\n
\ntappity, tap)
\nin between them ) <\/span>
<\/span><\/div>\n
\n. . <\/span>
<\/span><\/div>\n
\nlast Tuesday for my young charge. <\/span>She
\nwas working on an assignment – Theology, you know – and the paper was due on
\nWednesday. <\/span>Time is a strange thing – it
\nmoves very fast, and even though my prot\u00e9g\u00e9 has been living in it all her life,
\nshe still hasn’t managed to compute just what speed it goes at, and plan her
\nactivities accordingly.
\nshould introduce myself. <\/span>I am one of the
\nresidents of Rosary Convent, Tynong.
\n<\/span>However, unless you happen to be very high up in the service of God, you
\nprobably won’t see me should you happen to visit. <\/span>I am a Guardian Angel of one of these budding
\nDominicans. <\/span>Modest as the title looks on
\npaper, I think it fails to illustrate the scope and strain attached to such a
\nposition!
\ncontrary! <\/span>Guarding souls is one of the
\nmost sublime duties Almighty God can honour one of His creatures with. <\/span>Nevertheless, while becoming the guardian of
\na young religious may be viewed in the light of a promotion of sorts, it does
\nbring with it an entire string of new cares and responsibilities. <\/span>For one thing, my little prot\u00e9g\u00e9 seems to
\nhave undergone a strange metamorphosis, whereby she is in more in need of
\ndivine assistance than ever! <\/span>Upon
\nentering the Novitiate, she left a good many things behind – her old life, most
\nof her possessions, her ordinary clothes, her family. <\/span>She also seems to have left a bit of her
\nmemory behind, since I’ve had a lot of plaintive requests to remind her of
\nthings lately, such as the following:
\nto serve at table, dear Angel – please don’t let me forget!”
\nthat Literature Essay due?”
![](\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-WzslB1m7Pkw\/UcOdlJDZCMI\/AAAAAAAADoI\/l7Yz_JwJIQA\/s1600\/IMG_1509.jpg\")
<\/a><\/div>\n\nremind me to turn the oven on at four-seventeen so that dinner will be hot in
\ntime for tea!”
<\/a><\/div>\n\nfive-o-six in the morning) “Good Angel, what day is it today?”
\nnotion that it is grownups (or at least young adults) who enter the Novitiate –
\nwell, I must say that in my own experience, my little sister has become very
\nchildlike again in her dependence! <\/span>Or
\nperhaps it would be fairer to say that she realizes more concretely that she is
\nunmistakably finite, and consequently leans more heavily on supernatural aid.
\nLife, for those who are just getting used to it, can be rather bewildering at
\ntimes. <\/span>With a busy schedule composed of
\nprayer, study, more prayer and more study; varied with a healthy dose of all
\nthe work attached to being human (such as cooking spaghetti and washing
\ncoffee-cups), it is small wonder that brand-new postulants wander about the
\nconvent with a look halfway between preoccupation and semi-befuddlement. <\/span><\/div>\n
<\/a><\/div>\n\npart of the Dominican day that it is relatively easy to remind my prot\u00e9g\u00e9 what
\nall this busy-ness is about. <\/span>All these
\nvaried labours are for the Divine Resident in the Chapel, at Whose Feet the
\nCommunity gather many times during the day, to join us Angels in praising the
\nDivine Majesty.
\ncompass, my little charge looks to see what comes next. <\/span>Perhaps it’s time to attend lectures. <\/span>If that’s the case I remind her to bring a
\npen along, (very easy to forget such a small piece of scholastic
\napparatus). <\/span><\/div>\n
<\/a><\/div>\n\nassignments. <\/span>If so, I take up a position
\nlooking over her shoulder as she taps away on a computer. <\/span>Some days she can type non-stop, and have a
\nvery decent collection of words on her sheet by the end of forty minutes. <\/span>Other times the tapping is sporadic, and my
\npoor little scholar wriggles her head and her fingers helplessly by turns –
\nclearly there’s a thought coming, but it just won’t come<\/i>. <\/span><\/div>\n
<\/a><\/div>\n\nit a push, and then it’s business as normal.
\n<\/span>Other days she’ll set herself up nicely with a large array of books spread
\nout on the table and alternate between looking out the window for inspiration
\nand rubbing her forehead to help the ideas bud. <\/span><\/div>\n
<\/a><\/div>\n\nhelp, and I whisper an activation word in her ear. <\/span>Perhaps its ‘despot’, or ‘dynamic’, or ‘liberation
\ntheology’ or (this was a good one for helping along a Theology essay) ‘objective
\nconceptualisation’.
\nto know the Truth in order to teach it, you can guess that study takes up a
\ngreat deal of Dominican time, and it’s in this area that my young charge likes
\nbest to know that I am near. <\/span>There is
\nsuch a great deal (for the human mind) to learn and the quantity of knowledge
\nseems overwhelming at times to my little sister. <\/span>I have never had the experience of being mentally
\nbogged by a billion or more facts, ranging from the gymnastics of Gregorian
\nneums to the gory kaleidoscope going by the name of the French Revolution, but
\nI understand that it is not a pleasant one.
\n<\/span>However, it is my happy lot to sort out these scary arrays of knowledge
\nand help fit them into her ‘little brain’.
\n<\/span>At the same time, I find that the best remedy for any restlessness -mental
\nor otherwise – is the whisper that it is not necessary to memorize ALL these wordy
\ndefinitions of impersonal truth to be a good Dominican – the most important
\nTruth to know is<\/i> a Person – the Word
\nof God.<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/div>\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ten seconds to nine-o -five (tap, tap, tap sings the laptop) . . . nine seconds to nine-o-five (tap, tappity tap, tap) . . . eight seconds . . . (tap tap tappity tappity, tappity, tap) . . . seven seconds . . . (hit control-save; shut down) . . . six . . (flap … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-convent-life","infinite-scroll-item","masonry-post","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-33"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/opsisters.org.nz\/preview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/opsisters.org.nz\/preview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/opsisters.org.nz\/preview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opsisters.org.nz\/preview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opsisters.org.nz\/preview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4937"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/opsisters.org.nz\/preview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4937\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5253,"href":"https:\/\/opsisters.org.nz\/preview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4937\/revisions\/5253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/opsisters.org.nz\/preview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opsisters.org.nz\/preview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opsisters.org.nz\/preview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}