Thinking Out LoudIt’s suddenly cool to be – of all things – a nun. Popular culture wants what they’re having.
NBA basketball fans are dressing up as nuns, wearing a habit to support their side. They’re channelling the Salesian Sisters, famous fans of the San Antonio Spurs, who created a viral moment when a seven-foot-tall player bent double to receive their blessing.
We’re also enjoying the peek into nun-life provided by “nun-fluencers” on #NunTok and other platforms.
Sister Marta from northwest Spain sets aside one day a week to be a “digital apostolate”, uploading content to Youtube and Instagram. It’s her answer to the Benedictine call to “pray and work”. Sometimes she answers curious questions from the outside. How do nuns stop their habits from getting mixed up in the wash?
Sister Miriam shares her strategy for winning Ultimate Frisbee on the “Dominican Sisters Open Mic” podcast. (Hot tip: chat to everyone on the field).
Aiden Arata, a secular writer and social media influencer, reflects wryly on what she wants as she travels to a silent retreat at an abbey in the French countryside: “I want divine reorientation”. Arata feels like her life is being lived outside the train window, a “blur of motion and consequence”.
Our nun-fluencers show us lives that resist the contemporary blur of motion and consequence. A quiet life as a good life. There are ways to sort laundry; there are strategies to win Ultimate Frisbee. There is a time to be silent and pray; there is a time to turn on the podcast microphone and to upload social media content for global consumption.
I wonder if what the world is crushing on is the possibility of a collective nun-life? One where we live and work together as friends, and have some divinely-inspired fun while we’re doing it.
This Thinking Out Loud was first published on Facebook.
Image: Dominican Sisters Open Mic host Sr. Miriam, O.P. and Sr. Mary Dominic, O.P. / Courtesy of Openlight Media