I’m on a field trip to the Cloisters with the senior center. I have not been here in 50 years, like before I moved to New York. It’s so quiet and meditative here inside a medieval monastery. I love this atmosphere and feel transported back to the Middle Ages. I’m time travelling back to an earlier life. I’m transformed into a nun.
I’m Sister Kathleen enjoying the winter sun in the garden. I’m preparing to enter the chapel for Vespers. I’m walking around in my nun habit, Rosary beads hanging from my waist. I nod to the other sisters as I glide past them. I am part of a community.
Tomorrow I will work in the chapel and polish the benches and change the altar linens. I am excited to receive this assignment from Mother Superior, although I also like working in the garden, and learning about the medicinal herbs. The bishop is coming later this month, so we have to dust and polish all the beautiful statues.
My favorite statues are those of the Three Kings coming to visit Jesus. They look so life like. We must be very careful of the paint when we clean the statues.
My parents were surprised when I chose to enter this cloistered order. That’s because I’m known for being sociable but I decided to devote my life to God and live in this community in harmony with nature. The only job I dislike is kitchen duty and washing the pots and pans. But I offer this up as service. Any chore I dislike I do with a smile and offer it up for the poor souls in purgatory, as my mother taught me.
The one habit I’ve kept from my outside life is writing in my diary. This is a sin, so I keep my journal hidden under my mattress in my cell. If Mother Superior finds out, I will be in trouble and I might get punished, but this is who I am- a nun and a writer.
I cannot stop my writing habit. I love being in the library. When I go into the scriptorium to copy the Bible with my quill pen, (that is another one of my jobs),
I sneak out my paper or parchment. And I write in my diary. Maybe a demon has possessed me because I cannot stop myself. I should confess my sin to a priest.
It is not just that I am writing in secret but the content is about my lust. “Bless Me Father for I have sinned. I’m keeping a personal journal and this excites me. I’m writing about Sister Joan, beautiful Sister Joan. I’m so happy when she sits next to me in chapel. I get a warm feeling when we are working or praying together. I want to reach out and touch her hand but I resist this temptation. My thoughts about her are sinful but I cannot stop them.”
Will I have the courage to confess this? I’m nearing the end of my one year novitiate and must decide if I want to make permanent vows or leave and return to the outside world. I’m praying to make the right decision. I miss my family and my mother’s cooking. Mother makes the best rabbit stew with potatoes. Father keeps our home warmer than this freezing monastery. But this life on earth is just temporal. I am torn. If I leave I will rejoin my loving family but I may never see Sister Joan again.
Suddenly, I’m interrupted from my contemplation as my phone pings. I’m jolted back to the present to the year 2025. I’m sitting on a bench in a museum in Manhattan and it’s time to get the shuttle bus back to Westbeth Artists Housing. I pick up my down jacket at the coat check and I’m converting back to Kate.
On the way out, I stop in the book shop and examine a book called How to Live Like a Monk: Medieval Wisdom for Modern Life. I will order it and transform my life.
And who knows? Maybe I’ll meet a former nun at a lesbian bar in the Village.
