​I am sometimes asked, “Did you always know you wanted to be a nun?” I have to answer “no,” and I am glad for the experience of having carried other dreams, hopes, and plans for my life. In hindsight I suppose I can see how God was planting seeds much earlier than I was aware, but I did not really begin considering religious life until I was in college.

The summer after high school I was introduced to the Rule of St. Benedict and monastic life through a retreat I went to. I was captivated by stories of the desert fathers and mothers, those early monks and nuns who inhabited the deserts of Egypt and Syria in the 4th and 5th centuries. Monastic life as described in the Rule of Benedict intrigued and attracted me, and I began reading books by and about contemporary Benedictines.

All this continued to perk in my heart while I was at Williams, and during sophomore year I found myself considering a future different from the family and career life I had always pictured. I began thinking, albeit vaguely at first, about a life that was more deliberately and consciously focused on Christ, a life of prayer and community. During junior and senior years, while seemingly everyone around me was interviewing for graduate schools, entering the corporate and business world, or moving in other career directions, I was wondering how I could give my whole self to God with as much dedication as the early desert dwellers had. I wanted to live simply and purposefully, focused on Gospel values and not giving in to society’s demands to produce, consume, and make money.

A friend suggested that I visit a Benedictine community in New Mexico with which he was familiar. These sisters, alongside a community of monks, ran a retreat house. I spent the summer there after graduation, and then left to try my hand at some campus and youth ministry work for the next school year. But I found I missed the prayer and communal life, so the following summer I returned to New Mexico to join the community. After almost four years there I realized that while sharing life in the Spirit with retreatants was very fruitful, it wasn’t the right fit for me. I made the difficult decision to leave the community and returned to my home town asking God what I was supposed to do next. I thought I wanted a more contemplative life (still Benedictine) but I also wanted to be open to whatever he wanted.

I got a few jobs, the main one teaching in a Catholic school (the most interesting one driving for FedEx one holiday season). I enrolled in some ministry classes through the diocese which eventually led to a graduate degree in theology, just for fun. And I tried to listen to where the Holy Spirit was directing me. Over the previous years I had begun to realize that my deep desire for Love was so huge that I could not expect it to be fulfilled by any person, only God, so I was pretty sure marriage was not the right choice for me. But I told God I was open to it if that’s what he wanted. The dating scene just didn’t unfold, though, even when some friends offered to set me up with a “good Catholic guy.” So I continued discerning and slowly visited other communities. After a couple years, a Benedictine sister I knew (from a different community than the one I had been in) suggested I visit the nuns at Our Lady of the Mississippi Abbey, who, as part of the Cistercian Order, follow the Rule of Benedict and live a contemplative life with no “active” ministries. After a few more years discerning, I entered there in May of 2006. On September 14, 2012, I made my solemn profession.

Living with others who value the same expression of faith in a common life together has been important for fostering my desire to know and experience God’s love more deeply. Community life offers encouragement and support on the path of discipleship, and provides many opportunities to serve my sisters with both my gifts and my weaknesses. By sharing work and household responsibilities we all have ample time for private prayer and meditation each day, in addition to our common prayer and daily Eucharist.

​I especially appreciate the quiet hours before dawn for my Lectio, praying with and meditating on the scriptures. This encounter with God’s written Word becomes a stance of prayer, so that whatever I’m doing I can be more and more open to encountering God’s Word as it is revealed in all my daily activities. Whether I am gardening, cooking, practicing music, or just walking in the woods, I hope that I might learn, as St. Paul says, to “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances” (1 Thes 5:16-18).

Sr. Myra ’96