Shifting Culture
Shifting Culture
Ep. 293 Sister Monica Clare - From the Ad Agency and Stand-Up Comedy to Becoming a Nun
Today, we're diving into the journey of Sister Monica Clare - a woman who went from working in advertising and doing stand-up comedy to becoming a nun. Her story is a powerful testament to finding who you truly are and discovering a deeper connection with God. We'll explore her path of discernment, her experiences in religious community, and how she's now using TikTok to break down misconceptions about religious life. Sister Monica Clare will share insights on prayer, community, and finding your true calling - revealing that spiritual life isn't about perfection, but about genuine human connection and love. We explore a lot in her story, so join us.
Sister Monica Clare is the Sister Superior at the Community of St. John Baptist, an Episcopal convent based in New Jersey, and a spiritual counselor specializing in religious trauma, mental illness, and addiction. Before becoming a nun in 2012, she worked as a photo editor in L.A. and performed in an acoustic rock duo and an improv comedy troupe.
Sister Monica's Book:
Sister Monica's Recommendation:
God Didn't Make Us to Hates Us
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So it was all this stripping away of me thinking there were these, these holy personages that always behaved correctly and never argued and and I really had them on a pedestal, and coming into community showed me that they're just human. They have the same personality these other people have, and yet they live together and love each other. Underneath everything that happens, there is a great love and that really surprised me.
Joshua Johnson:Hello and welcome to the shifting culture podcast in which we have conversations about the culture we create and the impact we can make. We long to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. I'm your host. Joshua Johnson, today we're diving into the journey of sister Monica Claire, a woman who went from working in advertising and doing stand up comedy to becoming a nun. Her story is a powerful testament to finding who you truly are and discovering a deeper connection with God. We'll explore her path of discernment, her experiences in religious community, and how she's now using Tiktok to break down misconceptions about religious life. Sister Monica Claire will share insights on prayer community and finding your true calling, revealing that spiritual life isn't about perfection, but about genuine human connection and love, we explore a lot in her story. So join us. Here is my conversation with Sister Monica Claire. Sister Monica Claire, thank you so much for joining me. Welcome to shifting culture. So excited to have you on
Unknown:Thank you. I'm really excited to be here. Yeah, we're gonna dive
Joshua Johnson:into your story, your story of growing up becoming someone who works for ad agency, does some some stand up comedy and some improv, and then ends up becoming a nun. So it's a it's a fantastic story in there, but it's a story of really God, wooing you from early on, you start your book out about falling in love, falling in love with the movie. What were you falling in love with early on when you were growing up? I think
Unknown:I couldn't really articulate it when I was a little kid, but looking back on it, I think it was the beauty of that life. Of course, it was a Hollywood movie, so the cinematography was perfect and the sings were perfect. But there is a there is a beauty about it that really drew me in and and the order, because my life was so chaotic as kid, I looked at all these very neat lines of nuns walking, and they had a very pre predetermined routine and rules. And most kids wouldn't be attracted to that sort of thing, but I was really interested in order and rules. Was a weird kid.
Joshua Johnson:What do you think attracted to you with order and rules? Why do you think that you were drawn to order in the environment that you grew up in. I think
Unknown:it's just sort of inherent in my personality. I've always been a person who arranges things in neat little stacks and has to have a very clutter free environment, although you would never know that looking at my office, but I just like the idea of things being really set and and calm and safe, because we moved a lot. When I was a kid, my father was very volatile. We never knew what to expect from him, and so the there is something safe about order, that it's always been part of my personality. Well,
Joshua Johnson:is there seeking order in the midst of moving around a lot and really hard things, what was your conception of God? What were you attracted to growing up with God? Or were you even thinking about God much growing up,
Unknown:I remember thinking about God from the moment I became aware of, you know, thoughts and things like that, it was part of my life, from the day I was born, because my grandmother really was active in raising me and my sisters and she went to church. She took me to church ever since I was a baby, and she talked about God and read her Bible and talked to me about prayer. So I always had this sense that, you know, when you're a little kid, you have to anthropomorphize everything, pretty much. So I thought of God as the guy with the white beard and being very much, in my view, the perfect parent, like parent I always wanted, and that God was a loving a loving entity that was I was never alone. I've never felt alone in my life, because I've always had this idea that that God is always with me. Tradition that I grew up in Southern Baptist. Luckily, we had a very kind preacher in our church. He didn't preach. Each condemnation and hellfire and brimstone, he taught a lot about, you know, I remember he would, he would just open up the Bible and start preaching on whatever. There was no lectionary or anything. He refilled with the Holy Spirit, and He preached for an hour and a half on the wise man who built his house upon the rocks or whatever the foolish man built his house. Concept. So lessons like that were the kind of things that he preached about. And I never, never really saw the God of condemnation and shame and fear unless I went to somebody else's church and heard a preacher and I thought, well, he's wrong, because God loves us. You know, I always had this very deeply ingrained idea that God loves us and, most surprisingly, wants us to be happy. And a lot of people didn't get that in their religion growing up. So I feel very grateful that I did
Joshua Johnson:as you carried that through being with a God that didn't condemn you, being with a God that loves you feeling like he was with you. What was your trajectory like in your life? Like moving from figuring out, Hey, maybe I want to be an actress. Maybe I want to do stand up. What? How did that come into play in your life?
Unknown:That was mostly because I would try something. Because I'm always intellectually seeking. I'm always looking for new to learn, something new, like I've learned to knit when I was 46 years old. I'm always looking for the next thing to learn. And when I was in high school, I started doing theater, and I thought this is a lot of fun. And since I've been told over and over that I can't pursue a religious vocation because it's wrong. People would tell me, you know, you're pretty good at acting, you should do it. And I really did love being on stage and dressing up and pretending to be somebody else, and I felt like I was pretty good at it, but I didn't succeed at it. I always tell people I was a colossal failure as an actress, because I tried it for 13 years. I never got an agent or a paying job, so that's pretty bad. So God was really slamming that door for me out of that was where I met, you know, friends who did sketch comedy and they were stand up comedians, and they would say, you should really be a stand up comedian. So it was all these external affirmations from people that I was like, Okay, maybe I'll try that. And the fact that I didn't succeed at those things told me I really saw it as God was telling me I was not on the right path. You know, it's good for you for trying, but that's not it. Yeah,
Joshua Johnson:you got external validation. Whenever we get external validation. We follow that path. We form our identity around what others say about us, yes, but then, if you're following the path of God, sometimes it's an internal calling, and way, how did you wrestle with the external validation? Following the the identity path of others are setting for you and the internal calling that God was giving you. It
Unknown:was interesting because in my 20s, I realized that the calling wasn't going away. Because I wanted to read everything I get my hands on about nuns. I wanted to learn more about them, and just always have this fascination with nuns, but my culture was telling me that nuns were very unhappy, they were repressed. And, you know, there's all these news stories that you see about these scientific studies married people live longer and they're happy and whatever. So I was thinking, okay, that's backed up by science. I guess that you're supposed to get married. But then, after my divorce, I had enough therapy to really start looking into my authentic self, and I thought, Who was I? Who was I before all the bad stuff happened to me, I was a very quiet little kid who liked to read and I liked to go to church and love God. That's who I am, fundamentally all this other stuff was sort of masks and costumes that I added to that little girl just for external validation. And before I had therapy, I really was not able to ever disagree with anyone or stand up to anybody, because that was so conditioned into me as a southern female that you're not supposed to do these things. Those are the worst thing. But then in therapy, my therapist was like, No, discard that. That is not correct. You are allowed to upset people by disagreeing with them. So it was we started out with little things, you know, so that I could gain my confidence, and then after I had been in therapy and worked on my co dependency and all those things. My therapist said, you need to speak your truth. You need to be who you really are, and the people who are really, really important will stay with you as your authentic self, and the others will just sort of fade away. And that's exactly what happened.
Joshua Johnson:What is finding yourself and how do we. Find ourself rooted in God and and the way that we were created and specially made individually, but also then, like you're tethered to others and a being, so you're not just an island on your own. So how does, how does finding yourself and being tethered to each other and to God, work for you, and how did you find your voice in the midst of all that,
Unknown:it took, took about 30 years for me to do that.
Joshua Johnson:It is the work of a lifetime. It certainly is.
Unknown:It's still continuing. But I remember when I was a kid in the 70s, I would hear people on television talk about finding themselves, and I always thought it was a cheesy thing. I'm finding myself. You know, I went to Capri for the summer and found myself. I thought it was just so silly. But then I started going to Al Anon meetings for families and friends of addicts and alcoholics, and people started talking about the authentic self, and I had never heard that term before. And somebody, I can't remember who it was, they did define it as, who were you before all the bad stuff happened? And who were you before you started assembling all these coping mechanisms and survival techniques? That's who you really are. And it was really hard for me to dig through this, like archeology of Well, I do like theater, but I don't think I fit in in that group. And I started looking at my group like, where do I feel comfortable? Where do I fit in? And that really helped me define who I really am, because I thought, well, one of my favorite places on earth has always been church, and I feel safe around church people. It's very sad that some people don't, but I do, and church nerds were my people. And then the first time I went to visit a religious community, it was in Santa Barbara, the Sisterhood of the holy nativity. And I thought they're nuns, and I feel like part of the family, like I don't feel like I have to I don't have social anxiety around them. And that was really important to me, because I always thought that I was defective because I'm really massive introvert, and I never felt comfortable at cocktail parties or holiday parties in LA and I thought there was something wrong with me or missing from my brain, because I was so shy I couldn't interact with these people. And then I thought it's because I just didn't find my people yet. So the finding your tribe thing was a really big part of finding myself
Joshua Johnson:as soon as you started to visit religious communities, nuns, what were some of the conceptions that you had that started to fall away because of your interaction
Unknown:with nuns? Luckily, I didn't go to Catholic school growing up. I didn't have this image of nuns with a ruler beating children and all that. Thank God. I had an image of nuns that they were very serene and angelic and prayerful. And some of the first ones that I met were because they were in their 80s and 90s. They'd been in community for a long time, and then I started to see that they argued, and that surprised me. And even, like one of the communities which I'll go name, was that I visited when I was trying to discern, one of the sisters came up to me and grabbed my elbow and said, Did you see those two try to light those candles? They don't know what they're doing. I didn't realize they were like that. So it was all this stripping away of me thinking there were these, these holy personages that always behave correctly and never argued and and I really had them on a pedestal, and coming into community showed me that they're just human. They have the same personalities that other people have, and yet they live together and love each other. Underneath everything that happens, there is a great love and that that really surprised me. I think some
Joshua Johnson:of that there is pretty counter cultural to the way that especially people in the West live. There's more individualism, rugged individualism, like I'm gonna do, forge my own path and move forward. And you're you're part of a community, and the community of other women that are going after God and trying to do good justice work in the world, and what that looks like? How does community shape you and actually form you in a way where the what maybe what you saw beforehand as people trying to find their own path wasn't doing well for you.
Unknown:I think that the most pleasant surprise for me was that I could be emotionally intimate with people I had never done that before. I'd never really disagreed or had arguments or yelled at somebody before I came in community when I was 46 years old, believe it or not, and. Yeah, and the first few times it happened here, I realized, wow, that I'm not driving them away. They're not going to reject me or abandon me. We're going to apologize and make up and hug each other and tell each other we love each other. That had never happened in my entire life. So that was a wonderful deepening of my human connection. It's like in a marriage, where you get real with each other, and there are some sisters in community. They've been here for so long together that they have this shorthand, like old couples have, where you think they're that there's something else is happening than is actually happening, because they've known each other so long they don't have to spell it out for each other, and that's a very deep connection over decades like that, and sisters who don't get along throughout their entire relationship. If one of them's in the hospital, the other one will go and take care of her. So that is a really profoundly deep emotional connection when I had never experienced before, did not expect to be taught that lesson. Oh, that's
Joshua Johnson:beautiful. I think that, you know, we could all find our community and try to be able to care for each other and have a safe space where we could disagree and then hug each other and say we love each other at the end, and the world would be a much better place if we could all find communities like that. Since you were shifting from one career into becoming a nun and going into this religious community, a lot of people may not know, or they may know that there is a big discernment process of whether this is the path for you. So what was that discernment process like for you? And what is the discernment process to figure out? Is this the path?
Unknown:I always tell people to do what I did. I did it correctly, accidentally, because the first thing I did was get in touch with a priest. And I always tell people, if you want to discern a religious vocation, talk to a priest. Start there. Or you know you're Reverend, if you're a part of a Protestant denomination, talk to your pastor, and that person will be the starting point, because they know what to look for in the discerner, and they know if it's genuine most of the time they know. And then I tell people, gather some churchy tech friends around you and have a informal discernment committee, and they can help you figure out which place, which communities to visit. And you have to visit several times before you make the decision to become, you know, to apply to the community, because your first visit. You may think they're all floating around in their heavenly beings and all that the next time you have the visit. And then the process of after you apply to a community, it takes six to eight years to become life professed, and most people don't know that it's a long discernment. Even after you enter community, you're discerning every day whether you should still be here, and the communities are discerning whether you're in the right place. The other thing I always tell searchers when they come to us is, this is not like a job interview, where you come and visit a few times and we go, hey, we'd like you to come on board. You know, like you're you're one of us. We don't do that. We leave it up to the discerner to say, I would like to apply to your community, because it really should be on their heart that they feel drawn, and then they come in just as a visitor for a month. And now we let them break it up into two chunks of two weeks, because before you know, people would come in the summer between college terms or whatever. But people are working now and they can't take a month off from work, so And during that month, you get the psychological screenings and physical and all these, these prerequisites, a background check and all that. And then you ask to be made a postulant that lasts six months after your six month postulant. So you ask the sisters to be clothed as a novice. That's a letter that you write. And then you can be a novice from two to three years. And then after that, you become first professed, or some people call it Junior professed, that can be from three to four years, and sometimes it's two, but normally they drag that out because they're really trying to see if you're committed. And then when you are life professed, I tell people, it's exactly like if you were an adjunct professor and you become tenured, then it's it's a much more formal commitment. You get a wedding ring, which I have, and you are legally bound to the community. You can walk away, you can get in the cab in the middle of the night and go away. Nothing's gonna happen. But in your heart, you you are married to the community. You're married to Jesus. If you wanna leave, you really need a discernment process to leave. You have to talk to the bishop. Have to talk to the community pastor. Sure. So it's a very, very deep commitment. I was really annoyed that it was so long when I first came because I thought I would do this. Now, I see the wisdom in it, because every community has this long process, and it's definitely worth it, for sure. And
Joshua Johnson:what drew you to the community that you're in now, and what are some of the tenets of this community make it different than others.
Unknown:It was really an interesting surprise from God, because I came to visit this community right after 911 and I really liked the idea that it was close to New York City, because I was interested in doing Urban Ministry, I thought that would be something that I was definitely called to. And then I came back and visited a couple more times. But in the meantime, I visited this Society of St Margaret in Boston, and that was my number one choice. I went to their search program. I was like, This is it. I'm going to join these, these ladies, they're associated with a big city in Boston, and they have this lovely country convent with the Corgi farm right next to it, so I could just play with little Corgi puppies. And so they were my number one choice. And after their search program, I waited, like, a month, and then I emailed their their novice director, and nobody responded. And then I called. Nobody called me back. I emailed over the next six months. I called and emailed all different numbers at their convent. Nobody replied. So I said, Okay, number two choice on my Excel sheet that I had was community of St John Baptist, because I had them under the category Best convent, because the convent is so beautiful and they're close to a big city, and I like the idea of doing spiritual direction and retreats, because that's always something I've been interested in. And so when I emailed them, the superior emailed me back within 15 minutes, she said, Of course, I remember you. Oh yes, we would love to have you come in as a sister. So that was definitely a God thing that I did not expect. I didn't expect God to leave me here, and then they made me superior. Are they thinking,
Joshua Johnson:what are some of the the tenants of the community then, like, what does it look like? What are you called to? And what kind of ministry is being done?
Unknown:One of the great things that sister Barbara Jean established when she was superior years ago, is each sister has to discern her own individual ministry, in addition to our corporate ministry, which is our retreat house, that's our flagship, but since we don't run those big institutional works anymore, like hospitals and and orphanages, things like that, our retreat house is really our our main ministry, but you also are asked to discern what you feeling called to. Some of us are called to parish ministry. I really love doing it, leading, leading retreats and being a spiritual director, I got spiritual direction certified, and I think most of us all except two, are certified spiritual directors. And we have a lot of clients that we keep up with that really appealed to me, because there's always been a part of me also that wanted to maybe see if I could be an therapist, like a call within my call to be a sister. And I thought spiritual counseling is, is a sort of a soft launch of that kind of a thing. And it's been so rewarding. I absolutely love it. And we've also, you know, some of us have worked with unhoused people. I did not feel called to that, but God thought differently. So usually, that's how it works. Yeah, I was dragged into it by the Holy Spirit, and it was the most rewarding thing I've ever done in my life. Of course, of course, it was and preaching. We do a lot of preaching. I'm in the ordination process to become a priest. That was another thing that dreaming of this community was that two sisters were priests, and I was pretty progressive, so I thought that was terrific. And we just do a lot of varied ministries, like Sister Margo Elizabeth takes, which she calls Celtic journeys. She takes tour groups to holy places in Ireland and the UK. She felt called to that just out of left field. So I'm gonna try this now. She's been doing it for like 22 years.
Joshua Johnson:So as you started entering into this community, this place, I know you write a little bit about your first experience, maybe with some imaginative prayer of what Jesus was able to tell you and speak to you. What are some of these disciplines, maybe prayer practices or things that that could draw us closer and have a deeper relationship with Jesus?
Unknown:I love that question, because sometimes people really don't realize that there are infinite ways of praying. They think especially Episcopalians. If you ask them to pray, they bring out the Book of Common Prayer and they flip to a prayer. Prayer, it's all scripted. I grew up in a tradition where extemporaneous prayer was really a part of it, so I still enjoy just sitting down and talking to God in a very free form way. Until I came to the convent, I didn't hear anything back. But that changed dramatically when I deepened my prayer life and I realized, wow, if you deepen your connection with God, you can feel God's guidance and God's wisdom very clearly, whereas before I was thought, Oh, this is so unclear. I wish somebody would send me a text or something God. But and decision making and discernment is so hard and it's so necessary that when you bring God into that conversation. It'll, it'll transform your life. And I do things, yeah, I tell people in my retreats, even things like knitting can be a prayerful practice, because it calms your nervous system. And if you do anything like that, crafty or physical, like gardening or building something, if you do it intentionally and in a prayerful way. Prayerful and mindful is what I say. It can deepen your your connection to God. I also tell people it's perfectly fine to send out, like micro prayers. I used to, my lived in New York, I was still in the subway, and I would just go to God. I would think, help, you know, like one word, I think it was, maybe it was Saint Anthony who said, If you can't pray a whole prayer, you can pray, Oh God, make speak to save me. Oh Lord, make haste to help me from the Psalms. And that's a little micro prayer. And also, of course, centering prayer, where you just sit in silence and you meditate on a single word or concept. I love sitting a group of people in that silence. There's something so deep about that the Quakers knew that already, of course, and praying the Psalms. I found that praying Psalms to be incredibly boring. When I first came into religious life, I thought, this is kind of tedious. I mean, we're praying like, five Psalms every time I get a headache, and I'd be like, Oh, I'm starving. What are we having for lunch? Then I realize that it's like going to the gym. When you first start going to the gym, it's like when you first start praying the Psalms, it feels really heavy. And after you do it for two, three years, if you keep it up, the Psalms really work on you in a really mystical way, which I didn't expect either. I just thought, oh, I have to do this because I live in a religious community, but it's unbelievably boring. And then I realized I felt them speaking to me on a really deep level. And I realized why the early desert mothers and fathers recited the Psalms when they're working, because if you're having a rough moment, all of a sudden, a line from a psalm will come into your heart and you think, okay, that's why I prayed that song so many times.
Joshua Johnson:It's wonderful. I think there's a lot of people now they're like, Well, I'm not in a convent, I'm not a part of a religious order. I don't have time to do a lot of those things. And I mean, you talked a little bit about micro prayers on the subway. To do some micro prayers. But how do you start to build that muscle and that prayer muscle when you're in the midst of a busy life, and maybe you're a mother of small children, or maybe you're somebody where you know work is very demanding at the moment. What is building that prayer muscle look like when in midst of busy seasons? I think
Unknown:it's really important for people to realize they don't have to put pressure on themselves to get it right. And while you're brushing your teeth, you can just be asking, God, please be with me today in my job, because I'm having a rough time. That's enough. You know, you don't have to light a candle and sit in your little shrine or anything. And car prayers are fantastic. That's where a lot of my prayer takes places. In the car, I'll think of someone who's suffering with cancer or whatever, and I'll pray for them just briefly. And you don't have to. It's not like you know when you make three wishes with a genie and the fairy tales. You don't have to get the words right. You don't have to put pressure on yourself and say, I don't know if I'm allowed to ask for this. It feels selfish or whatever. You can ask God for anything, and you have to worry about bothering God, because God's inbox is never full. I tell people, you can pray about the craziest things, and it's just up to God whether or not you'll you'll get it so you don't have to discern that as you're praying. I think a lot of people put pressure on themselves, especially clergy. They really think they're supposed to sit down at that shrine and light a candle and go through daily morning prayer, and they're incredibly busy. So that's the clients that I have spiritual direction, clients who are clergy. I always tell them, just try like a free flowing conversation with God throughout your day. Because with our loved ones, we communicate with them at a certain rate of frequency every single day. Okay, like, if you if you love, like with my my sisters and my mom, we communicate on Facebook Messenger throughout the day, and so we have those little touch points where we connect and keep our connection going. And it can be the same with God. If you say, God, please let me get out of work early today, that's perfectly fine.
Joshua Johnson:So how to do some of these, these practices, what has helped you move from maybe a transactional relationship with God, of saying, I want to pray, to try to get something from God into a deepening relationship, because I want to be with God, and God wants to be with me. Yeah,
Unknown:the main thing that shifted me into that was when I first came and I was complaining to a sister about I said, I've got so much work to do and I don't have time to go to chapel. Sometimes. She said, Remember, Jesus is sitting there in the chapel waiting for you because he misses you and he wants to be with you. And it's not you know, like you have to go see your parole officer or something. It's God loves us and wants us to connect. Because I think it brings God tremendous joy to connect with us who he loves. And so that's a that was more of a positive reinforcement, instead of saying, if you don't pray, God's gonna make that tree fall on your car, that's pretty bad. So I think it really helps to know that that God is waiting for you with outstretched arms, just like a prodigal son, where the son returns home and the father welcomes him. You
Joshua Johnson:know, in the last 10 years or so, culture has shifted around the conversation of Christianity to into more of a negative view of of Christianity in the church, and what the church represents and who the church is. What are some things that you think that maybe some people don't have an accurate view of what you know the church stands for, and I know the church is that's kind of broad and big, because there are individual churches that that may have done a lot of harmful things. There are some individual churches that are incredibly open and Grace filled and wonderful, like there's, there is a big, wide variety, but in general, the body of Christ in the church. What do you think some people have some misperceptions of that, you could say, I think it's
Unknown:I've really found that people think church is either Roman Catholic or fundamentalist, and that there's no other way of church, there's no other form of church, and they see those as being exclusionist and and even within the Roman Catholic Church, though, there are a lot of progressive elements in the Roman Catholic Church, and they also don't realize that fundamentalism is really recent, that it really started in the early 20th century. They think that that's all the way back to Adam and Eve. That's how the church is right and and what I try to do on tick tock is to show people that there is something called progressive Christianity. The Episcopal Church is considered to be a progressive denomination, because we have, you know, we're inclusive and accepting of all the LGBTQ plus community. We have gay priests with partners. We have gay bishops with partners. Our priests can marry and have children. So a lot of these sort of restrictive beliefs that that had been in the Episcopal church for many years have now progressed into the modern age, where we say, and there's a lot of debate on that, but the Episcopal Church chose to embrace this idea that the things that were condemned in the Bible were lost in translation in many cases, but there are Some eternal things, like, Thou shalt not kill. Like those are the things that cause harm. And I think the progressive denominations are really looking at how much harm is this hosted sin causing? Is it causing no harm? But people see it as harm. And so I really try to get the word out that, like the Lutheran church, that Evangelical Lutheran Church of America is very progressive. UCC, the United Church of Christ. It doesn't sound like it would be progressive, but it's very progressive. And there are many others where you and your same sex spouse can go to that church and have your child baptized, and people will love and embrace you and include you. And a lot of people don't go to church because they have no idea that that exists. So
Joshua Johnson:if you're starting to recognize, recognize harm, of what harm is, and recognize sin, Jesus, I think, was a really good person to to balance this like, Hey, I accept you. There's grace like the woman being caught in adultery at the very end, he says, You know, I don't condemn you. Either your dimmers are gone, but then go and sin no more. What? What is then that relationship between grace and then Holy Spirit leading us into repentance, moving us towards. Is a more embodied way of being, like Jesus in the world.
Unknown:I think of sins also as self destructive behaviors. When I'm going through Lent and trying to do what in 12 step they call a fearless and searching moral inventory, where you get really real with yourself. I have my list of sins as being judgmental. That's a big problem with me being a know it all. I mean things that really put people down, make people feel bad. I try to atone for sins like being afraid I consider to be a sin for me, because it means I'm not in faith. If I fear is something that will harm me if I if I dwell on it, if I allow it to get bigger and bigger, which is hard these days because the world is such a scary place. But that's my list of things that I try to work on for repentance. I think other people can look at repenting for sins, like taking a partner for granted, or talking down to their kids, or, you know, anything that harms your connections. I think I really keep going back to Jesus, modeling connection and community, because I lived by myself for over 20 years. It was easy. It was easy to live by myself. I didn't have to worry about anybody else's housekeeping failures, because that's an area where I'm extremely judgmental, and all I had were just a couple of Crazy Cats destroying things. But coming into community, I've had to learn to stop being a jerk about stuff like that, because everybody's everybody was raised differently, and some people don't have the same germ phobias that I have, thank God. And my obsessive muteness drives people crazy, so you have to think about how it affects your relationships. I always tell people, if you want to take the temperature of your life, if you're gonna see how your life is going, look at your relationships, if you're having good, deep, meaningful connections, then you're doing something right. If you're not, you need to get into therapy and fix it. Why
Joshua Johnson:did you start making Tiktok videos? And what is this Tiktok community that What are you trying to do? What has shifted and changed in that space? I
Unknown:remember when I first came to visit the sisters, it was a long time ago, like 25 years ago, and one of the first things I said to them was, you guys have really got a great thing going. You should advertise. And they were absolutely horrified that I said that marketing mind, and I I've because I've always thought, if you've got something great, people should know about it, and that's the good form of evangelism too, is spreading the good news, right? Of course, when I came into community, the sisters really were opposed to any kind of publicity, any kind of putting ourselves out there, because they had been raised with the idea of living the hidden life in Jesus, which they interpret to mean you should seek no publicity whatsoever. You should be you should be obscure all your life and hidden from the world. And I said, Well, that's all fine and good, but that's killing us, because nobody on earth knows that there are Episcopal religious orders except for the members of those order. I've even met, I've met Episcopal clergy who had no idea that they were religious orders in the Episcopal Church. So my mission from day one was just to educate. I thought that I would educate maybe 20 people on who we are, the fact that we exist, what we do, what the gifts that we offer, the Church on the world. This pulling back the curtain and showing our life was really frightening to my sisters and I. I didn't start the Tick Tock account until after I was superior, because I was afraid if I did it before, then I'd get in trouble with a superior. So I gave myself permission, and a lot of them were really unhappy about it, but I had to try and because I know that when somebody gets resistant like that, it's because they're afraid of certain consequences. And I would say to them, I used to work in marketing and PR, please trust me that I know what I'm doing. Because, you know, I would never go on social media and say I had a huge fight with sister so and so today, and she's such a you know, they were genuinely afraid I was going to do that, or that was going to film. Our monastic enclosure is very private, and we don't allow anybody. I told them, I only film and the public areas of the convent where visitors would be, and I only disclose facts about religious life in general, I don't get into our personal lives, because it's not it's in our rule. We're not supposed to do that. Try to reassure them, because somebody who doesn't have my background and my experience. It's, I have seen it on social media, when people enter a religious community and they start throwing all the business up on Facebook and all these things that are best kept within the family, you know, and it just makes, it makes the whole thing look like a soap opera instead of, you know, I wanted to share with people how much joy there is in our life and how much meaning. And I was really shocked that people started watching the videos and I got so many followers. Because I really, I was really thinking 30 followers would be terrific if I had that, like 27th or something like that. And I was really amazed. Because in person, I know it's hard to believe, but in person, I'm very quiet. I don't speak much. I mostly listen. And tick tock was a way for me to express myself and to really talk about things that are always swimming around in my head, because I'm always sort of thinking about things from a theological point of view. And I was so happy when people responded positively, especially because they're mostly female Gen X who are not religious. They they just relate to the, I guess, the deeper truth of a meaningful life and the connection with the Divine. And they, they don't necessarily attend church, but I get so many affirmations from those people, and I'm always so grateful. It's amazing. That's
Joshua Johnson:great. People should go check out Tiktok and this book. But I want to know how you came about getting your name,
Unknown:my religious name, your religious name. Yeah, that's great question. Nobody's ever asked me that before. My legal name is Claudette Monica. And I think Claudette is a perfectly lovely name, but nobody could ever spell, pronounce or remember it. So I would go to Starbucks and I'd say Claudette, and they'd say, Okay, so that's spelled C O, M, what? It's not the uncommon of a name. I could have kept it for my religious name, but I had to ditch it because I thought I'll just be that person who confuses everybody. I literally would know people. I would see them on the street, and they'd go Charlotte, like they had no idea how to say Claudette. I like my middle name. My Aunt Pat gave me that name when I was born, Monica, and I didn't realize, you know, growing up Protestant, I didn't realize that was the name of a saint. It was the mother of St Augustine. And so when I came here, I found out that this was an Augustinian community, and I asked my novice director, you know, can I be Monica? Because I like that name better. People understand it better, and it's a saint's name. And I wanted my set, because we all have two names in this community. You keep, you usually keep one of your legal names, first or middle, and then you add a saint to it. So I wanted to add Clara, because that was my grandmother's favorite sister, and my novice director said, Nope, doesn't roll off the tongue. It's got it. Monica, Clara, that's too that's too percussive. So she said, What about Monica Claire? So I ran up on St Clair and I thought, Oh, yes, yes, okay, I can do that.
Joshua Johnson:This was very round about your name came about because of the other name was too percussive. Yes.
Unknown:Very holy. Holy reason. Very holy
Joshua Johnson:reason, that's great. If people pick up a change of habits, read your your story. What hope do you have for the readers of this book? I hope
Unknown:that they can find a way to deepen their connection with God, whatever they think of as God, even if people don't want to put a name to it or run it through the organized religion filter, I would hope that people could connect with God and feel how much God loves us and wants us to be happy. I was really touched. We had the kickoff marketing meeting for the book, and some of the people in that meeting, you know, they're like Gen Z, really super young, and they said, you know, when I read the book, it made me feel closer to God, and I start welling up and crying because I thought, that's everything I do. That's why I do it. So
Joshua Johnson:let's, let's pray that people will feel closer to God, that they would be able to pick up this book, because it is fantastic. You're a great, great writer to you tell stories well, and you tell your own story. Well, so so well done. It's it's fantastic. It's good. I have a couple of quick questions I like to ask the end. One is, if you go back to your 21 year old self, what advice would you give Joe
Unknown:get married? No, I know that I had to get married to go to therapy, I would just say, you know, no matter where you are, that's exactly where God puts you to learn something.
Joshua Johnson:Anything you've been reading lately, you recommend.
Unknown:I've been reading Reverend Lizzie's book. God didn't make us to hate us. It's really great. It's. Of meditations on, you know, the Bible doesn't tell us to hate ourselves or anybody else. It's very time. Yeah, very good. Look, great.
Joshua Johnson:Is there anywhere you'd like to point people to? People could go out get your book anywhere, find books are sold. Where else would you like to point people to?
Unknown:I point them to our website, csjb.org, and the what one Spirit Learning Alliance is another. That's where I got my spiritual direction training. And it's an incredible community. You can take classes, I always say, a la carte, or you can take the whole program. It's an it's a movement. Wonderful sister.
Joshua Johnson:Monica Claire, thank you for this conversation. It was a fantastic conversation. I love diving deeper into prayer life and how we could build a prayer muscle. I love to go into your story and how you found your identity and your calling, not from external validation, but from something God has told you what the discernment process looks like, how you organize yourselves within the community, and what community does instead of our individuality and our lives. It was a fantastic conversation. Thank you very much.
Unknown:Thank you so much. I had a lot of fun. You
