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1. Why I considered taking the vows.

Being contemplative and associated with the Carmelites in Reno, I began to consider consecrating myself through the vows of

poverty, chastity and obedience. Sr. Joan Williams had been my spiritual friend for some time, and I was a good friend of Sr. Carol Sachse. Their lives and input were grounding influences. Also, having lived a semi-monastic life through illness, I was aided by the writings of Thomas Merton and Therese of Liseaux, both of whom lived the vows. I was determined that my Christian faith had to have the answers about how to live fully as a woman and as a Christian.

The catalyst for actually planning a vow ceremony with my pastor, was a sudden miracle. After 18 years of illness, I was healed on a directed retreat. This gave me renewed energy and hope that my marriage, which had been non-intimate for many years, might take on new life. I had reached such a point of pain around the marriage that I needed to leave or find a means of acceptance that was healthy. Being celibate, not by choice, but by circumstances, precipitated my need for help transforming the pain into something creative. I decided if I did choose to live the vows, and celibacy as one of them, the lessons God would be teaching were about love and being human, of the reality of the risk and pain in that. There would need to be in me an integration of spirituality and sexuality, of glorifying God by being a fully-alive woman. No more peace at any price, no more immature idealism, no more avoiding the pain in my life or letting it suck me into illness. I wanted to live out the vows for one year to live in a container that simplified and focused my longing for intimacy, clarification of my identity and speaking my truth. Most importantly, there was a deep sense of God’s love drawing me to gift myself to the Divine.

My hope was that I could make of this experience a creative religious experience of faith that would fill the emptiness of a non-intimate marriage through taking acceptance to a deeper level of sacrifice, and I so wanted to come to know union with God. I also hoped this journey would be of benefit to others through the lessons I might learn.

I came to understand that the year of the vows, of living ascetic practices, was really about loving well. Matthew Fox quotes Meister Eckhart: Asceticism is of no great importance. There is a better way to treat one’s passions than pile on oneself ascetic practices which so often reveal a great ego and create more, instead of less, self-consciousness. If you wish to discipline the flesh and make it a thousand times more subject, then place on it the bridle of love. I decided to choose the vows for a year to discover and live out my true self, that self created by God. My spiritual director pointed out to me that during the 18 years I suffered from a variety of physical problems, I was living a lot like a religious, and through taking the vows I would simply be ritualizing my religious lifestyle.

2. My study of the vows.

1. Treasures in Earthen Vessels: The Vows, A holistic approach, Joyce Redick

The vow of poverty: as a total response to God’s loving call to union amidst all the insecurities and limitations of our humanity.

The vow of chastity: as love that is total, free, unconditional self-gift to God the Creator and to others;

The vow of obedience: as a vision of oneself as neither master of one’s destiny nor slave to the limitations of oneself or others.

1. In his Letters to Contemplatives, William Johnston writes: "celibacy…will only take place through the process of contemplative prayer in which you are silently open to love and grace."
2. From a human perspective, Women’s Mysteries, Ancient and Modern, Mary Esther Harding: "…the woman who is virgin, one-in-herself, does what she does—not because of any desire to please, not to be liked, or to be approved, even by herself; not because of any desire to gain power over another, to catch his interest or love, but because what she does is true."
3. I was challenged by the book, The Pregnant Virgin, by Marion Woodman: "Living by principles is not living your own life. It is easier to try to be better than you are than to be who you are."
4. Thomas Merton in a tape to his novices was enlightening: "There are times when keeping the vow of chastity, or putting up with the trials and temptations involved with the vow of chastity may be a martyrdom. You may have to put up with it…no point in being scared of it…just like anything else, you put up with it and you grow from putting up with it and you find, actually, it’s not too bad even though very painful, unpleasant, but you find out it’s perfectly possible to live with it. What’s important is not simply surviving, but making something positive out of the vow of chastity. That is what we don’t want to do. In order to make something positive…look at it theologically…deep mystery of being called to life in Christ when the church is in crisis…This is how the first monks understood this. It’s more than learning to get along with a body. This is tied up with our contemplative life. If I want to live as a contemplative, my chastity has to be something very deep, because the Christian life at its depths is a marriage with God…deep spiritual union with God….
5. In The Story of a Soul, Therese of Liseaux, I was encouraged by her example. She wanted to be united to the Divine strength to counter her weakness.
6. In Selected Poems, Jessica Powers, the inner fire of love for God was affirmed in this poem:

Young Maidens Running
"Saint I defined you: a slow serene
candle in a cathedral solitude,
a virgin lily in a nameless wood.
Yet you are flowers of petalled fire that lean
On a swift wind or waves that ride the sea
Into tender rushings toward divinity.
O living phrases from the Canticle!
I sing you, maidens that arise and run
In the stained footsteps of the King’s young son.
Hence must I now for saint a new concept tell:
A maiden racing toward a sole desire
With garments glowing & her face on fire.

7. I read Religious Life: A Prophetic Vision, Hope and Promise for Tomorrow, by Diarmuid O’Murchu: O’Murchu emphasizes that in all cultures throughout all time there are those who carry the archetype of the religious for their societies. This gave me the confirmation that the life I had lived and was living fit into an ancient yet contemporary context.
8. Women Who Run with the Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estes: This book helped me ask myself some important questions to keep myself honest and grounded. What is not as it appears? What do I know deep in my ovaries that I wish I did not know? What of me has been killed or lies dying? What is it I want? What am I hungry for? Long for? Wish for now? Crave? Desire? Yearn for?
9. Inner Work, Using Dreams and Creative Imagination for Personal Growth and Integration, Robert A. Johnson: Working with my dreams keeps me honest about what I really am struggling with and what direction to take.
10. Addiction to Perfection, Marion Woodman: I learned that my fantasies of "the ideal" push me beyond my abilities and capacities, obscuring my truth. The more I can face my realities, the more grounded I will be and the more likelihood of my soul prospering.

My Methodist pastor and my spiritual director assisted me in putting together a traditional vow service. It was held on the Feast of the Transfiguration in 1996. (Pass photo) The need to ritualize my choice of celibacy came from an embodied, intuitive place. I needed the support of the senses to nurture the body and let it know I wasn’t going to leave it behind as I tried to live the vows. There was a need for the memory to be flooded with symbols of consecration. I needed to hear certain words, wear certain clothes, smell the frankincense candle, receive a meaningful piece of jewelry. I also needed witnesses who loved me and understood, who could remind me of the why and wherefore when times got tough. I left the service with deep healing and a sense that I was being melted down and reformed.

A prayer I prayed during this year was, Dear God, come into this desire for union and grant that your vital, divine seed grow in this place in my being until I am whole, and you are liberated in me. Amen.

1. Feeling "different" and resulting loneliness. My journal recalls one difficult period: Tonight the religious life seems so meaningless. Why sacrifice? One needs a belief that it matters. Here I sit questioning everything and am most miserable. No answers today when just yesterday I was filled with assurances. It was at times like this that Gerard Manly Hopkins poetry could lift me up: "Let me be to Thee as the circling bird, or bat with tender and air-crisping wings that shapes in half-light his departing rings, from both of whom a changeless note is heard. I have found my music in a common word, trying each pleasurable throat that sings and every praised sequence of sweet strings, and know infallibly which I preferred. The authentic cadence was discovered late which ends those only strains I approve, and other science all gone out of date and minor sweetness scarce made mention of: I have found the dominant of my range and state—Love, O my God, to call Thee Love and love." Another cry from my heart was: I feel left out, isolated because I’m different. I want to fit in and get along, but it doesn’t come first. Truth comes first. Be born O God in the barrenness of this lonely wilderness. Writings of Kathleen Norris also helped by writing of "singleness of heart." This singleness of heart seemed to be summarized for me in a scripture by St. Paul, "I count all things as loss that I may gain Christ and be found in him not having a righteousness of my own but a righteousness that is from him." Pondering this, I felt like my life had been so powerfully simplified in gifting my whole self to God.
2. What to do with my sensuality? Some of the best help I had was from a book, Being Sexual and Celibate by Keith Clark, Capauchin. He writes, "Whichever of the lasting life-forms we have chosen to pursue—marriage, celibate life or single life—we bring to that life our biological urges, our bio-psychological drives and our personal/spiritual need for intimacy. Our sexuality opens to us the possibility of entering into permanent or temporary personal relationships with other human beings. No relationship will be fulfilling unless it includes behaviors which allow intimacy to arise…namely: self-awareness, self-disclosure and hearing of each other." He helped me understand why I felt dissatisfied with God. I expected an intimate relationship with God to satisfy my bodily and material needs. Of course that couldn’t be. This realization helped me release my naïve expectations. A remarkable encounter with Christ during mass at the Carmelites in Reno brought dramatic healing. I had the experience of seeing Christ in an inner vision and hearing him invite me to let him hold my sexuality with him. I had a deep sense of the most vulnerable, wounded and precious part of myself being held by Christ and me together. I experienced a dawning of a loving, settled, gentle, secure sense of seeing clearly that God gave me an opportunity to make my physical, sexual expression a gift for God’s own purposes which I might never understand.
3. How to accept my limitations and wounds with self-compassion. When I early on began to realize how limited and wounded I was, and how little I could really live out the vows as I had hoped, I read a quotation from Jean Pierre De Caussade: " When, with the help of grace, we have reached the stage of finding self intolerable and of knowing not the smallest satisfaction in our good works, our one remaining need is to endure that self with sweetness and to show it the same charity that it is our duty to show our neighbor." This was an eye-opener for me and began to show me how self-compassion was a part of the spiritual journey.

One of the key lessons, was what represented my core identity: to live life fully, accepting dying and rising as a rhythm of life. All my dyings and risings have formed me and enabled me to sit with others in spiritual direction as they go through their own dyings and risings. My identity as one who is a bearer of incarnation became more conscious, that I was called to live my life, not anybody else’s life, and to do so rooted in the energy of God. In Merton’s words, "Not that I must undertake a special project of self-transformation. Or that I must work on myself. In that regard, it would be better to forget it. Just go for walks, live in peace, let change come quietly and invisibly on the inside. But I do have a past to break with. An accumulation of inertia, waste, wrong, foolishness, rot, junk…."

Another important lesson was that God wanted an adult-to-adult relationship with me. I became aware that I was leaving an old identity and that a new one had not yet formed. As I sat quietly at Mass with the Carmelites one morning, a penetrating thought came into my mind: "At the center, all is passion, the exuberant joy of liberty." This ecstasy, though it lasts only momentarily, and comes quite infrequently, reinforces the reality of intimacy with God as not only possible, but desirable by both parties. By the end of the vow year, I felt an inner movement toward wonder again, a sense of the numinous without the old terminologies of father, son and holy spirit—but a deep sense of Christ and God. Karl Rahner has a prayer that became mine toward the end of this period: "The darkness is still with us, O Lord. You are still hidden and the world which you have made does not want to know you or receive you….You are still the hidden child in a world grown old…..You are still obscured by the veils of this world’s history, you are still destined not to be acknowledged in the scandal of your death on the cross…But I, O hidden Lord of all things, boldly affirm my faith in you. In confessing you, I take my stand with you….If I make this avowal of faith, it must pierce the depths of my heart like a sword, I must bend my knee before you, saying, I must alter my life. I have still to become a Christian."

I realized a deeper sense of my own poverty as one who attempted to fully respond to God in the vow year and yet discovered how much of me is in the way. The vows seemed to create an emptiness and a place within that cried out for nurturing, yet not a nurturing as a child needs from a parent, but as a friend needs from a friend. This tremendous thirsting for God then became the sign of God’s presence. Again, during mass at the Carmelites, the image of a tiny black ant came to mind. As I pondered the symbol, I realized what tremendous tunnels a little ant can hollow out. This encouraged me to think of the Christ in the disguise of an ant who can hollow out a space within without my help. I treasure Philippians 1:6: "For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus."

Although I was not living in a community, the openness and welcome of the Carmelite community was vital for me to compensate for the sacrificial nature of living the vows. I learned to offer my loneliness as a prayer. My feeling of being so different, kind of an ugly duckling, was soothed and healed by being with the Carmelite sisters who were leading a vowed life. There was the hope kindled that I might become a swan too. One night when I was feeling especially distressed, Sr. Pat read the following at vespers: "You have just come to a hard place where the two currents meet, and you could let yourself be beaten back towards the shore; but you can, instead, bend your back to the oars and pull the boat for all you are worth across that rough bit, and it will be better when you get out of the cross-currents. Hold on and let nothing dismay you. You may have to change your means; don’t change your purpose. Remember you are doing God’s work and God is with you, and all God’s saints are looking on, ‘a great cloud of witnesses,’ while you fight in the arena, and they too have fought and overcome…" Although I only attended Mass and Vespers at the Carmelites, it was joyous to be with these spiritual friends, especially when I was going through the "belly of the whale" experiences.

I also learned that my sensuality is a gift of God not to be repressed, but rather offered to God in gratitude. I was healed by Christ’s acceptance of my sexuality and the joy of knowing this aspect of myself is highly valued by Christ. I discovered within a hidden self that is both gentle, tender, shy, sexual, feminine and no "push-over." The vows protected this trueness as it emerged whole. As I considered staying in my marriage I would have to take my sacrifice to a new level. I could not move into denial of the pain in the relationship, of the deprivation, but would have to embrace the pain in order to let it teach me and at the same time I not deny my legitimate needs. My spiritual director affirmed that this is the celibate struggle, the challenge in chastity. For me, living the vows honestly involved standing against my natural tendency to choose escape through repression or denial or distraction instead to choose accepting and dealing with what is. The trick I learned was to accept the feelings and the struggle so the Holy Spirit can work in it. There’s a line from an old movie with William Powell, "It’s not a good idea to have a drink when you’re making decisions about mermaids." I like this line because it reminds me of how important it is to stay conscious in this life, and when we don’t, our fantasies can really trap us. Living consciously, aware of what motivates us, of God’s desiring in us, of our anger as well as of our love, not repressing anything, but dialoguing with everything that is in us is a kind of obedience—a living out the Christ-centered truth of our lives.

As it turned out, a divorce became necessary. I also became a Catholic during this period, and now have an annulment. My "wasband" and I are on friendly terms.  I think of it more as a "retirement" than a divorce.

My current lifestyle embraces a passage by Isaac Dinesen in "The Blank Page," writes: "be loyal to life, don’t create fiction, but accept what life is giving you, show yourself worthy of whatever it may be by recollecting and pondering over it, thus repeating it in imagination: ‘this is the way to remain alive.’ I can see how the ongoing, conscious struggle with the vows enhances the beauty of souls who live the religious life well. I’m so very grateful to all those vowed lives that continue to bless and challenge me.

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