Can I be friends with a cloistered nun?

What I mean with “we do not visit them every now and them” is that we don’t visit them for dull reasons. I am sorry if I am not that good in expressing myself in English.

The simple answer to Shelly’s question about friendship with contemplative monastics (cloistered nuns) is an emphatic, “YES.” Monasteries have always been places where the faithful and other well-disposed persons could connect with the ways of contemplative prayer and receive spiritual guidance. We don’t put up a shingle in front of the monastery about offering spiritual direction but an awful lot of that goes on in any monastery. The Church has encouraged monasteries to be “schools of prayer.” People connect with us via surface mail, telephone, e-mail, attendance at our liturgies, and visiting too. Stories of friendship between lay people and monks and nuns abound in spiritual literature. Often these friendships seem to provide a point at which folks feel more connected to the transcendent. Our community and many other cloistered communities support this by creating associate or third order type of organizations. Our lay associates meet at our monastery every second Sunday of the month when they receive some input from a sister or a fellow associate and share in the prayer of the community. Friendships, as long as they are appropriate in nature, are healthy for everyone, nuns as well as lay people.

The specifics of how what and how much contact one has with friends and family vary according to the community, and sometimes also the individual concerned. (I’m something of an exception in my community in that I come from the other side of the world and so while I have less visits they are generally longer when they do happen!)

I think that in the monastic tradition there are two fundamental values that one should keep in mind. The first is that of “separation from the world” – in retreating to the desert, the desert Fathers and Mothers sought to cut their ties with human society precisely in order to become freed from the negative influence of society. However, they did this in order to engage with the world at a deeper level. In the words of Evagrius of Pontus: “The monk is separated from all and united with all.”

The second value is that of community and friendship. The desert literature gives some striking examples of God-given friendship, such as that between Saint Anthony and Saint Paul or that between Saint Mary of Egypt and Abba Zosimus. In the Cistercian tradition the work of Saint Aelred of Rievaulx has been particularly important, especially his Spiritual Friendship.

There is thus a clear acknowledgement that friendship is an important part of our journey to God. However, how that happens and the role that it plays in our spiritual life does require good discernment and is something – especially with more important friendships – that we should be open about with the abbess/abbot and/or with our spiritual father or mother. Not so much for them to approve or disapprove as for them to help us discern where God is working in this friendship.

Hi Shelly! It looks like you’ve gotten a lot of good insight and help with your question about being friends with cloistered nuns. But I’d just like to reiterate and echo Sr. Hildegard’s – YES! As a cloistered nun myself, I can assure you that it’s not only okay for nuns to have friendships, but it’s very important. Beautiful friendships rooted in the Lord are encouraged. And how they develop and are maintained depends on each community’s discipline.

As human beings, either lay or Religious, we are called to love and share our lives with others. A nun’s first love is Jesus Christ, and her most important friendship is with her Divine Spouse. But their spousal love is fruitful and must flow out in friendship with others.

I loved the book that Jean mentioned: “Therese and Maurice: A Story of Love”. It’s excellent and shows the incredible beauty of spiritual friendship. A must read!

May God bless you and your friend, and may your friendship always bring you closer to our dear Lord and His Kingdom.

if it is a true friendship rooted in your mutual love for Christ then this will be OK for you. True friendships don’t always need lots of contact and interaction as you are meeting in the depths of the heart of Christ.

I have a question about this. What if a friendship is NOT rooted in your mutual love for Christ? Suppose you’re a nun, and have a friend who doesn’t believe in God, or doesn’t care either way? But you’re friends because of some other reason, like, you were friends growing up, or you both really like Star Wars movies or something like that. Does this mean you can’t really be friends? Is there anything in a nun’s life that isn’t about God? I guess I have that question when it comes to both contemplative and apostolic orders. I would honestly like to know, because I find it all very confusing. Most of the responses here are: “yes, of course nuns can have friends!” but from what I read it seems limited to those who either believe in God, or are seeking God in some way, or those who nuns see as needing God. I suppose my question is whether a friendship, for a nun, must have some spiritual or religious dimension – as opposed to just being friends with people because heck, you like them. Which is, I think, the reason most people become friends, not for spiritual reasons.

Thanks for the reply, Jean. I can’t say I really understand – this is sort of over (or a little to the right, lol) my secular head, but I appreciate your honesty.

Subtopic: the Bride of Christ

Last night, I was thinking about the discussion re: friendships with cloistered nuns and the reading I have done about spiritual friendship. In particular, that quote I posted about spiritual friendship not being given as a bit of human satisfaction but “as a foretaste of Heaven” and what it means (paraphrasing a sistert here) to take the friendship to spiritual direction to determine where and how it moves one toward one’s goal of a total giving of self to God.

Consistent with the very serpentine and tangential my mind works, I suddenly got some insight – maybe – into why “the bride of Christ” metaphor bothers me so much.

It is not what that metaphor suggests about religious life.

It is what that metaphor suggests about MARRIED life. The metaphor is a good one ONLY if one is using a very old and very traditional model of marriage in which women were very much obedient to their husbands, very dependent in a hundred different ways and expected to like it (or at least convince everyone she liked it).

That is what bothers me. That metaphor is an indirect but very powerful communication to lay women and I cannot support the message. Marriage between two adults cannot and should not in this modern world parallel the relationship proposed between a cloistered nun and God and perhaps not the relationship between any vowed religious woman and God. There are risks and realities (legal, cultural, psychological, financial) in modern life that render that metaphor dangerous for the lay woman. Women living consecrated religious lives use that metaphor in the context of a freedom and dignity and safety that far too many lay women do not have…and we risk participating in a demeaning and diminishing and dangerous process of subjugation of women when we use that anachronistic metaphor.

Think domestic violence and the reality that the punch in the face is often the beginning of the end and NOT the beginning; the beginning (and sometimes the totality) is financial control, thought control, movement control, even control of food and reading material, control of clothing and contact with friends and family and co-workers; the use of morality and tradition and religion and law to control; the control of sexuality, emotional abuse, isolation, litanies of the woman’s failure to love and care followed by the chance for a do-over…. That is the extreme. And men are victims too. The continuum is thick and wide with subtleties , the vast majority of them seemingly innocuous or idiosyncratic until the day of the first punch or however the beginning of the end or the beginning of the lifelong status quo announces itself.

And oh how how much food for that ugly and oppressive dynamic – that can be made to look so holy and loving – is available in that old metaphor that links a life consecrated to God and human marriage.

I know this will seem reactive to many. But language is powerful and
we construct not only our own reality with it but also the realities and lives of others.

It is, I believe, a dangerous metaphor for 21st century lay women throughout the world, and I would even wager that there might be some deep link between that metaphor, this insistence on the habit as perpetual wedding gown and the increasingly strident prominence of the conservative Catholic movement in both lay and consecrated communities.

Finally! I knew there was some real dissonance for me behind the jerk of my knee in response to the metaphor. Totally off topic but very helpful to me. Again, my objection is not to what the metaphor suggests about religious life. My objection is to what the metaphor suggests about married life for lay women in the 21st century.

Jean

Hey newly – I appreciate your thoughtful response and will do some thinking about it. I think your life is a beautiful one and I will take what you have to say into consideration. There need not be any blame or side-taking here;
it needn’t be an either/or. It can be a both/and and it could move us to consider other very apt and beautiful language that honors the holy and deeply loving life religious women such as yourself and others live
while also attending consciously to the need to participate in the honoring of the lives of our lay sisters – second only to attending to God and before attending to ourselves as religious women who have already been given the motherlode of privileges: the grace of a life of intimacy with God.

I am simply proposing that the metaphor needs to be looked at very carefully by us and in an effort to anticipate and respond in terms of its possible messages to “the least of these”, the least empowered or most potentially oppressed among our lay sisters. You are assuming a level of education and experience with critical thought – both in the Catholic world and secular world – that does not sound consistent with actual educational accomplishments in this country (and certainly not in most developing nations) and certainly not consistent with the education levels (not just on paper but in practice) in those communities where women aremost vulnerable to oppression and disempowerment.

An immediate thought is religious in general and the community here likely represent an unusually well-educated group of men and women, both in terms of religious education and other types of formal education; also that many, many Catholics’ last experience of catechesis was at confirmation; also that “soundbite” education and awareness is the name of the modern game, no matter the context so what USCCB et al say, the local message might be and often is very different. (let’s face it: the Pope is on good terms with Obama and look at what just happened at Notre Dame…). last observation: i think there is a significant part of the Christian community (including Catholic communities) in which women are taught that men are the head of the household (“as God is the head of the Church”) and that, even when priests and pastors make efforts to clarifiy that this does not mean women are doormats, the messages re: power differential get skewed along some pretty traditional lines.

There are always ways to adjust the way we carry the messages implicit in our language and I am proposing that we consider that here, most especially as a group of women whose priviledged status in terms in education, choice and sense of empowerment is undoubtedly not the norm in this or in almost any other country in the world.

Jean

woops the smilies don’t work here, for me anyway.

the head explosion guy shows you the sudden transition of a smiley, happy person into that guy in the painting The Scream. That’s me when I get on this topic.

and the second guy is a smilie laughing and pounding on the table on the table until he cries… That’s Nathalie immediately after I get on this topic.

Jean

hey newly – i have been thinking all day as I pack boxes and walk with my pup. i sincerely beieve there is room for both perspectives on this metaphor (and room for a hundred more) and what is most important is that this metaphor not be taken off the discussion table. we were becoming such an extremist culture and one of the the great gifts, I think, of this new day with Obama as our president is that we are being forced to live with the reality that life need not be either/or; that we can predict based on any formula where he will fall out because he is a critical thinker; one day I am disappointed, the next day I am thrilled and I love that that is the case: that is real life, that is authentic – what is true will never fit any ideology like a glove; one belief need not determine our next belief; that we do ultimately have to make choices but we need not let scripts determine them for us. Jesus again and again demonstrates the power of critical thinking – again and again finds the truth expressed in and embodied in wildly unexpected and confusing and consternating people and places. I saw a gorgeous film – a classic; can’t think of the name but Ernie Borgnine is in it – in which Jesus visits Matthew at his home and, from the outside, he looks like any other partier. his challenge – his invitation – to Matthew was gentle and intimate and look like total abdication of past teachings on the surface. Jesus, in my mind, is the ultimate critical thinker. He’s the bomb in that area. That’s all I am asking for about this metaphor. Might we who embrace it through vows need to live differently with it, just as Jesus lived differently than expected with some of his teachings? That’s all.