Especial spirit

It was 1990. I needed a spiritual director.

The priest that morning was a slim, slight man in his mid forties.

I approached him after Mass and asked him to be my spiritual director.

He accepted me on the spot.

Later, he told me it was because I have an especial spirit.

I also found out he is a Jesuit and astronomer.

An especial spirit?

Working on writing my life as a nun and looking back,

I realize I do have a unique spirit but don't we all.

It is a spirit unique to us.

We alone are able to affect certain things.

No one is able to do it the way we do it.

Because we are all unique.

We alone are able to walk our path to God.

No one else because we are uniquely ourselves.

Because we are unique.

When we look back, we are able to trace instances,

where our uniqueness showed up.

For me, it is an inner resilience. 

At the monastery, whatever I went through, 

I never failed to join any acts of the community.

I could be devastated, running into the garden to gain composure,

Crying as I worked it out and then dried my tears,

and attend the prayers without anyone noticing anything.

I am one of those who could cry and once I wipe my tears dry,

no one could see I had been crying.

At recreation, even when I was going through the hardest of times,

I was unfailingly cheerful and bright 

Because the community has only those two hours of recreation,

and I did not want to spoil it for any of them.

It was the stoic part of me.

A certain inner strength which I possessed from small.

My spirit has always been free and independent.

I could not be contained or boxed in.

That was actually the main reason why I could not succeed as a nun.

My mistake was entering into a way of life where one has to be a specific way.

My spirit needs to be free as a bird.

Born of nature and natural as the natural world around me.

I could only grow this way or  that.

Following whatever paths open out,

whatever streams meander, here and there.

Often without thoughts about implications.

My thoughts, my actions, straight and direct as they are.

To be a person without guile, natural, candid, open and transparent.

Is good only in the spiritual world with spiritual beings.

I was told by psychics my light is so bright,

I draw animals to me, the doves that keep coming to have babies on my window sill.

The dogs who take to me naturally.

But to operate in this world, in societies with that form of openness and transparency is something else.

As Jesus told us, be wise as serpents and simple as doves.

One needs both.

Failing it, I ended up in situations or circumstances where it is imperative for me to leave.