And Then There Were Nuns (30 page)

It occurred to me then how much I would miss not being a part of this if I disappeared behind the walls of a convent. Would I be content to pray for these people and for this life in my intercessions, or would I prefer to be in the thick of things, where I could muck in with them and pray alongside them? The hurly-burly of life is exhausting and maddening, but it is also invigorating, and a rather large part of me needed that stimulation.

A year of wearing virtual nun's weeds of black, brown, and gray and nearly three months living in the monochromatic-toned world of the Lenten cloister began to fall away from me. It was like regaining my sight.

I got up and walked along the main artery, and at a side lane, I came across a boutique with a riotous display of clothing in its window. I could not resist. Or rather, I did not resist. Among the racks of gypsy skirts with their Kaffe Fassett–like explosion of variegated patterns and textures, one caught my eye.

It's not exactly nun wear,
the Voice Inside warned as I held the skirt against my body and admired it in the shop's full-length mirror.

And I'm not exactly a nun,
I shot back.

When I emerged from the shop, the sun was beaming full strength. Everything around me was so intense and alive with laughter and movement that I had to sit down and catch my breath.

Why can't monasticism be a wee bit more colorful? Surely embracing color and being devoted to God aren't mutually exclusive.

I wanted my monasticism with a side order of materialism. Would that make me a material monastic? A monastic materialist?

The bus back to Whitby deposited me at a garden center at the far end of the priory grounds. I walked through lonely and uneven fields of wheat stubble as dusk descended. A grove of poplar trees, their bare limbs uplifted, seemed to hail me in greeting. Between their thin branches, the backdoor light near the priory kitchen twinkled “welcome home.” I sped up my pace, one hand clutching my overnight bag, the other a shopping bag of new clothes.

( 6:xi )

A GUEST
arrived at the Priory: John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York.

In simple terms, the Archbishop of York is the Church of England's number two. His jurisdictional responsibility covers the territory north of York, whereas the Archbishop of Canterbury looks after Anglican matters south of York. Matters pertaining to the Anglican Church outside Britain fall mainly in Canterbury's domain. It's all very Anglican and therefore completely confusing and unsatisfactory.

The Archbishop of York had arrived at St. Hilda's to conduct a visitation, which is basically an audit to ensure that the Order of the Holy Paraclete was sticking to its mission and hadn't branched out into arms smuggling or wasn't running a casino.
Although, come to think of it, there's an idea for a new revenue stream...

Archbishop Sentamu sat across from me at dinner. He appeared to be a hearty, good-natured man. He had a shaved head that revealed a hint of gray stubble and a charming gap between his front teeth. His deep magenta cassock looked rich against his black skin and set off the hand-painted pectoral cross of wood that hung from his neck.

Sentamu—he prefers people to refer to him by his surname—came to the U.K. from Uganda, where he had practiced law. His judicial independence caught the attention of Idi Amin, who threw him in jail and had him beaten. When he was released, Sentamu fled to England, studied theology, and was ordained a priest in 1979. He was appointed Archbishop of York in 2005.

Dinner that day was a “talking meal.” There were so many things I wanted to talk to Sentamu about—the attitude toward female clergy, the redacted sign boards I had seen outside Anglican churches on the Isle of Wight, the lack of cohesion within the Church of England, the church's attitudes toward religious orders—but this was not the time or place. Instead, I told him how much I liked the chapel at Bishopthorpe Palace.

“Ah, you mean the St. Paulinus and St. Hilda Chapel!” he exclaimed in a deep, booming voice. It was the sort of voice given to exclamation marks.

“I wasn't aware it had a name,” I stammered.

“It didn't, until recently. In seven hundred years no one had bothered to give it one, so I did!”

When the Archbishop learned I was from Canada, he regaled those of us sitting near him with the story of his visit a few years earlier to a conference in Winnipeg.

“It rained the entire time—all week! Rain, thunder, lightning! Never experienced anything like it. At one point we wondered whether God was trying to tell us something!”

I remarked that Winnipeg was not known for its fair weather and that the city is nicknamed “Winterpeg” on account of its bitter, snowy winters.

Suddenly I felt a little sad for Winnipeg—some cities just cannot get a break from the ridicule of outsiders—so I related a positive anecdote about how a Canadian serviceman on his way to England had impulsively purchased a small black bear and named it Winnie, after his adopted hometown of Winnipeg. It was the First World War, and when the serviceman, arriving with his unusual pet in England, discovered that he was being sent onward to France, he donated Winnie to the London Zoo. Frequent visitors to the zoo happened to be A.A. Milne and his only son, Christopher Robin. So captivated were they by Winnie that Christopher named one of his toy bears after it. Thus was born Winnie-the-Pooh.

Well, I blush at the memory of how transfixed my tablemates were by this story. Sentamu himself let out an enthusiastic “Incredible!”

Afterwards, a few sisters who had been seated at the adjoining tables cornered me in the kitchen and begged to know what I had said to capture the attention of the Archbishop of York.

( 6:xii )

IF SISTER
Patricia had not become a nun, it is quite possible that she would have become a goth. She was fascinated by goths and by the subculture lifestyle.

The previous day I had wandered into the Whitby Pavilion to discover that the place had been turned into a veritable goth mall. You know you're on your way to reaching your nun potential when you encounter men wearing more makeup than you own and who are able to apply it with more skill than you ever could. It was depressing.

I mentioned the goths to Sister Patricia as we started out for what was intended to be a short walk. She stopped in her 85-year-old tracks, and her hands began fluttering: “The goths are in town? Oh! We must go into Whitby and see them. Right now!”

She loved the costumes, preferring the Edwardian goths to the vampire-cult version. “They look rather harsh,” she said diplomatically. As we waited at a traffic light, a tall, husky man stood beside her in a long black leather coat, a spiked dog collar sans shirt, black leather trousers, and black platform boots with studs and spurs. What was this guy's inner life like? Was he a cerebral type, perhaps an aficionado of Gorey and Poe, with a helping of Lovecraft and Gaiman thrown in for lighter fare? Did he hold down a regular day job—an investment banker perhaps?—and don his goth gear on weekends, or was this a full-time personality? When he raised his arm to brush back his curtain of dark brown hair, his sleeve retracted and exposed two bracelets—one of thick brown leather with Iron Maiden's logo burned into it, the other of instantly recognizable pink silicone.
Mother, sister, lover?
I said a quick prayer.

Along Church Street, near Sanders Yard, an Edwardian goth couple was posing for the tourists. The woman wore a fitted black lace-trimmed jacket over a black ruffled-lace dress with a bodice that had its work cut out for it keeping a set of creamy breasts in place. Her hat was a frothy confection of black lace, black feathers, and red ribbons. Her partner was attired in black breeches and boots and a mottled purple ankle-length waistcoat topped by a tri-cornered black and gold hat.

“Now
that's
lovely,” said Sister Patricia, clapping in enthusiastic approval.

We repaired to a pretty café in Sanders Yard for tea and cake and sat for a while in a kind of blissful sugar stupor, watching people watching us—it is surprising how many people gawk at the sight of a nun—or turning our attention to young parents helping their tots in and out of strollers and jackets. Oh, how I remember the days of directing squirmy, reluctant arms into stiff coats and snowsuits as chubby legs kicked impatiently to be released. A family with older children came into the café to take a break from goth watching, and suddenly I felt homesick for my own brood. I wondered what they were up to. Would they ever visit unusual places like Whitby? Would they ever feel compelled to make journeys that might help them reconcile themselves with God? A few years earlier, I had taken them to the Bahamas as a sort of “last family holiday.” I had never been able to afford to take them away together before, and now I wished I had been less careful with my money and more reckless about traveling as a family.

( 6:xiii )

EARLY ONE
morning in mid-March, after ten hours of solid, blissful sleep, I opened my eyes, and without any sort of prompting or prior knowledge of what I was about to do, I spoke aloud to the ether: “I am not going to be a nun.” Full stop.

I turned my head toward the wall and let my tears fall until they soaked my pillow. The disappointment was crushing.

For more than a year and a half I had pursued this path with all I could offer. I left my family, gave up a steady job, jeopardized a romance, and alienated some friends just so that I could seize the brass ring of my spirituality. I had been so certain of its veracity, so determined to square my life and lay a new foundation for my future, but even the most fanciful side of my personality had to admit that I was forcing myself into something that was unnatural for me. It was one thing to be an elastic monastic and another to be a spiritual contortionist.

Why isn't it meant to be?
I wailed petulantly to God.

But I knew why; I had just been too stubborn to concede defeat.

It had nothing to do with my commitment to God or my failure to adapt to community life. Nor did it have anything to do with my marital status—I had met a few nuns my age who were divorced with grown children and had taken easily to a nun's life. It was my inability—no, let's grind that down to more honest terms—my unwillingness to play by the rules. The disciplined routine clashed with my nature, and it was breaking me apart.

There had been small clues that pointed to my reluctance to unequivocally embrace religious life. When I returned from my walks, I had begun to stall at the little wooden gate leading to the back door of the priory and would often then set off on another long walk as a way to delay my return.

I took more and more walks of greater distances and greater endurance. One day I walked all the way to Lythe, a small village above Sandsend. The long, steep road that twisted up to the little church of St. Oswald's had nearly winded me, but I hadn't cared; I needed to hear my heart pounding to know that I was wildly alive.

Another litmus test had occurred in the parlor several days earlier at tea time. Two magazines sat on one of the tables; on one magazine cover was a dusty African village overlain with cover lines heralding articles about peace and justice conferences and water treatment projects; the other magazine cover showed a close-up of a disgraced fashion designer overlaid with cover lines promising a juicy exposé. As I restrained myself from grabbing the one with the fashion designer on it, another sister came into the room and grabbed the one with the African village on the cover, gasping as if it were the September issue of
Vogue.

And then there was that obedience vow.

The other day, in the kitchen, Sister Heather Francis had pulled me aside to tell me that she had added my name to the rota for meal preparation. I was to do a breakfast and a supper each week. I almost choked,
“Are you crazy? For twenty-five women?”
Instead, I rhymed off—as patiently as I could without my eyeballs bleeding—the many tasks that were already on my plate. She was nonplussed and repeated the instructions. I could not bow out. I might not like what was assigned, but I did not have the luxury of saying, “No way” or even “No, thank you.”

I had left the kitchen to go to my cell and punch something when I had bumped into Sister Marjorie.

“You're looking thin and tired, my dear,” she said.

No kidding!

Ironically, my love for Colin, not for religious life, had grown and deepened in the convent. I wanted to be in community with him. I remembered something that a friend, a former nun, had said to me when I told her of my intention to explore a religious vocation: “Whether you choose God or Colin, both are valid; both are good. One is not better than the other. It's about where you fit, where you feel authentic and comfortable.” I felt most authentic and comfortable with Colin.

I got up, dressed, and went down to chapel. I went about all my duties as usual and did not confide my decision to anyone. I needed to sit with it a bit longer just to be sure, but by evening my mind was still unchanged.

That night I stared up at a magnificent perigee moon, the gullies and mountains of its surface preternaturally clear, forcing a change in the soundtrack of my brain. It still seemed to be on
“Nun, Nun, Nun.”
I was tired of introspection, tired of thinking this through.

OK
, I declared to the moon,
I give up. I'm not meant to be a nun.

I sat on the edge of the bed and finally accepted the decision. And then I tried to formulate a plan on how best to leave the convent. There was no good reason to stay any longer at St. Hilda's, but I felt a sense of responsibility to finish the work the sisters had assigned me. The transcription work on Mother Margaret's speeches was complete; the historical update could be wrapped up in several hours of solid, uninterrupted work, which meant missing the offices. If I did that I could catch a train to London and be back to Colin within seventy-two hours. I could be wading through throngs of rabid shoppers on Oxford Street or sitting in a cinema with a tub of popcorn on my lap by the weekend.