Habitus
A young nun of Ryde reflects on the religious habit, first from her perspective of seeing others wear it, incursions of otherness into the fashion-world of a modern university town: ‘While in the colourful hotchpotch everyone was trying to express ‘himself’ as best he could, the habit gave its wearer an ordering to a community, to a meaningful whole, even if only that one member of the whole was to be seen. Curiously, the habit seemed to me to emphasise the essential personality of its wearer, in contrast to the elaborately accessorised conformity I could see all around it.’ She then speaks of the experience of actually wearing it: ‘The habit reminds me continually who I am – a child of God whom the Lord has graciously placed in his service – and it demands of me that I do justice to this calling. What could better express a total self-gift to Christ than a garment which surrounds me entirely, like a second skin?’
You can read the whole piece here.
