Obedience

Obedience is one of the three vows, that I took as a Junior Professed. 

(Junior Professed was another "grade" or stage in the succession to Final Vows. It took about 8 years to reach that final step. Up until then vows were temporary and for a specific time.  All the women who had not yet made final vows were considered part of Formation.)

The code of Canon Law defines obedience as:

"The evangelical counsel of obedience, undertaken in a spirit of faith and love in the following of Christ who was obedient even unto death requires a submission of the will to legitimate superiors, who stand in the place of God when they command according to the proper constitutions."


I apparently stunk at keeping it.  I can see now that I really did.  That's very ironic given how obedient and compliant I was all through school.  I can count on 2 fingers the amount of times, I was actually "reprimanded" in grade school by one of the Sisters.  Even then, they knew my record and my behavior and their reprimand was surprisingly mild.  They could really haul out the big guns on the normal trouble makers.  All they had to do was say my name and give a cross look and I was obedient putty.  Pleasing them meant everything.  That desire to please didn't end when I entered the convent but my ability to do so was so damaged, that I began to lose my sense of self.  As a school girl, I'd always known how to please the Sisters.  As a young religious, I could never seem to get it right.  Who was I and what had happened to the girl I was?

Once the epitome of obedience, now I was labeled a rebel and an insolence and arrogant one at that.  I'm sure there were moments when those attributes did describe how I felt.  After all, my Formation Director/Boss had gotten away with fondling me and making me the bad guy.  I often felt a righteous rage.  I also felt a profound sorrow.  The lofty ideals that had once filled my head and beckoned to my heart were crashing down to earth and bursting into flames.  While in the convent, I witnessed my innocence die.  There are moments, even now, when I wonder if the aftereffects would still be as profound, if there had been an actual physical violation.  My mind was raped on a daily basis.  As dramatic as that sounds, it feels so true as to be very disturbing.

There is still anger in me over many of the things that happened there.  I doubt that any of the perpetrators were acting freely.  They were victims of the system and the process.  They were damaged and often dangerous because of that damage.  They saw nothing wrong in teaching lessons and reprimanding us harshly.  Personal attacks on our character, our intellect, our looks, our singing were a daily occurrence. 
I was often told,  "This is for your own good."
I wasn't able to see it.  It looked pretty bad to me.

"Moved by the Holy Spirit, they subject themselves in faith to those who hold God's place, their superiors. Through them they are led to serve all their brothers in Christ, just as Christ ministered to his brothers in submission to the Father and laid down his life for the redemption of many. They are thus bound more closely to the Church's service and they endeavor to attain to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" (Decree on Renewal of Religious Life, 14).

Sounds like a great ideal, but what happens when corruption sets in?  What should a moral individual do, when he is commanded to act in an immoral manner or to ignore an immoral situation?  Would my keeping silent have been the right thing to do?  I will never be able to answer, "yes".   
Maybe I've always been a closet rebel at heart.

Actually, in the end, I could thank the Sisters for teaching me something about the vows in the strangest and most backward way.  I could not accept that I was arrogant and disobedient. If there were any external signs of that it was to conceal my lack of self-esteem and confidence.   Digging deeper and doing some secret reading on my own,  (Remember we had to get every book we read okayed.) I developed my own understanding of obedience.  Years later, when it came time to write our marriage vows for our wedding,  (My first wedding was a civil ceremony in our backyard.  The second was a quiet blessing by the Church.  Both times, the same groom.) I decided to include obedience in the vows I wrote for our backyard hippie wedding.  Not because I'm not a capable and independent woman but because the root of the word has power and meaning to me.  I know that it sounded old fashioned.  Part of me probably included it as a sign of protest for all those years when those defining obedience seemed to be missing the point entirely.

 β. The old Lat. form was oboedire.—Lat. ob-, prefix (of little force); and audire, to hear, listen to. 

To listen to my spouse, to listen to my life and the people in it and to try and hear God in those human communications seemed the best way to understand obedience.  At least it was and is the best way for me.

Real life in the real world has taught me more about obedience than I ever learned in the artificial enviroment of the convent.  Life has a way of handing us all sorts of things that are beyond our control.  We don't need to create artificial circumstances for obedience.  Life does that for us.  Those things that happen to us that are outside of our control provide us with a wonderful opportunity.  How is this experience serving me, a greater good, God, Allah, Vishnu?  If something is beyond our control, the best way to deal with it is to accept it.  It's easy to curse fate, become bitter, blame other people, even blame God.   Over the years, I have done all of these things.   It's much more difficult to learn to surrender and accept what life and ultimately what God has dished out for us.  The challenge is to find God within the experience and to emerge from it a better and stronger person. 

"Watering sticks" was a collosal waste of time and human potential.  It missed the point.  To demand obedience from others, a person must be worthy of it.  It must serve a greater good.  It must help the obedient become a better person.  Watering sticks in a blind obedience is foolish.  It does nothing to glorify God and everything to protect the hierachy and their positions of power.  It completely misses the point.
For me obedience means "to listen."  God knows I need all the practice I can get in this department.  He seems to be serving up lessons every day.  Lately, I end my day with the same prayer, 
"I surrender.  This is out of my hands.  I can't let this ruin me. Help me find a way to see the good in this situation. Help me accept what is."
Since God is "up all night anyway"  I figure it's His job to worry about it.  I'm kept very busy working on the surrender and maintaining a helpful attitude.  This is what obedience means to me.