Musings

There are many frustrating periods in the basically solitary life (and for many reasons other than that one.) :) This has been one of my anxious and confused weeks, and the lovely essays I had planned on the Trinity, Corpus Christi, Philip Neri and Augustine of Canterbury never materialised. I'm trying not to let any sorrow come forth today, remembering Philip Neri, who once had a gloomy member of the Oratory have the humiliating experience of singing the Miserere at a wedding breakfast.

I may be rather shy and reserved, but quiet I am not - no 'life of the party' to be sure, but once I get on a topic, there generally is no stopping me. I suppose that is why 'words' are on my mind today. I have had the good fortune, more so than most, to have had expert spiritual direction - one of the biggest graces for keeping one in the truth, since our individual capacity for self-deception is enormous and, in those dedicated to prayer, all the more insidious because we can convince ourselves that our faults are virtues. In convent life, most unfortunately, there frequently was no individual direction at all. The closest thing, if you will, was a brief self-accusation in the context of sacramental confession - and, for all that I find that sacrament most valuable, often the matters which one most needs to 'face head on' are not what one would be confessing as sins.

For all that it contains enough horror stories for fifteen religious lives, I found that Kathryn Hulme's The Nun's Story, which was adapted from the experiences of her companion Marie Louise Habbets as a Sister of Charity of Ghent, provided some excellent illustrations of how the best-intentioned Sisters can have great confusion when left with nothing but 'live the Rule.' (Not that living the Rule is not a blessing!) One example from that text is a superb example of how good intentions can go awry, how impressions (on the part of those in authority) can be mistaken but understandable, and how genuine opportunities for spiritual growth can be missed when one has no chance to explain one's motives.

Unless one has been in the position, it is difficult to express how confusing the 'quest for perfection' becomes in many young Sisters.All too often, one's seeking to observe a practise that supposedly involves the practise of virtue is misread by the very Sisters who would have propagated the theories. In Kathryn Hulme's work, Gabrielle, a first professed who is an extremely gifted nurse, is assigned to a school of tropical medicines in preparation (or so she hopes) for an assignment in the Congo. Before she leaves for the school, Gabrielle has a frank conversation with her novice mistress (and frankness can be as rare in convent life as the apocalypse.) Both are highly intelligent and from privileged backgrounds, and there is common understanding about the difficulties of dealing with common life. The novice mistress says that her way of dealing with this was to take on 'humble' tasks, help sisters for whom one has a strong disliking, and otherwise seeking to be 'the little donkey of the community,' much as Christ endured being around simple-minded apostles who smelled of fish.

The gap between inevitable perceptions and the best of intentions is most striking in Gabrielle's situation at the school of tropical medicines. Sister Pauline, who is older and in the same class programme, is a poor student, and shows great disliking (more likely fear) for Gabrielle. Gabrille decides to be the donkey - and do so by pretending she wants Pauline to check her work, then going off to study facing a wall. The conversation with her Novice Mistress before she left the motherhouse explains much of Gabrielle's action - how unfortunate that, since explanations are never solicited, or even allowed, from the 'young,' her basically good intentions are shrouded in behaviour that the best of us would find exasperating. (Of course, the novice mistress's exhortation shows that it is not Gabrielle alone who maintains an element of snobbery, but this neither party would have recognised.)

Sister Pauline is far from an endearing character, yet anyone would sympathise with the patronising gestures Gabrielle makes in trying to perform an 'act of humility.' Gabrielle indeed is a superior student, and a direct offer to help Pauline could be uncomfortable from one much younger, yet the honesty in such an approach would be more acceptable. As many a young Sister would later blush to recall, the attempted humility in pretending to ask a poor student to review one's notes (because "I may have some mistakes") amplifies any appearance of pride to the hilt.

The superior's suggestion that Gabrielle 'fail exams to show humility' is deplorable, and out of accord with the most basic approaches to the spiritual life (humility being truth.) One cannot help but wonder why Mother Marcella made this bizarre suggestion (perhaps she, too, had memories of a younger sister's outshining her?), yet the tragedy is that Gabrielle neither recognises the blatant flaw in such reasoning nor consults anyone else. (Had she had any form of direction, both such a dishonest action and the 'donkey act' would have been 'cancelled,' yet her genuine desire to help others could have been harnessed realistically.) Of course, Marcella had ample opportunity to witness Gabrielle's ruses of humility . It is tragic that silence existed in all too many forms in convent life. Misguided though she was, had Gabrielle explained that she was trying to follow her novice mistress's counsel, Marcella's attitude may have been quite different.

Spiritual direction is not a Francican forte, yet one book on that topic, composed by a Franciscan friar, shows great common sense. He instructed readers not to tell their directors only of their weakness and sinfulness, but of everything - the good, the exciting, whatever. Wise this is - because we get into the largest messes, now and then, when we are trying to improve!