Open to the Irony

I am open to the irony that the "prison" of the cloister will be my doorway to freedom.

I wrote those words a month before I moved into the convent on 113th Street. I was open, but with so many preconceived ideas of what life in community would be all about. I thought it would stretch me in ways I'd not been stretched, that it would take more courage to live in community than anything I'd ever done, that maybe everything I'd done before was only a dress rehearsal for this... the final choice. I was worried (a little) that others would see the decision as a cop out, an escape of weakness. That irony appealed to me as well.

Now I'm in my third year of this discernment process. it has been nothing like I thought it would be and has done everything I said it would do. How ironic is that?