A Change of Behavior
Leaving Behind My Husband, Profession, and Every little thing I Owned to Change into a Nun
By Sister Monica Clare
Crown, 336 pages, $30
Sister Monica Clare, previously Claudette Monica Powell, entered the Group of St. John Baptist (CSJB), an Episcopal convent in rural New Jersey, in 2012 and was elected the sister superior there in 2019. She has turn into a preferred determine on social media. This e-book, her autobiography, appeared in 2025.
Claudette grew up in chaotic and impoverished circumstances which are painful to examine. Her sense of vocation to the non secular life first manifested itself in early childhood, when she kissed the tv display whereas watching The Nun’s Story.
She grew up in a world influenced by Methodist and Southern Baptist piety and by calls for that women restrict themselves to wanting fairly, marrying early, and producing infants. Church provided Claudette a protected place to be, a welcome different to what prevailed at residence.
Claudette later took a special highway about what it meant to be a girl. Her one marriage was brief and loveless and produced no youngsters. She labored as a photograph editor in Los Angeles and carried out in an acoustic rock duo and an improv comedy troupe. Solely later got here the non secular life.
Her experiences echo the best way many ladies converts in early Christianity courageously moved away from the calls for of their households of origin and their society to observe Christ, come what could. In these days she may need turn into a martyr.
As Claudette slowly moved by means of the levels resulting in life career, she was repeatedly preoccupied with fears that she wouldn’t be accepted for the following stage, that the sisters would reject her. This little question mirrored the unconventional insecurities she skilled rising up, in addition to the emotional reserve that characterised her neighborhood, or no less than did so from her perspective at the moment.
However love conquered all. Claudette endured regardless of her recurrent fears, whereas the sisters steadily made clear their affection for her and acceptance of her. Everybody appears to have been blessed by this chapter of their frequent life.
Sister Monica Clare writes about her experiences and the lifetime of her neighborhood in a lucid and engaging approach. There’s nothing opaque in her account of the Group of St. John Baptist. At instances austere, theirs is an austerity that displays their alternative of prayer as their prime exercise.
A.M. Allchin as soon as printed The Silent Riot, a research of Anglican non secular life. Monica Clare and her sisters show themselves to be contributors on this insurrection, resisting mistaken commitments that scarred human flourishing in instances previous and that proceed to take action at this time.
The sisters’ lifestyle, whereas alien to many, typically shines forth on this e-book as sanctified frequent sense, a practical strategy to dwell within the presence of God. For Sister Monica Clare, it has turn into a welcome residence and a basis for her present work as a non secular counselor specializing in non secular trauma, psychological sickness, and habit.
Close to the tip of A Change of Behavior, the writer summarizes her story to this point: “I spent the primary forty-six years of my life satisfied I used to be on the fallacious path. In all places I went I felt like a fish climbing a tree. However the reality is God was paving my approach.”
