20151007 (discernment)

Last night's Slate’s photographic

Section ran a series of pictures of

A woman preparing for her solemn

Profession final vows as a Dominican 

Nun which for me was especially

Moving in that I, too, once sought

To join the Dominican order but 

Left no sooner than I had been 

Measured for my religious garb

Those few days have weighed upon

Me my whole adult life as never

Being properly understood

In high school I had been taught

By Marianist priests and brothers

In college by Jesuits I was attracted

To neither the less said of the Marianists

The better I’d had enough Marian

Devotion to last me several lifetimes

I never sensed anything religious

About the Jesuits who seemed so

Ordinary in their dress and manner

I had steeped myself in a  

Romance of the thirteenth

Century a stilted history of Aquinas

Of study in Paris the beginnings

Of the great universities had I 

Been more comprehensive 

Historically I would have been

Revulsed by the Dominicans

Whose tasks as preachers were to

Aid the Inquisition instead I gave

Them the benefit of the doubt

A couple of years before I had read

Seven Storey Mountain and been

Seduced like so many others by

Thomas Merton and the possibility

Of a religious life away from

The troubling world which was

My world I was still at home with

Parents who often argued who

Had no understanding of my 

Interests who sheltered me as

The youngest child who might

Be leaving home then they’d

Have to live with each other

Without distractions an unkind

Depiction I know but fairer than

Not my brief stay showed me

It was not to be my life that so

Much I thought would be 

Enduring comfort grated on me

Not the chastity not the poverty

But the obedience to another’s

Direction I’d already had too much

Of that at home I had conceived 

This as a step to my freedom 

Which it wasn’t the romance of

The spirituality the community

Even the clothing was a reminder

I would be hemmed in by rules

I hadn’t lived yet by my own rules

Though they were God’s rules

They’d just have to wait

Maybe later after I’d fashioned

A self I could surrender

c. J.S.Manista, 2015