Disavowed: a woman's journey through three religious communities

Chapters 1 - 8

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTIONS

The Mistress of Postulants handed me a small, white cotton cap.

“How do I get my hair in there?” “We're going to cut it off.”

Aargh!

How did I wind up here?

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I was born on the feast of St. Simeon the Stylite, a saint perhaps best known for making an appearance in Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, powering a sewing machine with his rhythmic devotional bows. Our household had, as did most Catholic households of the day, a copy of the Lives of the Saints, with sepia-toned holy-card style pictures.

We had more saints in those days, and you don't hear too much about St. Simeon on his pillar anymore, but I've kept a soft spot in my heart for him. Compelled to odd behavior by his desire to serve God? I feel that I understand him.

So I was understandably annoyed when his day - my day! - was usurped by the upstart St. John Neumann in 1978. However, I've come to understand him, too.

Based on my scholarly reading of the “Treasure Chest” Catholic comic book version of his life and several visits to his shrine in Philadelphia, I think of St. John Neumann as an appropriate patron for neurotics.

I mean nothing bad about the Saint. He felt unworthy and he worked himself to death at a relatively young age. For a fervent young Catholic of my generation, what's not to like?

Thus I find myself with two figures assigned by fate or by providence to be my special guides: the practitioner of a form of worship that contemporary sensibilities find bizarre, and the self-abnegating workaholic.

The pattern for my life was set. For I, too, was to be self-abnegating, neurotic, a workaholic, and frequently bizarre; just, alas, not a saint.

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It was a fine, hot, sunny day in 1977, and unbeknownst to me my birthday was already in the process of transitioning from Simeon's feast day to John's. I was sitting in the library of the community college where I was completing a two-year degree that I hoped would fit me to spend the rest of my life among the stacks of books as a library technician. This was just one of many ambitions that were not to be. Despite my many personal shortcomings, such as being unremarkable, plain, and extraordinarily shy and timid, I was feeling that I had it pretty good.

I was able to spend many hours with my beloved books, and other hours with my small circle of friends, my dog, my cat, and my music.

A little heaven on earth, as it seemed to me at the time, not yet twenty, living in my parents' house, and relying on my bicycle for transportation.

I had no big dreams except to get a job, to read many books, and perhaps be able to afford a shared apartment with a couple of friends someday. Perhaps I could save enough money to visit England, where I felt confident of being able to communicate with the natives (as opposed to, say, Canada), and tread the ground Shakespeare and Dickens once trod. (I have never yet been out of the county, as it happens.)

However, on that day in 1977, I was feeling remarkably content with my lot.

I was watching the shadows of two bees who were buzzing outside the tall library windows, cast on the table in front of me, and suddenly I felt overwhelmed with the beauty of it all.

With all due respect to those of wider experience, I never required the use of hallucinogenic substances to have such experiences. As the saying went at the time, I was “high on life”. You may retch now if you like, but I found my self-made dreamy little world to be sufficiently mind-blowing.