vocation trip

i am going to africa - to visit the order of the holy paraclete's convent in swaziland. they run a girl's orphanage there. they moved their convent to a town called bulembu - a mining town that was converted to a village that has job training, a hospital, and a school. i'll stay two weeks and then i'm going to the mother house in england.
i probably won't be able to post from africa - but i'll take a lot of photos and post when i get home. i'm not leaving until late july. i can't wait! i'm so looking forward to seeing the convent in africa and the orphanage. i feel a step closer to the goal.

two nuns at one street fair!

where are all these nuns coming from? one at the beginning of the 2nd ave. street fair being held on 3rd ave due to 2nd ave subway construction on 2nd ave. a veil and a polyester suity type thing. the other i saw on my return saunter through the fair. wearing a brown habit with a peaked veil - black i think, maybe brown. can't remember. i had two friends with me so i'm not making these sightings up and their not like snuffaluffagus.
i'm working towards it. i wonder if once i do enter an order i'll stop seeing nuns (other than the ones i'll be living with of course).

the question of kids

when i first heard the call to the religious life i said to god, "no f#%*ing way!" i was planning on getting married (preferably to a pediatrician/veterinarian) and have children (two and send them to collegiate). so, i thought for a long time about why those things were deal breakers for me. i came to the conclusion at the end of my think that marriage i could definitely live without. i really only wanted a wedding anyway, not necessarily a husband. kids though, that was tough. i had always wanted to be a mother. so, i decided that since i figured god didn't make a mistake in calling me to a live of poverty, chastity, and obedience that i would at least have to be able to work with kids. so, i got my master's in teaching english as a second language to K-12 grades and began teaching 5 years ago. i hope that when i do enter the convent, they'll look at my experience and qualifications and let me keep teaching as a religious.
i still love kids but .... i'm ok now without having any of my own. they say that teaching is the best birth control there is. it's working for me. 25 kids in school is way different than one or two at home but still.
all joking aside i think i can do better by NOT being related to children because they'll be more likely to open up to me. when i was a teenager especially i relied on my relationships with adults who were not my mom (my dad had died by then) - esp. my youth group leaders from church. they totally rocked. i hope to be a rocking nun.

astoria, queens nun sighting

saw a nun and a woman who might have been her sister, actually, on 30th ave. when i was getting my lunch today.

nun sighting

an asian nun in a slightly peaked veil entering the subway station as i was exiting. i had a real pang after she passed me - i want to be a nun.

you may be a nun if ...

the universe may be telling you that you are a nun if you ...
+ sing the magnificat in plainsong chant style while walking up or down stairs alone
+ pray over your fresh laundry
+ see nuns everywhere you go
+ see nuns so often that now even your friends are seeing them in airports and stuff
+ think meryl streep's character in the film doubt was a hero and you hope to be a nun just like her when you grow older
+ have the book of common prayer online version saved to your favorites on the blackberry
+ love your pet dog but start making plans for the next phase of your life for after she dies

the empty mouse house

when i was in first grade at st. ignatius loyola school we used to go to church for holy days of obligation. this was back in the days when i didn't know i'd been baptized episcopalian. i went to catholic school b/c i wasn't zoned for a good public school and my mother and her mother went to convent schools so on it went with me. i used to look at the tabernacle which was very fancy, made of marble with golden doors, and i pretended it was a house for church mice. i call it the mouse house to this day.

so, tonight we had our maundy thursday service at my church and the foot washing is always a funny thing (i had my foot done - we only do one). i love the part where simon peter tells jesus - you won't wash my feet! only to change it to - wash not only my feet but my hands and head also! what a doofus. i love simon peter because he is the disciple who consistently puts his foot in his mouth (let's build a booth on this mountainside where we saw jesus transfigured! i can walk on water ... oops! no i can't! what a dope.). he is just like me - duh!

anyway, it was a festive kind of service (for episcopalians, honestly, i cannot WAIT to get to africa and see how they worship there) with all of us standing around the altar table, passing baskets of bread and cups of wine to each other for eucharist.
then, we went back to our pews and the priests stripped the altar and sanctuary of all decorations while a quartet chanted the 22nd psalm. it's always very moving for me and really gets me into the spirit of the mourning and loss the disciples must have felt during these few days. at my church, the priests remove pew cushions, hymnals, books of common prayer, those table cloth things (there's some fancy liturgical name for them but i don't know what it is). the final thing to be removed is the consecrated bread and wine that is in the mouse house. there is an eternal flame over the mouse house and that is extinguished. then, the bread and wine are taken away, and the mouse house door is left open, an empty mouse house exposed. i am telling you it gets me every time! i don't believe in transubstantiation per se but it hits me like a ton of bricks every year when i see that! and i think to myself - i miss him! where is he?! when will he be back? i get really lost and sad.