Monastic Musings 

What is the Hardest Part of Being a Sister?

By Sister Gretchen Johnston (gjohnsto@css.edu)

February 7, 2025

I can only answer this question for myself. I’m sure many Sisters would have different answers to this question. It is a little bit like asking what is the hardest part of being a college student? Being a Sister is my life now. Being a college student is your life now. What is the hardest part of your life?

Sister Michelle, who used to be my postulant director and is now with God, used to say with a smile: “What is the easiest thing about community? Community. What is the hardest thing about community? Community.” 

Living together with other people is hard. This will happen no matter your way of life. We have different ideas about what we want or need, and even if these are the same, we might have different ideas about how to get there. Think about squeezing the toothpaste tube! When I was growing up, I squeezed the toothpaste tube the way I was taught to by my parents, from the bottom up. But my sister thought she had a better way by squeezing the tube in the middle and we continually had “dialogues” about it, as siblings do. 

The thing that I find hardest about living and interacting with other people is the compartmentalization of others. It is a completely normal response to life to put things in compartments, but it can be very unhelpful in relationships with others. 

For instance: I am a millennial, currently the only one in my monastic community. There have been many negative stereotypes about millennials that some of my older Sisters have subscribed to. Sometimes it is hard to resist saying “OK, boomer,” but that would feed into stereotypes in the opposite direction. 

Sometimes people compartmentalize Sisters. I worked for almost a whole year at a Methodist church before they found out that some Sisters like to laugh and tell jokes. They were flabbergasted that it was “allowed”! 

I currently work at a Lutheran church, as well as the monastery. I couldn’t tell you how many times people have said to me “Oh, I didn’t know they believed that!” One weekend I played at a Catholic church on Saturday evening and the Lutheran church on Sunday morning. On both Saturday and Sunday, someone came up to me and told me a negative misperception about the other church. It was about the same issue! I simply told them that was not what I had observed. I’m thankful that I can help people to de-compartmentalize. 

Even Catholics, who have always had religious Sisters, sometimes compartmentalize Sisters. This is especially true when they assume all of us are the same. The Duluth Benedictines are different from other Benedictines around the world, and Benedictines are all very different from the Franciscans or the Eudist Sisters of the Eleventh Hour or the School Sisters of Norte Dame. Even priests who have not had much contact with Sisters can fall into this trap. And I’m sure people compartmentalize college students, too. People might think that you have nothing important to say because you’re young, or that you don’t have any wisdom. 

This is what we strive for as Benedictines. We may not always reach this ideal, but we take comfort in St. Benedict’s words: “…with Christ’s help, keep this little rule that we have written for beginners.”—RB 73:8b. Together, we are all beginners striving to seek God as God may be found in beauty, truth, and goodness.