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!