For weeks I’ve been writing about all the changes that came to the Catholic Church through Vatican Council II in the ’60s – especially for us nuns, who were itching for the church to join the modern world. In just four short years we went from habited, blindly obedient, cloistered beings to intellectually curious, self-possessed, self-directed women ready to plunge in to help a hurting world. Quite a ride, I tell you.
It kind of feels funny, when you descend for two weeks or so into a past period of your life like I’m doing now, and all you experienced – the way you get right in there again and feel what you felt, remember the big insights you got, the parts of books you copied, the friendships that lasted, and even the songs…”yellow bird, high up in banana tree… you sit all alone like me” and… “where have all the flowers gone, long time passing…” “today while the blossoms still cling to the vine, I’ll taste your strawberries, I’ll drink your sweet wine…”
Writing is one heck of an interesting experience. It definitely does a number on time. Today I spooled out words for three hours straight and I was back in Canada when I went to school in London, Ontario, back to Marcel Gervais’s scripture class on the Book of Jonah and the humor of the biblical account and what a hoot Jonah was, who was supposed to be a prophet but ran away and ends up getting a free ride in the belly of a whale to the place where God told him to go in the first place.
Tongue River Canyon in Wyoming where I went to write yesterday. Flower is Indian Paintbrush.
Sister,
Do you think there is a chance that the shunning of the habit has perhaps gone a bit too far? I remember one of the funnier lines of the play was when you met with the chaplain and he asked about your habit, and you told him that the Vatican required “distinctive clothing,” to which he replied, “Well, I suppose you will interpret that however you like,” or something like that. But it seems that some religious have even gone so far as to do away with distinctive clothing, or regarding something as commonly worn by so many Christians as a cross to be “distinctive.” I don’t know, it just seems to me that the habit is such a beautiful outward manifestation of the inner commitment to Christ, and perhaps it is now more than ever that the world needs signs of people who shun the values of the world.
Just my thoughts