Finding My Tribe

Recently, I came across the following quote in The New Yorker:

“Why do people want to adopt another culture?” Alice Kaplan, the French scholar, writes. “Because there’s something in their own they don’t like, that doesn’t name them.”

I have certainly adopted another culture by joining the Mount St. Scholastica community, with the attendant culture shock (“I can’t wear blue jeans in chapel? We’re having a house meeting at the same time as my favorite TV show? We pray how many times a day??) It’s worth the effort to become acculturated, however, because something in my previous life as a single American woman didn’t name me. My culture didn’t encourage me to live simply, be aware of the needs of others, or set aside regular times for prayer. The limited extent to which I was able to do those things as a single person required great effort. It is different for the Sisters of the Mount, because the Rule of St. Benedict provides a mechanism for community life and enables them to support each other as they seek to live out their values.

It still feels weird to eat with a different group of people at every meal, and wait to do laundry because someone else’s clothes are in the washer, and speak up during conversations because the Sisters who wear hearing aids can’t  hear me when I mumble. On the other hand, when I proposed having an autumn equinox prayer service, my living group offered to help, and more than 50 people attended; when I pick beans, at least half a dozen Sisters pitch in to help clean them; and when I bake brownies, there’s no danger I’ll end up eating the entire pan myself. It appears I have found my tribe.