We have seen that we each have a daily regime: start the coffee, read the news, check email, take a shower, check email, leave for work! Perhaps we see this more clearly now than we did when we began, and perhaps we are beginning to make note of a few tendencies that are more engrained in us than they have been well known to us!
Do we categorically refuse to eat alone unless we have a book open on the table beside us? Do we forsake other things of surpassing importance for that one television show that we will not miss? After a hard day, are there things we somehow will always manage to enjoy in the evening . . . a long conversation with a friend or a bowl of ice cream, for instance?
When we pause to consider, not one of those things is made available to the in-house monastic. She must spend all of those intervals with the Lord, learning never to leave Him in thought or deed, making worship her purpose and stillness her “leisure.” All this is the choice of each.
The cloister to which we are about to travel is one of astounding earthly treasure and overwhelming earthly tasks. There is opulence and obligation beyond anything most of us have ever experienced or even imagined. Who could count the diamonds or the difficulties under her roof?
Like the nuns of Regina Laudis Abbey, this “Sister” must not claim more for herself than she has been given, and she, as they, must not give less of herself than is demanded by her “job.” Both they and she believe that what they have is theirs by Divine Right, and that who they are and how they order their days, matters supremely. We have much to learn from her, dear ones. Beginning tomorrow, Cor Unum will be our passport to an unprecedented excursion, and when we return, none of us will ever be quite the same.
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