Billy Elliot

If you have seen the movie, "Billy Elliot" then you know something about what I feel like when I dance.  A few nights ago I did a fundraiser for our local church school.  About 70 people came.  I said I would tap dance for them.  No one had ever seen me tap or perform dancing of any kind.  People asked me, "Are you ready?" and "Are you nervous?"  I was ready and not nervous.  I don't have fear when I dance.  My body just dances.  Billy Elliot called it "electricity" as in something flows through him.  All other life issues, thoughts and such just fade away.  Talk about "letting go."  You sort of surrender to the moment, the music, and you go.  Practice of course is important.  But practice will not make a dancer.  That comes from within and connects to all the muscles in the body.  You dance as One or you don't dance.  Divided, you just do exercises, and steps.  Swan Lake ballet is a perfect metaphor for Billy Elliot, a miner's son.  For most hours of the day, in the story, a girl is under a spell and she is a swan.  But for a few hours each day, she can be herself.  When Billy dances he is who he is supposed to be, though those around him try to keep him from being himself.  When I said I wanted to be a tap dancer at my "mature" age, people asked why.  They saw me only through their eyes and probably their needs.  But I saw me, as they could not.  So if dancing or whatever you think you want to do makes you one with yourself, and at ease within, then do it and stop being a swan.  I hope the church wants to do another fundraiser, because I have only just begun.  Pride? No.  Electric.

Aging On The Insides

If you are falling apart, at a jumping off place, it is not necessary to find a group or persons to help you who are your age on the outsides.  Find a group that is your age on the insides.  Many a young person beat themselves up with a hard lifestyle of bad stuff, but get the grace or desperation to seek help while they are still relatively young, say under 30, or a teenager.  On the outside, biologically, they may have some youth, but they have grown old on the insides.  They have quite a bit in common with a person in their 40s-60s in terms of the insides.  And is it not the insides that need to be changed?  These young people tried to get well, sober, sane, healthier by exercise and food diets and organized religion.  But that did not change their destructive habits that kept bringing them down and down to the jumping off place.  Many a fit young person, aged on the insides has found quite a bit of help from "old people."  The insides match up.  I hear that young people read my blogs.  True?

Bread Baking

I was making bread yesterday.  I had my plan of how the bread was supposed to respond to my mixtures and timing.  The bread did not cooperate.  It decided to do something that was not my plan.  In the bread mixing machine, I kept adding flower, but the bread kept staying moist and a bit sticky.  Eventually I decided it was mixed OK and let it in a bowl to rise.  It was still not quite the way I wanted it.  But it rose and then I pounded it down.  It was way too moist again but I put it into separate bread pans and let it rise again.  It did, but did not have the feel of my plan.  The bread had its own plan.  I baked it and it came out fine, but not how I expected it would, given the last time I baked bread.  I have to remember that bread is a living organism and you cannot control such things.  Remember that the next time you try to control a person, a living organism.  They will turn out the way that they will turn out and you may wonder, “How did that happen?”

Singin’ In The Rain

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The Dancing Priest

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Let Me Entertain you

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The God Pill

I try not to help people by telling them they have to take the "God Pill."  Any pill comes from outside yourself, has a magic power to make you feel better, be well, and all you do is swallow it.  People in fox holes take god pills.  They suddenly decide to believe so that some magic from outside themselves will fix them up and save them from doom.  The god pill is temporary.  Doom passes and with it faith.  I talk to people who are at wits end, telling them about an energy that I discovered was inside me all the time, but somehow I was disconnected from its power to help me become a better, happier and freer person.  I tell them that I discovered this energy within me through, one, meditation, two, a personal advisor on a path of learning to live free of a bondage to self-will run riot, and three,  trying to be useful to others.  I try to live this way on a daily basis.  Faith in a deity is optional.  It certainly is not the beginning of the process.  Faith at the beginning would be only an affirmation.  There would be no action, no plan, no guide, no practice.  Plenty of believers are at that stage.  My God is gentle, courteous, and sometimes quite hidden, but always within.  Trust and hope are important.

Vital Needs

Two things I need to feel the benefits of a spiritual practice.  Inclusion and acceptance are important to me.  I can so easily have a meditation practice fall into isolation instead of solitude, unless I feel I am part of something larger than me, a group that includes me and accepts me as I am now.  I could spend time alone on a retreat, or live as a hermit for that matter, but I would need to know that out there, in the world, I have my group who includes me in keeping me informed, checking in with me, and me with them.  I can only grow from who I am now, and so I need to feel accepted as the "now" me.  The people of my group can challenge me from a place of acceptance.  Without their challenge, their example, encouragement, I could easily fall into the fantasy that I am growing based upon my own opinion.  People in recovery, for instance, know that they do best when they feel part of a group and feel accepted by that group.

Sunday

I read that Sunday is now the top shopping day in the country, save for some holiday season Saturdays.  The original purpose of Sunday being a day to do nothing came from the Sabbath idea in the bible.  God meant the Sabbath as a day set aside to remind the people of their liberation from slavery.  Slaves had no days off.  Sundays seem to be very busy now with driving family around to various  events, shopping, and getting all kinds of stuff done.  It is not a day of doing nothing.  And it requires that some people work on Sundays so that all this can happen.  I recall that when I was a kid, I might sit around but my Mom did not get the day off.  She cooked a big Sunday roast dinner which we ate in mid-afternoon.  Evenings we were on our own to get something from the fridge, so I guess my Mom got an Evening Sabbath.  Like many people I do stuff on Sunday (Church services) but I try not to make the day "slavish."  Get some restful time but this often means someone else is working so I can get this restful time.  Someone might cook Sunday dinner and invite me.  The ballet company is working and so is the symphony.  I can only hope they enjoy what they are doing.  Maybe they get a mid-week Sabbath time?  How is you're Sunday?  Oh, my Mom, the great cook, died this day in 2003.  I miss the roasts...and my Mom.

What Changes?

Sometimes when people get into a spiritual path or recovery program, they think that their life will become easier.  Their spiritual path, tool kit of recovery, will click in on a daily basis and their difficulties will disappear.  Not so, I have found.  What changes is me, not the circumstances of life around me.  I grow up and have better tools, emotional sobriety, people to help advise me, and such so that I can handle life's situations better.  Health issues, financial issues, bosses, work issues, rush hour traffic, partner issues do not just disappear, but I don't have to go to pieces over any of them on a daily basis.  And if I need to make a change, I begin with me, and then if more is needed, I have guidance from new friendships, wise and balanced people in my life, and my own spiritual practice to give me the courage and compassion to make the change.  I try to begin with me each day.  Otherwise, I will just whine, complain, and be full of useless self-pity about the world around me, and make no adult decisions to do much of anything.

Humility

Someone reminded me that humility can take a lot of pressure off of oneself.  This is because humility is the acceptance of myself as I am, rather than as I want to be or think I should be.  Humility allows me for a moment to stop fantasizing, striving, shaming and guilting myself because I am not other than I am at this moment.  I might even throw in a “welcome prayer.”  I welcome myself to be just as I am at this moment in time, if it is part of what is going to lead to change for the better.  Think of someone who hits bottom, the pits in their life.  They may wish they were anywhere and anyone but who they are at that moment.  But that is the moment of “bottoming out.”  For a drunk, it can be the doorway to recovery, so in a sense, the bottom can be welcomed or at least appreciated later when the drunkard is into recovery.  If some situation seems so dreadful that it leads us to change for the better, then some humility is called for.  “Welcome mess!  You have led me to finally make a change for the better.”  Beating up on myself never did me any good.  Blaming people, places and situations does not lead me to change for the better.

God Has My Back

Well, I got a God shot today or as you read this, yesterday.  I had been in the Monastery in the Mountains for the summer, reading, praying, pondering, and came back to teach a morning in Boulder on Prayer and Meditation.  But I forgot to get it into the parish bulletin where I was teaching, and thus forgot to alert the volunteer crew who come with treats, makes coffee, and sets up all the hospitality.  My life was in ruins.  Maybe it was a sign from God to shut up and stop teaching, since I am getting a bit too much into this "Non-dual" way of spirituality.  Then a miracle.  My helpers were in town and stepped up with little notice to set everything up.  People showed up, more than I expected.  I was all over the place with a little this, a little that, Ram Das, Ken Wilbur, Joseph Campbell,  and so on, I was not sure if people would stay.  It all went very well.  This is a God shot. Higher Power, my God, the Great Mystery, has my back.  But I need a manager!

Your Own Answers

I like what someone said about the God issue.  This person was not all that certain or settled about "God."  But they did not want to be controlled.  This person wanted some help in finding their own answers about God.  Control would be where someone else tried to give you their answers or some organized religion's answers to God, as in dogma and catechism or scripture interpretation.  Someone else said that everyone who gives you their answer as the only answer, has a small God.  God is bigger than any one person's belief.  I think that in the search we can see how other opinions might fit us, but belief in someone else's God is somewhat second-hand.  Plus, once you develop some sense of your God, if you are into meditation, listening in some silence, then your relationship with your God will change, grow and shift over time.  I do not have a stale nor "yesterday" God.  It is always Presence even when I feel no presence.  Feelings can obscure this path.  Acceptance and patience are better guides.

Passion

What is your passion?

A parent might have a passion for their child.  An athlete might have a passion for their sport.  A chef might have a passion for cooking.  It is an uplifting focus of their life, that gives them meaning and purpose in order to overcome those days and moments of inertia/indifference.  Other things become their bucket list for the day, or "to do" list of things to accomplish such as shopping, or reading a few pages of a book, or calling someone who is sick.  The bucket list may or may not get done.  The passion is daily attention.  My passion is prayer.  I try not to make it part of my bucket list. It is not something "done" in the early morning and then I move on. It is returned to during the day.  What is your passion?

Prayer Posture

If you would like to get on your knees to  pray, or it has been suggested to you that you do that, say in a prayer of gratitude, I heard of a very practical way to do this.  Before you go to bed at night, put something under the bed that you will need the next morning soon after you get up.  One person put their wallet and car keys under the bed.  It might be your book bag, or a meditation book that you will reflect on soon after you get up, in a morning meditation.  It might be your cell phone (but don't check it for messages) so this might be too much of a temptation.  I put a morning reflection book under my bed.  I deal with need for control and not getting my way by doing this.  I get all comfortable in my chair and then realize the book is still under my bed and I have to get up,  grumble, grumble, and go get it, and kneel to get it from under the bed.  I get the book and sometimes deal with silly me, and say a prayer on my knees, "God help me to accept life on life's terms!"

The Run

I have learned to never judge how my run exercise is going to go based upon the first two for three minutes.  Often, I start out going very slowly and labored.  "This is not good," I say to myself.  "I am washed up, old, rotting."  But often after a few minutes, I begin to feel better and run with more alacrity and smoothness.  The runs that start out a mess most often are some of my best runs.  And when I finish I can say to myself, "Well, self, you are not rotting or washed up."  So with your spiritual practice or yoga exercises.  Never judge by how you start out.  The beginnings can fool you. Be the tortoise and not the hare.  I am running like a tortoise at the moment!  Yikes.

BringTo The Table

What do you bring to the table of life.? Many of us bring our endless list of things we want or think we must have.  This is the prayer of some church people.  "I got to get a job, apartment, partner, makeover, fitness, car, cell phone," and so on.  These are all things we want from the world.  But what about asking ourselves what we can bring to the world?  What about trying to be of service without worrying what we will get back.? I think that the most rewarding service is to give without expecting a return.  This kind of giving has great returns.  I have found it so.  

The Start

It does not matter why you try a spiritual path or practice.  Just begin.  Most of us begin with some selfish reason.  We want to feel better and think "spirituality' the solution.  I think of people who walk into AA.  They  are there to stop drinking.  That is their presenting issue or problem.  If they hang around long enough, they begin to find out that this AA thing is about a lot more than the drinking.  They stop drinking, so their presenting problem is diminished.  But then the steps, a spiritual program, reveals to them a lot of shortcomings in their personality of which they were clueless.  This is when the spiritual solution to their immature and crazy life really begins to take off.  So start your spiritual practice for whatever reason.  Eventually, a lot more will be revealed.  Growth is always surprising with a newness of light.  The old solutions that did not work were just a rut of the same old stuff.

Growing Old Fast

One of the reasons that young people, teens and young 20s get into recovery so early is because they got very old on the insides very fast and did not have the long slow grind that is the story of people who come in at a much older age.  I think of the Facebook pictures of young people who want me to be their friend.  They all have those fresh faces!  No one posts their face the morning of a hangover after a night of no real sleep and a lot of booze, drugs.  You never get that face.  I once had a picture taken of me by a newspaper to go with a story I was in.  The photo was the day of a hangover.  Wow! Who is that guy?  I looked terrible.  My sister Maureen saved that photo for me in her memory book of my priestly ministry.  She had a sense of humor.  So I wonder when I see these fresh faces in their Facebook pose, what will each one look like in a few years or even less than a few years if they live hard and survive.  For those of them who are in some danger, I hope my blogs help.  Can I blog from the Foreign Legion?

Sandy

Well yesterday, I posted on Facebook, my big ego notification with photo, of six loaves of whole wheat bread, with cinnamon and honey.  All the monks looked forward to eating the fresh baked bread.  I was full of pride with my good deed.  Then the disaster.  Eating the bread felt like eating some sand, though the bread had an otherwise good taste, and good outside look.  What is this gritty stuff?  It turns out that the sign on the storage bin said "FLOUR and GLUTEN."  The recipe called for some gluten.  There were only two containers in the store bin.  One clearly said "Flour."  So the other must be gluten, right? Wrong.  It was sand, and I did not bother to check it out with a monk who might have some history of that bin.  The bread looked good on the outside, but had sand on the inside.  I had to throw out all six loaves that I spent the morning baking.  So embarrassed and deflated, and stupid.  I have to go join the Foreign Legion.  That what it is for, people who mess up.  Is it still around?  My ego is seriously deflated as is my reputation as a baker.  People are laughing.  So maybe we all make mistakes and just have to carry on.  I often say that it is the insides that are important and not the outside look.  I will work on my sandy insides.  Well...off to the Foreign Legion.

Outside Of Cup

I always clean both the outside and the inside of my coffee cup before I put it back on the shelf.  But  I notice that many people don't do that.  They just throw the cup into the dish washer and walk away.  Dish washer does not clean out inside stains from tea, coffee stuff.  Lots of cups at the monastery are stained on the inside.  Yucky!  Then I began to think about how often I only clean the outside of me and do not clean the inside.  I try to present a pleasant outside appearance, though now I have cut all my hair off and people are ignoring me.  I digress.  I need to remind myself that I should spend a bit of time each day working on my insides because if I don't work on my affective, emotional and spiritual life, soon enough they will pop up on my outsides and I will look badly no matter how well I am groomed.  I might have a smile but make a cutting remark, be judgmental or worse, whining with judgment.  Attitude plummets and I look on the outside like the mess I am on the inside.  Each day I trudge that road of inside work.  Oh, be careful.  Today is Friday the 13th.

Forgiveness And Anger

Some people think that forgiveness means they are supposed to condone or accept someone's bad behavior, or forget about it and just move on.  I don't forget that someone hurt me.  But if I get angry every time I think about it or recall it, my anger will not change the other person or be rid of the wrong done.  Forgiveness is so that when I do remember, I do not get angry.  If I am getting angry, I may do something stupid, repeat a solution that never worked, and I will be the worse for it.  Forgiveness beats my old solutions to anger.  It keeps me sane.

Flavors

Think of the search for God, compared to the search for ice cream.  Ice cream comes in flavors.  You cannot get just “ice cream.”  No ice cream store or market will offer anything but a flavor.  Well, houses of worship or religions can get caught in the same thing for anyone who is searching for “God” beyond flavors.  Each one says, “We have God.”  But what they might have is only a flavor of God, and they think their flavor is the only one.  What if institutions really offer flavors?  I believe that meditation is necessary so as not to stay on the level of flavor.  Give a young person a way, a path but later let them know it is a path that can only go so far without deep meditation and maybe some self-analysis to see if we are actually growing up.  If you would kill or reject or condemn someone else because they are not your flavor in religion, sexuality, ethnicity, language or culture, than your religion did not help you to grow up.  If someone says, “Chocolate is the only ice cream flavor worth eating,” you would think them narrow.  God is deeper than any flavor.  Taste and enjoy God in any religion but know that God does beyond any flavor.  “Taste and see,” in deep prayer.  Oh, and chocolate really is best.

A Baby Step

Therese of Lisieux, who died young, came up with this one about trying to pray, or meditate.  The little child wants to get to its mother who is upstairs.  It lifts its little foot to climb the first stair, but in vain.  Each renewed effort ends in failure.  The child has the right intention.  Its will is in the right place and its effort is there.  It just cannot effect union with mother.  Mother, like the Holy Mystery, eventually comes down the stairs to embrace the child, you.  Just keep trying and don't worry about your idea of successful meditation.  It is a matter of intention.  If your intention is to feel successful, better, "making progress," it is all about ego and self-will.  If it is about union with holy mystery, it will all work out.  Keep lifting that foot in daily meditation.  A Power greater than you is at work.

The Price Of Negotiations

Jephthah is a fellow who pays a big price for negotiating with his God to get something.
His God is a kind of mythic-magic warrior God who can deliver Jephthah's enemies into his hands.  Jephthah lives in a warrior world full of enemies who must be subdued.  So he calls upon his God for assistance and makes a negotiated deal.  If God delivers and Jephthah wins, then he will offer in burnt sacrifice the first person who comes out of his house to greet him after victory.  He does battle and wins.  He figures that his oath demands he pay up.  The first person who comes out to greet him from his house is his only child, his daughter, a virgin teen.  Oops! Bad deal for Jephthah and worse one for his daughter.  But he pays up and offers her as a burnt sacrifice to his God.  It still goes on today in religion.  People kill other people not of their religion, asking their God for help, and think that God is on their side, or they will please their God with killing.  But to a lesser extent, are some of us not doing the negotiations with God to get something that really is all about us?  Or we judge something really good, and God must want it too, when in fact it simply fits our own self-focused agenda?  Are we not sometimes willing to sell out or ignore the innocent, the powerless, the marginalized, in order to protect our own turf, security or comfort?  All my God asks of me is to be in line with Love, and be in service to others.  The sacrifice is my self-centeredness.

Death Bed Conversions

I love the idea of death bed conversions.  It drives a lot of self-righteous people crazy.  There are people who try to wager how they will get to heaven.  Now heaven is a place, a good place, that you can earn by effort in this life, generally keeping the rules and obeying their God as they see God.  The more faithful they are the better the chance to get to heaven which is imagined as time carrying on forever after death.  They figure that nasty people have no chance and they know who the nasty people are.  It is people not like them.  But along comes a teaching in my church that says the nasty person, doing zippo obeying of any rule but their own decadent self, is about to die and on their deathbed, they have a conversion, someone gives them an emergency baptism, as they breath their last.  They go right to heaven.  So unfair.  Well, yes, if the self-righteous were god.  This death bed person would burn.  I suspect that God is a lot more generous than some of us would care to admit.  There is a bible story that says guys got hired to work all day, and guys got hired to work only an hour.  All got the same pay.  It's in the bible.  Just sayin'

Mental Obsession

What is a 'Mental obsession?"  An example would be someone who drinks and demands more drinks thinking that alcohol is the solution.  This is only part of the obsession.  The second part is that this person has a solution but does not know what the problem is that they are trying to solve.  This might also be a definition of insanity: to practice a solution without knowing the problem.  It could be serial marriages, serial jobs, or serial careers.  It could be shopping in which you buy more of what you have plenty enough of.  Generally, the behavior is obsessive.  "More" is the solution.  The person keeps doing what they think will make them feel better but only to get worse, or at least "different," which is generally a move sideways and not to anything better.  I have found that mediation often points me to the problem.  Most often it is me.  This is why prayer needs friends to help figure some better solutions once the problem has been identified.  I am too insane to get sane by myself.

A Mixed Lot

There is a lot of prejudice, and dis-ease about being with people "not like us."  There is skin color, economic status, language, ethnicity, and sexuality to keep people separated and wary of one another. So there can be a lot of discomfort and fear in one another's presence, that can be avoided by staying "with your own kind" as the song says in the musical, "West Side Story."  But there is one place where none of this exists.  It is a recovery meeting such as AA.  Here, members are bonded by their common addiction and story of how they got there.  All these outside social pressures lose their energy to affect the members.  Not only do they accept one another.  They try to help one another to attain sobriety on a daily basis.  There are meetings for gays/lesbians, and meeting for women and for men only, but no one is rejected because they happen to walk in needing a meeting and help at that moment to stay sober.  It is in these meetings that people make lasting friendships with persons their upbringing would not have allowed.  We all need some recovery from something.

The Past

It is a bit unreal to expect anyone to forget the past things done to them, or past hurtful experiences.  Memory is memory.  "Getting over" the past is not about forgetting it.  It is about dropping the expectation that the past will change.  Only the present can change.  The past is done.  It is history.  Some people think the solution to a past is revenge.  Get even.  Or go one better.  Revenge Plus.  I have found that it is best to admit who did what and not apologize for them.  It could be someone we love but who just did not come through for us as we wanted.  A parent gets sick and cannot give the child the care the child wanted and needed.  You were the child.  Once the past is admitted, then I try to not let its energy control me now.  Mommy is gone and I am no longer a baby, but the energy is still there for that old want.  Meditation has helped a lot to keep me in the present and see where I am letting the past energy leak into my responses to life today.  Oblivion would be a short term solution.  Been there.  Done that.  I remind myself now, "The past is not going to change. Stop living it."  I have become a better friend this way.  No one wants to be a friend if they sense you are in it to soothe some old scar.  Mediation is a way of 'Friending" myself.  I like that!  So do my friends.

Clean House

Sometimes people decide to lighten their lives by cleaning house.  They go through their closets, garage, attic and cellar, to find all the accumulated stuff they have and no longer use or need.  Recycle, give away to charity, landfill, garage sale, pass on the the children or friends, and then the cleaning house project is done.  They should feel a certain lightness of being, an accomplishment, right?  Not necessarily.  Why?  Because they have some possessions they hold dear in the nooks and crannies of their inner self, and it weighs them down, taking up space.  They hold onto old resentments, anger at stuff done to them, real or imagined, self-centered fears, jealousy and envy, the desire for some retribution or revenge.  Wow, what a load.  This is the "clean house" that still needs to be done.  And to do this we often need help.  Sometimes it is easier to clean the house, than the heart.  And sometimes neither is done and life is very heavy and cluttered.

Why Learn?

There are various reasons that a person seeks knowledge, so someone told me.  Sometimes it is for fame, to be noticed by others for your knowing stuff.  Fame won't make you a better person.  Another reason to seek knowledge is out of curiosity.  You like to think of yourself as "learned."  That would satisfy vanity.  Vanity will not make you a better person.  Finally, a reason to seek knowledge is in order to serve, that is, to love.  This is what will make you a better person, no matter if someone listens, or fails to listen, is interested or not, learns from you or not, you  will never be the loser.  You will be changing for the better, becoming a better you.  I keep this in mind when I study about mystics and prayer.  Why do I do it?  I hope it is for love, so that if no one reads my blogs or learns from me, I will  be growing.  Curiosity about non-mystical issues is OK too, but I ask myself how it may serve others.  Did you learn anything from this blog?  That I am an idiot? Oh well, this would cancel out my vanity.

Labor Day Thoughts

HOMILY NOTES, FR. TERRY RYAN, CSP

MATTHEW 25: 14-30

This is a story about a guy who got rich foreclosing on other people’s farms, then harvesting after the crops had been planted by the previous owner who could not pay off the debt.  So the owner is going off on an excursion.  He has three servants who he trusts with making some profit as he did.  So he gives each a specific amount to get them started.  To the shrewdest he gives the most, five talents (money).  To another, not quite so bright he gives two and to another who might be least good with money he gives one talent.  Then off the owner goes.  

The fellow with the five goes and doubles his money.  The one with the two goes and doubles his money.  They were well taught by the master.  Bu the guy who had one talent buried it in the ground.  Which one do you admire the most?  I admire the one who buried it in the ground, because I think he is the one who is most growing up and becoming all he was made to be.  Why?  Well, when the master comes back he praises the first two fellows.  They are just like the master.  But the third guy, the one I like, does two things that I think more important than becoming rich.  One, he tells the truth.  He tells his master just what his master is, a guy who makes money off of the work and bad fortune of others, to which the master agrees.  Two, he expresses his feelings when he says that he buried the money out of fear.  

I know people who make a lot of money but they are not very honest and that don’t talk on the level of feelings or the affective level.  They might talk about business, world events, sports, art, culture, home decorating, cooking, but not about truth and feelings when it could make them vulnerable.  They might be accomplished persons, but not very grown up.  This might be safe, as we see that the honest servant got thrown out into the darkness.  But I believe that God is in the darkness and will find me.  Jesus was honest and look what it got him.  But he says. “Come, follow me.”  I would rather be in the darkness, than hide out in plain sight.

Her Sister Agnes

Many people know of Francis of Assisi and Clare, the first of the women religious to join up with Francis.  She snuck out the her family villa in the night to join Francis.  He cut off her beautiful teenage hair.  But what few know is that Clare had a sister, Caterina, who at 15 also joined a bit later. She was given the name Agnes by Francis.  Since she was considered the property of her father, the family men came to claim her back.  She refused and so her uncle drew his sword to finish her off.  Some others of the family tried to drag her off by her hair.  I guess Francis did not cut off all her hair.   Agnes ended up staying in the cloister convent.  Neither Clare nor her sister, both beauties in the Offreduccio family, tried to "sell" themselves off or be sold off for prosperous and comfortable marriages, allowing the men to continue to be in charge of their lives.  These Catholic nuns were forerunners of Women's Independence movements.  We read about bad stuff in the Catholic church today, but don't forget that a lot of good stuff began with the same church.