The Latin Deli: Prose and Poetry

The Purpose of Nuns

The Purpose of Nuns As a young girl attending Sunday mass, Fd watch them float down the nave in their medieval somberness, the calm of salvation on the pink oval of their faces framed by tight-fitting coifs. They seemed above the tedious cycle of confession, penance and absolution they supervised: of weekday dreams told to a stranger on Saturday; of Sunday sermons long as a sickroom visit, and the paranoia of God always watching you—that made me hide under my blanket to read forbidden fictions. Some of us were singled out for our plainness, our inclination to solitude, or perhaps— as our mothers hoped in their secret hearts— our auras of spiritual light only these brides of quietness could see in us. We were led to retreats, where our uninitiated footsteps were softened, and our heartbeats synchronized, becoming one with the sisters'. In their midst, we sensed freedom from the worry of flesh—the bodies of nuns being merely spirit slips under their thick garments. There was also the appeal of sanctuary in a spotless mansion permeated with the smells of baked bread, polished wood and leather-bound volumes of only good words. And in the evenings, the choral mystery of vespers in Latin, casting the final spell of community over us. The purpose of nuns was to remind us of monochrome peace in a world splashed in violent colors. 65 And sometimes, exhausted by the pounding demands of adolescence, I'd let my soul alight on the possibility of cloistered life, but once thesky cleared, opening up like a blue highwayto anywhere, Fd resume my flight back to the world. 66 ...