Triptych

In this intimate memoir an ex-nun records her three-paneled personal journey through spiritual, cultural, and socioeconomic change from the 1950s to the 21st century. She asks: What impact did growing up poor, urban, and Catholic have on my development? What influences led me to walk the less-traveled road of convent life and what propelled me to leave it? How did I get here from there? The book begins with the author's first visit to her childhood home five years after her religious profession. Intimately detailed flashbacks reveal both glimpses of her family life and her preparation for religious vows and educational ministry. The reader learns the "secret" of what she wore under a nun's religious habit, the daily routine of convent life, evolvement of her spiritual understandings, and the joyful challenge of teaching. The second section concentrates on the 1960s and the author's participation in its core events that include the Civil Rights March on Washington, the changes in Catholicism after the Second Vatican Council, an emerging consciousness of her own sexuality and the role of women in American society, and her departure from convent life. The final section offers highlights of her experiences during the final thirty years of the twentieth century-coping with sexual and career issues, experiencing corporate downsizing, teaching bankers in Romania and high-school students at an Islamic school in the United States, and a growing realization of the diversity of spiritual paths. Interspersed with poems that relate to the content and concluding with an epilogue of essays that comment on recurrent themes within the narrative, this memoir offers a unique insight into the mind and heart of a contemporary woman.