And Then There Were Nuns

by Jane Christmas

  I’ve never understood why atheists waste their time debating the existence of God. People who get foamy mouthed over something they insist doesn’t exist in the first place strike me as being rather shaky about their convictions. If you don’t believe in something, why give it a second thought?

  God-bashing is nothing new, but in this latest incarnation, the voices for the defense were weaker. No one courageously spoke up and told the New Atheists to push off and pick on a deity their own size. The churches just sucked it up and shrugged.

  Now, some argue that to fight back is un-Jesus-like, but to that I say, “Phooey.” Sure, Jesus refused to engage his enemies, as when he appeared before Pontius Pilate or when people taunted him and asked him to prove he was the Son of God. But he could also open a can of whoop-ass, as he demonstrated in the temple when he screamed blue murder at those who had turned a house of God into a marketplace, and another time when he called the Pharisees hypocrites after they tried to trap him with a trick question.

  Defending your turf shows that you stand for something, right? Other faiths have the guts to speak up when their faith is slammed: Why can’t the Christians?

  It was the sort of stuff that stirred my militant side. If no one was going to defend God, then I would. Screw those New Atheists. I’m going to fight for my faith. I’ll be Jane the Warrior Nun! A vision materialized in my mind of me standing bravely on a hilltop, the wind fluttering the veil of my wimple while I brandished a crucifix at the approaching horde of faith bashers.

  Which is precisely when I began to panic. As I stood on the doorstep of my newly embraced vocation, part of me was afraid of not being deemed nun material; the other part was afraid that I might be exactly the sort of candidate that a religious order would want.

  I pressed the bell. Seconds later, the door clicked open.

  For some reason I had expected to be met by an oversized and overworked matron thrusting a balled-up smock at me and barking orders to get changed and report to the kitchen on the double to peel carrots for dinner. The reality was alarmingly different. I stepped into a tranquil reception area of modern sofas and plump chairs upholstered in cheerful chintz and arranged convivially around a polished mahogany coffee table. The walls were white and decorated with a few watercolors depicting pleasant landscapes. The air smelled fresh and lacked the odor of sanctimony.

  An impish woman with a bouncy walk and a broad smile approached me. She was dressed in civvies—a beige tunic over a white t-shirt—but her nametag identified her as Sister Anne. She handed me a thick folder with my name on it and began telling me something important, but my senses were still taking in this strange environment. This doesn’t look or feel like a convent. Is this the right place?

  Another sister wandered by. Beneath her warm smile sprouted a considerable growth of chin hair. I smiled back while my brain shouted: What? No waxing or threading here?

  “OK? Got it?” Sister Anne asked.

  “Pardon?”

  “St. Elizabeth. That’s the cell—the room—you’ve been assigned. Here, let me show you again.”

  Without a smidgen of irritation, she ran her finger along a poster-sized schematic layout of the convent’s guest wing and then slowly—she must have thought I either was deaf or had arrived from Stupidville—repeated the instructions.

  “Up the stairs and turn to your left,” she said. “Got it?”

  “Um, yes. Thanks.” I started to walk away, still bewildered, and then asked, “What about a key, you know, to the room?”

  Sister Anne let out a high-pitched giggle, as if that was the most insane thing anyone had ever said to her. “We don’t use keys. Your things are safe here.”

  I lugged my suitcase up a stairwell, turned left at the top, and followed a narrow white corridor carpeted in dark gray to the door marked “St. Elizabeth.”

  My cell didn’t look like what you would refer to as a “cell.” Sun was streaming in through a large window, and like the reception area, the room was bright, airy, and modern. Measuring about ten feet by twelve feet, it easily accommodated the essentials: a tall chest of drawers, a desk and chair, and a bedside table all made from the same blond wood. An Eames-style chair, a footstool, and a pole lamp tucked to one side filled the area in front of the window. To the right of the window, a single bed was stacked with crisp white linens. There was a note instructing me to make up the bed. The bedside table held a small lamp, a digital clock, and a Bible. On the other side of the room, near the door, white towels hung from a chrome rod next to a small wall-mounted sink. The walls were white and bare except for a small mirrored-front medicine cabinet above the sink, a watercolor of a Muskoka landscape above the desk, and a small, slim crucifix that faced the bed. The large closet contained a clothing rail with a motley assortment of hangers—wire, wood, plastic, and crocheted.

  I parked my suitcase at the end of the bed, then picked up a black binder from the desk. Its cover displayed an icon of St. Elizabeth of Hungary.

  Coincidentally, my grandmother was Hungarian and was also named Elizabeth; in fact, we nicknamed her St. Elizabeth because she was such a devout and saintly creature, constantly baking or sewing something for her church and for a variety of charitable organizations.

  I flipped to the short biography of St. Elizabeth inserted into the binder.

  She was born in 1207, a princess, the daughter of Andrew II of Hungary. At the age of fourteen she married Ludwig IV, who had just been crowned king of Thuringia, a region of modern-day Germany. By all accounts it was a happy marriage, and with her husband’s encouragement and support, Elizabeth not only cared for their own growing brood but also established homes for the elderly, the orphaned, and the abused. The marriage was only into its sixth year when Ludwig, en route to join the Sixth Crusade, died of the plague. Elizabeth joined the Franciscans as a lay associate and adopted a life of poverty while she continued to work in the hospices she founded. At the incredibly young age of twenty-four, she died from a combination of overwork and a virus. Four years later, in 1235, the church declared her a saint.

  St. Elizabeth’s feast day, I noted from the bio, was the same as my grandmother’s birth and death dates.

  Coincidence? Is this a sign that I’m on the right path? I wondered what my Roman Catholic grandmother would have made of her argumentative Anglican granddaughter coming to a nunnery. Maybe she was smiling benignly down at me, pleased that I had embraced my faith so seriously. Or maybe she was appalled that I had breached sacred territory: I could hear her admonishing me in her broken English, “You shame yourself!”

  ( 2:ii )

  FOR SOMEONE with the title Reverend Mother, Sister Elizabeth Ann did not fit my image of a convent’s mother superior. She was a few years younger than I, with short, wiry ginger hair and a freckled face that displayed a warm, mischievous smile. Nor was she dressed in a habit, unless the sisterhood’s habit happened to be a beige khaki A-line skirt with matching jacket worn over a sage T-shirt. She had Birkenstocks on her feet and a pager on her hip. She greeted each of us with a happy nod as we entered the room.

  Nine of us, ranging in age from early thirties to mid-sixties, had been admitted to the Women at a Crossroads program. We entered the room weighted down with trepidation and hugging to our bosoms the thick navy blue folders that each of us had been given upon arrival. Perhaps we were all wondering whether by month’s end we would be wearing habits and clutching signed ironclad pledges to the sisterhood. Months earlier, everything had seemed so clear, and I had been suffused with a sense of purpose about this new life. Now, my so-called purpose seemed more like recklessness, as if I was about to unlock Pandora’s box and unleash something resembling that freaky scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

  “Good morning,” Sister Elizabeth Ann purred. “We’re delighted to have you with us. Before we go any further, let’s begin with a prayer, shall we?”

  Heads bowed and eyes closed on cue.

  “Heavenly Father...”

  Sister Elizabet
h Ann’s calm voice flowed over my pummeled psyche like warm caramel. The tension from my secular job that had made me rigid and paranoid began to ease as Sister Elizabeth Ann’s prayer massaged my stress: joints unclenched, the Gordian knot of anxiety and fear that had resided in my stomach the last few years began to loosen, my muscles awakened, my spine straightened, and my ears began to detach themselves from my shoulders. There was a time, years earlier, when I had been able to cavalierly deflect the slings and arrows of the daily grind and clamber over the walls of my self-doubt. But the projectiles in the form of daily humiliations at the office had become harder lately; the arrow piercings to my self-confidence, deeper. The emotional armor I had forged was supposed to be temporary, but over time it had welded itself so tightly to my being that it was what now held me together. With every syllable that Sister Elizabeth Ann uttered, the armor started to loosen, and it felt so good that I had to restrain myself from emitting a loud “Ahhhhhhh!”

  With head still bowed, I cracked open my eyes to check out the others in the group. We had all been sent instructions about what not to wear at the convent: no sleeveless tops, no shorts, no jeans, no skirts above the knee, all of which deep-sixed about 80 percent of my summer wardrobe. Some of the women had their own interpretation of the dress code, deciding that “no sleeveless tops” did not mean no sleeveless dresses. Shawls or light sweaters were layered over these or brought along in case objections were voiced.

  Sandals had been given the all-clear, thank goodness, but as I scanned everyone’s footwear, I inwardly gasped: I was the only one with nail polish on her toes, or rather the only one wearing a shade that was the color of hellfire. Sparks might just as well have been shooting from the tips of my toes and devils doing the can-can with their pitchforks.

  My face flushed. I tucked my feet under my chair and hoped no one had noticed. A few weeks later, when I upended the bottle of nail polish, I noticed the name of the shade: Friar, Friar, Pants on Fire. Not the best choice for someone hoping to embrace the life of a contemplative nun.

  I returned to Sister Elizabeth Ann’s prayer, but my mind had the attention span of a three-year-old.

  The morning sunlight from another torridly hot summer day slashed through the vertical blinds and splayed itself in long, straight fingers of gold on the beige Berber carpet. My mind bubbled with a gazillion questions: How hot is it outside? Will we have any of our sessions outside? Did I pack sunscreen? How old is this convent? Do nuns miss sex? What was I thinking when I put on this garish nail polish?

  Then, with the inconsequential questions out of the way, the Big Question stormed to the front of my thoughts, hands on hips, and blared, Excuse me, but what in hell’s name are you doing in a convent anyway? My brain erupted into a vision of flashing red sirens, shrieking alarms, and urgent “Mayday!” commands as it scrambled for an answer. My heart rate sped up; a cold sweat beaded my forehead. I was ready to flee the room, but then the Voice Within floated serenely into the scene, silencing the sirens and the brain babble, firmly reassuring all assembled that my entire life had been leading me here. This is exactly where she should be.

  I relaxed and returned once more to Sister Elizabeth Ann.

  She was talking about orientation now, an appropriate subject for her, given that before entering religious life, she had worked as a forester. She loved the outdoors, particularly the wild regions of Northern Ontario, and she told us she was happiest and at her most peaceful when she was camping.

  “Camping” is not a word to which I respond positively, but Sister Elizabeth Ann’s description suddenly sent my thoughts back to the pilgrimage I had taken in Spain several years earlier on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela—I had met Colin there, in fact—where I had experienced the delicious freedom that comes from being without possessions, responsibility, and conformity, and where I came to understand that the more I tried to fit in with society, the more distant I became from my true self. And yet nothing says conformity more than a nunnery. What was I doing here?

  Orientation, Sister Elizabeth Ann continued, has both spiritual and practical connotations. As a noun, “orient” means “east”; as a verb, it means “face east.” She asked us to consider our presence in the program within that context: Were we here to root ourselves and prepare for a new journey, or were we here to focus on a faith that took root in the East?

  “As you continue through this period of discernment, this challenge—because it is a challenge—keep in mind that silence is key so you can listen to God,” said Sister Elizabeth Ann. “We have a tendency to fill up God with our prayers, but we don’t give God time to speak back to us.”

  By listening deeply and earnestly, she said, we would be able to discern whether we were choosing God or whether God was choosing us. In the monastic life, you do not enter a monastery or convent on your own instruction but on God’s.

  “Listening can instruct us, but it’s often hard out there,” she bowed her head toward the window where the light was streaming in, “to hear yourself think, let alone hear what God is saying.”

  We all nodded agreement.

  “Pay attention to yourself. Life is about our willingness to change and take risks, and we get those cues from our hearts and our intuition. Likewise, and this is just as important, pay attention to your overreactions: when someone gets under your skin, ask yourself why that is. What have they stirred up? That can provide clues about who you are. To be true to yourself, you need to listen. As St. Augustine said, ‘Behold what you are; become what you see.’”

  Wow. A place that understood and practiced intuition, that spoke unabashedly about God, and that quoted the saints rather than a politician or a departmental head was exactly where I wanted to be. My enthusiasm and confidence surged again. I did not necessarily have to be Jane the Warrior Nun, but I could find a place among like-minded people and live out the rest of my days focusing on my faith and on concentrated prayer.

  I glanced around the circle at my fellow discerners. I got the sense that they were a lot like me: high achievers, hard on themselves, eager to mine the trenches of our nature to discover what it was that was missing in our lives; the wherefore and the why of this desperate longing within us. To get there, we would need to defrost that part of ourselves that had become frozen under an icy layer of distraction and disappointment.

  “At the heart of discernment is the unmasking of your ego,” Sister Elizabeth Ann continued.

  We shifted uncomfortably in our seats. We knew we had flaws, but we weren’t about to expose our jagged edges and trauma-filled journeys to one another. Not yet, anyway. So we spent the next two hours doing the female thing of sniffing the air for kindred spirits and dropping threads of vulnerability into the conversation to see if they would be picked up and spooled by a sympathetic soul.

  It became quickly apparent that a few of the women—two were priests, two were theology scholars—were more knowledgeable than the rest of us in quoting passages from the Bible or summoning a quote from a theologian. When someone mentioned, say, John’s gospel or the Book of Isaiah, the clever ones deftly flipped to the correct part of the Bible, while the biblically challenged (like me) had to first consult the table of contents to see if it was in the Old Testament or the New Testament and then locate the proper page. By then, the conversation had usually moved on.

  It was also clear that we were at different stages in our faith and had different ways of approaching God. One older woman with short brown hair and glasses perched on the end of her nose quoted heavily from modern writers such as Jean Vanier and Philip Yancey; a youngish, skinny woman with long red hair referred to her “personal relationship with Jesus Christ,” a phrase that makes me cringe and want to blurt out, “Really? That’s not what He told me.” (There is a smug, evangelical ring to that phrase. The other phrase that rankled was “the Good News,” as in “Let’s pray for the Good News of Christ on Earth.” Wasn’t it all “good news”? What was the “bad news”?) I pegged her for a relative newbi
e to the faith scene. Like former smokers, they are quick to proselytize in order to expiate their sins, which can be endearing as well as pain-in-the-ass annoying. I dug my fingers into my thigh to stop my cynicism, and to remind myself that I was at least in a place where the words “God” and “Jesus” could be said without the room erupting into scoffs or someone huffing that her human rights were being violated.

  The talk that first day wasn’t all religion: there were practicalities to go over.

  Sister Elizabeth Ann asked us to take out the grid-format schedules that had been tucked into our thick folders.

  When Benedict of Nursia was setting up his monastery at Monte Cassino at the turn of the sixth century, he recognized that even religious folks could be consummate lazybones. It was one thing to chat all day with God, but someone had to run the place, and Benedict had no intention of getting stuck with all the cooking and cleaning. He came up with a brilliant and sensible schedule that has been adopted by almost every Christian monastic community since. The days were organized around eight periods of communal worship, called offices, during which prayers would be recited, psalms chanted, hymns sung, and the Bible read. The offices—vigils, lauds, prime, terce, sext, none, vespers, compline—were the pillars of the monastic day, while the periods in between were for work, study, meals, and recreation.

  The Sisters of St. John the Divine had scaled back Benedict’s version to four daily offices: morning prayer or matins, Eucharist at noon, evening prayer, and compline. I was not familiar with compline, but as I was to find out, the term comes from the Latin completorium, or completion, which is rather apropos for the final office of the day.

  I stared at the schedule in my hand. Oh dear. Convent life was more regimented than I expected. There were no blocks marked “free time” unless sleeping was considered free time; no segments marked “Swan around cloister.” And what were these bits marked “chores” and “work”? A rest period was indicated, but it was only one hour and fifteen minutes. Classes were in the morning, but the timetable did not specify what they were about.