Departure

     I left the Monastery of the Infant Jesus in November, 2006, two years and four months after I entered, and six months before I would have taken temporary vows. Not a day has passed since that I have not thought of my all too short life within those walls.
     My departure had nothing and everything to do with my relationship with God. During my last months, he gave me many graces, some in the form of heavy crosses; much new light of knowledge, a greater understanding of his love; in short, I felt closer to him than ever. Yet, too, there was the tiny seed of that other knowledge that grew steadily day by day, the knowledge that he wanted something else of me. I never doubted it was his will, not just mine, that brought me to the cloister, and my confidence on that score was confirmed by the prioress, my novice directress, and many of the other sisters. They and I felt I did have a monastic vocation, and perhaps I do still. But it became clear that God wanted me to be somewhere else in the meantime.
     When the prioress, Sr. Mary Annunciata, called me to her office to tell me she had concluded, after long weeks of prayer, it was best for me that I leave, she again said that she believed I had a vocation, but not with them and perhaps not with the Dominican order. She strongly suggested I try the Benedictines. My musical and literary gifts would be able to flourish with them, as they put great emphasis on the development and use of individual talent, more so than any other order. So why didn't I go to the Benedictines in the first place, you may ask? Precisely for that reason. From the very first whispers of my call, I wanted to find out who and what I was without my talents. They were and are a great part of that "who and what," but they also clouded the issue for me to such an extent that I no longer knew myself -- my whole self. My better self.
     There were many tears when I said goodbye to the sisters, theirs and mine. The bond of religion is a strong one, but the bond that cloistered contemplatives share is unique. Only we can truly understand why we have chosen to sacrifice our life in the world to give ourselves utterly and completely to God in prayer and penance for that same world. The contemplative vocation was, is, and always will be, something of an enigma to those who have never felt a calling to it. Many consider it an aberration, even un-Christian. Then again, how many thought Jesus was an aberration? How many still do? It is for those very people that the contemplative religious life exists at all. And it will exist till the end of earthly time.
     I took my prioress' advice, and after leaving the Monastery of the Infant Jesus, I visited the Benedictine community that I had had my eye on long before, ever since I began my discernment: the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Connecticut. . . .


UNDERSTANDING

Closing the door behind her,
autumn crispness cool upon
her now bare head, she clearly
sees the room she has just left.
Her mind recalls the soft white
of tunic and scapular
hanging limply on the hook,
the once flowing fall of veil,
still scented from her shampoo,
lying motionless on the
wooden chair. And now, pausing
just outside the cloister door,
she covers her ears to block
something she has not felt for
a long time -- the chilly wind.


But what is she taking away with her?
The proper way to fold a fitted sheet?
Folded properly, with patience, it fits
better on the shelf with the other sheets.
She understands the worth of that lesson.
She understands that freedom was found in
the scarcity of things, that prayers could speak
louder in silence, that a narrow cell
could not confine the heart. She has learned well.
She knows, too, that the simple veil she wore
protected her ears and mind from the chill.


["Understanding" was first published in Time of Singing]