankato, since I came here, and the phenomena that I experienced here was a new butterfly that I had not met in Chicago called the hackberry. They explode, when all the eggs hatch. You get swamped by them when you walk by the route — like 75 or 80 can come at you all at once. It’s an otherworldly experience! To have all these little creatures explode up on you — it’s like all your little friends.

Our community of School Sisters of Notre Dame is a Laudato Si community. When it first came out, we spent a lot of time talking about it. It made me all the more a fan of Pope Francis, for sure — leading us in, opening up these doors, waking us up. What was more impressive was to hear all the folks at the Lutheran church I was still affiliated with saying the same thing.

Q) How does your time in nature help you connect with God?

A) You can walk along and pray as you’re walking — prayers of gratitude and thanksgiving. Our family home in Red Wing was on the Mississippi — we had the river and the bluffs. My aunt had a house on a hillside, and she could watch birds and talk about all the different birds that she saw. At that point, I thought I would wait for the kind of day where I could have that same kind of experience. So, it goes way back.

Q) And you’ve never lost your sense of wonder.

A) This is the first year I’ve had a chance to have a monarch egg and watch it hatch all the way through its living stages until it becomes a fully grown butterfly. It was a two-week process. All told, here in this house, we hatched five monarchs safely so they wouldn’t be lost anywhere in creation and sent them on their way to Mexico.

That was, for me, like making a retreat somewhere — and it didn’t cost anything. God must have such immense capacity for ingenuity to figure out how to make each one of these little characters so different.

Q) You’ve lived such a full life. What’s something you haven’t done yet but would like to try?

A) I’ve had a lot of adventures. I guess that comes with being curious.

They had a group in here last week called The Wild Rose Cloggers — women who do a mix of tap dancing and Irish dance. I would like to learn how to do a little bit of tap dancing yet. It’s on my bucket list.

When I was in kindergarten, my mother put me in a class for tap dancing, but I only did two lessons and that was it. Now I thought: “Well, my legs still work, so maybe I’ll give that a try.”

Q) You’re glorifying God by using the many gifts he has given you — and you have many.

A) I do have to admit that. It’s hard to say that.

Q) How did it feel to mark your 70th jubilee in July? 

A) I’m very grateful. I’m going through all the cards a second time and looking at them more carefully, from a distance, at what people have said and thanking them for some of the things they said. You can’t soak it all up at once.

Q) What do you know for sure?

A) Well, I know there are a few things I want to get done before I’m going to go to heaven. I’ve got a couple of projects that I want to accomplish. That’s about all.