"All you need is love, love, love…." The Beatles were amazing. Being a teen-going-on-adult in the 60's was amazing. Even more amazing when I read about that decade, than it was in actual experience. I lived on the fringes of the upheaval and attempts to change the world by so many of my generation. I had friends who were mainstream sub-culture, (Is that an oxymoron?) but I was not a real part of it. I never did drugs til I was over thirty, never marched or protested anything outside of singing popular folk songs in a coffee house in Newport. I was there but I wasn't. One friend was a freedom rider. He returned from the south one summer with dark knowledge in his eyes that he couldn't explain to me in words. He told me I was better off not knowing.
I could have been a Republican then. All I wanted was to get married, have kids and a washer-dryer combination. I'd wanted that for as long as I could remember. Changing the world wasn't on my agenda. Changing my world was. I approached it haphazardly: a college education here, an enlistment in the Navy there, finally catching a husband here, having a baby there. Frankly, I was out of it; moving blindly through my life, hoping for someone to come along and make everything all okay, and if not that, at least better.
Somewhere along the way I learned I had to be responsible for my own actions, decisions, happiness. Bummer. You mean Prince Charming isn't coming? Oh well, time to get a life. I worked hard and got one. It was pretty good. Then I moved out of my comfort zone and started offering service to those who had less than I did. Hello. Suddenly I was no longer living on the fringes. This was reality and it was better than anything I'd ever experienced. One thing led to another. I did more, I wanted more. Not more stuff, not more knowledge, not more tangible anything. More of the awe, I think. More of the sense of seeing Christ, of being Christ. That led here… to the convent. "Be careful what you ask for, little girl."
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3 comments:
I like your writing Sister Claire. Very fresh, very real. Every heard of the convent called Our Lady of the Rock on Shaw Island, WA? Are you a Benedictine Sister?
You know it is interesting you wrote to me today. I had a friend who was a sister of sorts and she told me that my husband whom I am divorcing 'should' or could be a deacon. Well this has been tormenting me, because in my tradition, divorced men can not be ordained. So I thought 'am I ruining his life'. And a Greek Abbess confirmed for me I was by telling me by divorcing him, I was causing him to sin!
So imagine my delight at finding your post on my blog.
Many have asked me if I have a monastic vocation. Well how could I with a 5 year old daughter?
I have to admit, I do dream of the 'right man' entering into my life and restoring everything to 'normal', meaning family life. I do not want to be an orthodox christian single mother!
Our Order is Episcopal and we follow a modified Augustinian Rule.
Although I don't know your reasons for divorcing, I'm supposing you have already been through any/all the reconciliation steps and for whatever reason, they didn't stick. I can't imagine how your decision can create a state of sin for him. Maybe it's an orthodox thing.
Claire
A woman should never marry a man. I can tell you that right now. I think the abbess was talking about continence. That is all I was, a vehicle for his continence. That is not true, but sometimes that is what I hear. Sometimes I feel I was married to him for his passion...not mine...which is why I am divorcing him. I finally woke up and realized life does not have to be this way!
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