Sometimes you have to go visiting . . .
She was sitting at her desk in the school library as one student busily finished up his work. I was skimming a young-adult mystery. Soon, we were alone.
I had no idea what to say since it had been more than 40 years since I’d been in this spot, serving out a stretch in detention and silently praying she wouldn’t jot out a note to my folks and pin it to my uniform sweater.
It is rather awkward being in the presence of a nun.
In memory, I hadn’t spoken to one since the eighth grade, so maybe it was the post-traumatic stress that kicked in. I blurted out the first thing I could think of, which was whether she was packing a ruler somewhere deep in the long, white habit she was wearing.
“We are a little bit more restrained than that now,” Sister Nikki finally said, bowing her head and trying hard not to laugh at me.
I had so many questions.
I knew she was the school’s phys-ed teacher. So . . .
“No, I don’t wear this at P.E.,” she said, both index fingers pointing at the flowing habit and long, white veil on her head.
She is 29 years old, one of the two Community of the Beatitudes nuns serving in the U.S., the Beatitudes being a Montpellier, France, religious community dedicated to serving the poor and the proclamation of the Gospel.
She is in her seventh year as a nun, still waiting to make her final vows. Her secular given name is Nicole Marie. She will not tell me her secular last name. When she takes her final vows, all that will change anyway, she says.
“I have a name in my heart that’s meaningful to me,” she says. “What it will be is a secret until the day I take my vows.”
She first thought of becoming a nun at ages 13 and 14. It wasn’t anything serious then, she said. By the time she had enrolled at the University of Minnesota, the idea had captured her.
She investigated various orders, but was not really moved. It was during a year of study abroad that she met members of the Beatitudes during a trip to Rome.
“I totally fell in love,” she says. “There was a depth to their prayer life. They were totally given. It was love at first sight. Something in me said ‘That’s it.’ ”
She completed her degrees in architecture and German and joined the order in August 2002.
“The decision was hard on my mom,” Sister Nikki said. “She wanted grandkids. I have four brothers, and one married a few years ago, and he now has a baby. That burden has eased some.”
Sometimes, “it cracks me up,” she says when I ask of people’s reaction when she goes out in public in her habit. “Sometimes, it’s like they just saw a ghost.
“People ask me all the time about God, to pray for them or somebody they know who is ill. Sometimes it is just questions about the Catholic Church.
“It is sometimes relentless, but what is good is it opens the door to everything spiritual.
“It is what I wanted to do with my life.”
Hers is a life mostly of prayerful contemplation outside of her work in the school, Sister Nikki said.
“My life is a joy, an opportunity to give testimony that God is still alive,” she said.
I asked her one more time about the ruler.
Sister Nikki laughed.
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
