Mary Ward: Unbound by convent-ion
Mary Ward (1586–1645) an English nun who founded women’s religious communities modeled on the Jesuits… wanted women to serve in active roles in the church (not just cloistered in convents) … met with considerable opposition… but she “put herself aside, without regarding what was agreeable or disagreeable, her only ambition being fidelity to God…”
Philip Sheldrake
Are you crazy?
What are you thinking?
Why swim upstream when you can float
inside convent’s sanctioned mote?
Mary, Mary, why be contrary
treading on religious toes
losing friends
courting woes?
Ah, she says, what mind have I
for seclusive cloister
or convent’s favored vote?
I love the pretty priestly prayers
and most holy communion
but here’s the twist, it is the prayers
that turn me inside out.
I long to see, taste and caress
all the things in which God lives
and all the people needing
holy love’s healing kiss.
Come Holy Spirit swell
this eager bag of bones
blow security from her throne
inside this sleepy convent.
Compel me to step away
from my comfortable cloister.
Belonging to God solely
I belong to every body.
Poem by Debra Asis
The Philip Sheldrake quote is found in to today’s selection in An Ignatian Book of Days by Jim Manney, a series of daily reflections from the Spiritual Wisdom of St. Ignatius of Loyola. Throughout the book we hear the voices of St. Ignatius as well as many great thinkers and writers, long gone and present day, each uniquely revealing the way of finding God in all things.And that is my intention; to find God/Divine Presence/Ultimate Reality in whatever presents itself to me each day in 2024.
Each day I read, reflect and write on the selection, hoping to articulate the ways in which I come to know God/Divine Presence/Ultimate Reality via personal experience, impelled by the leading of my inner life.
INVITATION
Would you like to join me? The book is accessible on Amazon. Let me know in the comments to this post and sign up to get an email whenever I post. I would love to read your reflections too, public or private messages welcome!
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Learn more about me at
https://www.debraasis.org
All words are generated by grace and the grit of a real human being,
Debra Asis
