In the Spirit © – Rev. Marti Keller
Published May 2006
Penwomanship
www.penwomanship.com
On Wanting to Be a Nun
My brother, my twin brother, and his wife were in town visiting,
having traveled 14 hours by plane from their longtime home in Northern
British Columbia. When we were young, in our late teens and early
twenties, David and Jeanette looked just like Sonny and Cher, at
least to me. I still have a picture of them when they got married
on a patch of park at a busy intersection in Palo Alto, California
in l968, both of them dressed in Indian attire, East Indian that
is: David in his collarless Nehru jacket and Jeanette in a peach
colored sari. The two of them, long-banged Sonny and Cher look-alikes
and in love, still are, 31 years later. Not only did my sister-in-law
look like Cher when we were young and best friends, but she was also
Catholic. How much I envied her devout religious practices, no matter
how much she did not always relish them and no longer observes them.
What Cher has to do with my spiritual history is that she starred
in one of my favorite movies--truth is many of her movies are among
my favorites--Mermaids, in which she lives what for her is a typically
unconventional gypsy life. Constantly on the move, she fixes standing
up meals for her children: a steady diet of canapé sandwiches
decorated with toothpicks festooned with olives or cherry tomatoes.
Her younger daughter goes along with the studied whimsy, wearing
flippers and fancying herself a sea creature, but her older daughter,
played by Wynona Ryder, wants desperately to have conventional dinners
and to be a nun.
“You can’t,” her mother tells her. “You’re Jewish.”
Which is the same thing my mother might have told me in those pre-teen
and teen years when being a nun, living in a convent, chanting, praying,
counting rosary beads seemed to be the most wonderful way to live.
A nun, it appeared to me, could actually expect a calm, contented,
controlled life in a world that was – and still is for many – too
much with us.
This sort of cosmically enforced spiritual discipline appealed to
me, and I have been on a search ever since to develop realistic,
sustained ways of my own to make the largest and deepest connections
to what I choose to call the saving spirit of life. For me this includes
personal goals of noticing and engaging in acts of lovingkindness
,and compassionate engagement in the world.
So, when I recently watched “The Sound of Music” again
on the occasion of its 40th anniversary edition, I remembered wanting
to be cloistered, to have the time and space, as Trappist monk Thomas
Monk urged us, to deliver ourselves from the desires and cares and
attachments of existence in time and in the world. To do everything,
as he wrote, to avoid the noise and business, of humans. To keep,
as he said, beyond the reach of earthly song, to keep our eyes clear,
our ears quiet, and our minds serene.
As millions of moviegoers have learned, the young novitiate Maria
pressed her nose up against life in an Austrian convent on the cusp
of World War II and desired the same things. Once inside, despite
her devotions, her natural inclinations took over: “profane” ones
like; sexual desire and love, and other spiritual needs, other spiritual
practices, like spending time alone outside in her beloved mountains,
whirling like a Sufi mystic dervish, or even singing--in the abbey.
But she tried, God knows she tried, to contain all her normal curiosity
and adventure, in an attempt to find what she had already discovered.
There are dozens of examples of would-be and eventual saints of
all religions trying to follow what they saw as the only legitimate
forms of spiritual practice, punishing self-discipline, and failing.
For those of us who do not ever aspire to sainthood, what does it
mean to have a balanced, cross-trained spirituality, to feel present
and to feel whole?
Jewish mystic David A. Cooper has written that he believes the
universe can be viewed as a metaphysical magnet, with one pole called
good and the other evil, God being the good. The more we engage in
certain activities, he believed, the closer were are drawn to what
is life-enhancing. He asks himself on a daily basis, how close do
I feel to this Good or God? How much are we conditioned by habitual
behavior that makes our lives routine and unconscious, and how much
of our time and energy do we devote in a mindful way to connecting
to what he calls the magnet of goodness? Cooper is not suggesting
that we check out of our material lives, shedding our jobs and our
families. He urges us to find ways that are not punishing, but nurturing
and forgiving of ourselves, our limitations and our passions.
I read somewhere that in order to be considered a practice, we
must do something at least 40 times. For an act to become a habit,
a healthy habit like a spiritual discipline, we need to be intentional
-- realize its benefits -- prepare ourselves for the work, no matter
how joyful and rewarding; begin the practice and maintain it until
it has lost its benefits. I welcome your everyday, every year spiritual
practices, and next issue will have some general guidelines and examples
of my own.
Rev. Keller explores topics of everyday spirituality; prophetic
witness; religious feminisms; and intra-religious teachings. She
is especially sought for her contributions exploring the place of
Judaism within and without Unitarian Universalism and for the individual.
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