the mystery of nuns

okay, another great book from the semester: the tulip & the pope by deborah larsen (but do larsen's a st. paul native who joined the BVMs in Dubuque, IA for five years: 1960-65. rocky years to be in a monastery.

the mystery of it all is shocking. before she joins, the life behind the walls is shrouded in this mystery...part of the appeal in joining was that she would get to know what was going on in this secret place. while she's in, her body is shrouded in mystery--she's got several poignant references to not knowing what her hair really looked like or what her shape really was. there's this funny seen where she & some other young nuns are crossing a busy street to go to a swimming class and, for expediency at the changing room, they have their pajama pants on underneath their nun clothes. she imagines what would happen in one of the pant legs were to unroll & if a man in a car were to see--it would probably be, she thinks, this scenario he would remember for a while--seeing a nun's body as somehow not perfectly kept. as she's leaving, she goes to marshall fields to buy some non-nun clothes & looks in a full length mirror for the first time in five years. she looks at her hands on the train back to st. paul and notices that they are no longer consecrated as holy. returning for a reunion, she has a sense of mystery about the nuns who stayed that surpasses the mystery of why women left.

so all this mystery around being a nun. should i write about that?

ayay!

p.s. shoes have arrived @ rei!

rising tide of rivers and catholicism.

i am not really sure how interesting it is of me to post about the random things i do here, but i really need to let folks know that this book is a great addition to anyone's nightstand or deskstack of books. john m. barry walks through, with great gusto and an interesting narrative tone, the build up to the 1927 flood of the mississippi flood and the dynamiting of levee in st. bernard parish. i mean, i'm not a good history book reader & this was a page-turner for me.

you can get it at amazon used for right around $5.

in other news, i'm less and less convinced that vatican 2 caused dramatic shifts in the catholic psyche. as a product of a good benedictine tradition, i have always heaped a lot of wonderful things onto vatican 2, especially to our very own virgel michel.

this week, we read a book called summer in the city (another great read, if you're coming up short!), which is an uber-sympathetic look at what i think is asset-based organizing in east harlem in the mid-1960s. so the nuns and priests do all these art programs, stun the world with their dislike of habits, etc. etc. but in 1964, there are major riots on the streets. the monsignor organizes a peace march and what do they do? pray the rosary. say rote prayers. offer mass. times get tough & people rely in these things.

there's a way in which i find it to be a beautiful irony--as much as the changes were being pushed for and at, documents and hierarchical meetings simply cannot switch a deeply ingrained catholic psyche.

now, please. don't read between the lines here some romanticized image of a pre-conciliar church. nonononono. the mission of the class is to think about these transitionary years where even the liberals were raised with a latin mass, novenas and the virgin mary. the push & pull is fascinating.

and, ladies & gentlemen, this was when our parents came of age. that, my friends, might be the most fascinating part of all.

peaceout, k.

p.s. shoes are on their way & i'm not sure how i feel about the (red) campaign. c'mon...shop at the gap & stop AIDS in africa? gimme a break:).

online shopping

my very favorite shoes in the world seem to be coming apart. one thing has ripped off all together, the bottoms are wearing down and the suede isn't really the same color i started with. i think its time to get new shoes...a prospect i dread.

i might buy these. what do you think? i have a coupon for 15% off & free shipping to my local rei store. any thoughts?

chalkboard paint

the farmers' market has taught me many things this season. perhaps one of the more applicable has been the discovery of chalkboard paint. that's right. in the picture here, i'm pointing to a wall that just 20 minutes before was "antique white." it is now ready to be used as a chalkboard. all with a bottle of spray paint.

that's right. i'm pumped.

tidbits from the catholic sixties

Traditional Latin Catholic Mass

on the last sunday of ordinary time, 1965, the mass was in latin--a form not all together different than this one my professor dug up from youtube. seven days later, on the first sunday of advent, 1965, it was in english. i can't really even imagine the drama of the shift. interestingly, my parents aren't sure they remember it being that dramatic of a shift in gears; both were surprised to learn that was the date. i suppose that a perhaps immature view of history is to look for dramatic fissures in time & place and to exaggerat them. But I'm not sure how much of an exaggeration it is to say this must have been like being rear-ended in the parking lot while you're on a cell phone.

my tendency here, i'm afraid, is to take too sympathetic a view of pre-conciliar devotions: to romanticize the devotions to saints and mary as something nice and, regardless of the theological implications, as real. which, to some extent, is an important perspective. don't get me wrong: i'm not in danger of wishing vatican 2 didn't happen. but i guess it seems more important to respect that my grandma, in a very real way, believed in the presence of st. jude as she combed through the house loooking for some lost item.

i do have to admit a certain amount of pride in being connected with st. john's and st. ben's as virgil michael is all over the place & their are veiled references to the "progressive liturgical reforms in the midwest"--sts. ben's & john's, bahbe!

happy friday. its finally fall here...smells so good. k.

remembering dreams

so one of my classes is called "psychoanalysis & character ethics" and we have launched in with freud's the interpretation of dreams. one of the things we're supposed to do for the class is to keep a "dream book" where we record dreams that we have.

sounds great, right? like an assignment to sleep.

well, its causing me this weird anxiety...like even if i go to sleep, there's something i'm "supposed to be doing." sheesh. but the other thing is that i actually very rarely remember my dreams. i like to think of myself as a sound sleeper. greg is the one with the crazy dreams.

so i've started sleeping with a notebook next to my bed & hoping that being startled awake by my phone alarm will spur on the memory of dreams. last night, it seems to have. but! i slurringly wrote out the dream and went back to snooze for a while. i've just gone back to look at what i wrote (because i actually don't remember the dream) & i can't decipher my sleepy handwriting. oh dear.

is there something i can eat to make me remember my dreams?