Mine was a somewhat tortured path before becoming a bride of Christ. When I was young I fell in love like most girls do. Shlomo Goldberg.  I thought God would make him forget about business long enough to fall in love with me. I’d never known anyone in his line of work before. He said he dealt with grass, and chemicals. I thought he was a lawn doctor, but he was a drug dealer. I just thought he was popular. I learned the hard way, there are some things a girl shouldn’t do for a man just to get him to like her. Like post bail.

     A year or so later I fell for another man before I found out what he did for a living. Jose Clemente. It made me sick listening to him talk about it. He thought I should understand about the needles and the narcotics and the naked women just because he was an obstetrician. And finally there was the man that brought me to the brink of despair. He thought he was so smooth…I suppose in his line of work you have to be. He settled people’s problems, you know, handled contracts. A hit man. “John Doe.” I should have suspected something when he’d always sign his name in quotes. When I found out I was devastated and I began to think that God was trying to teach me something. I refused to see him again, but he begged me to give him a chance to make good. I was torn, but in the end I told him I needed God. A gd good without God is just “o.”

   Now that I’m older, I realize life isn’t like the movies, but shortly after that last break-up I saw Captain Von Trapp fall in love with Julie Andrews in the Sound of music. Then I saw The Nun’s Story, and when the surgeon at the African mission falls in love with a nun played by Audrey Hepburn in I thought God was showing me the way to true love. Then I saw “Change of Habit” in which Mary Tyler Moore is working in the ghetto as a plain-clothes nun and falls in love with Elvis. Of course in real life a plainclothes nun looks more like a suburban social worker in comfortable shoes than Laura Petrie, but I thought I was getting a message. So I entered the convent and here I am.

   We have everything we need taken care of. There is a Sister Emeril to make fabulous food. Sister Morgan Stanley handled our finances. Sister Virginia Slim to take the edge off. But there is no Sister Ralph Lauren for wardrobe and make-up. Its not easy for me.

   My first book, Love Is a Land Mine, was a warning shot to the hormone-driven, lust-obsessed, and lovesick to be read before someone lures them into romantic situations. I know how easy it is to fall hard and deep when someone says those three magic words, “I’ll sleep over.” Those are fighting words, and I have made it my mission to prepare our young people for the sexual battlefield. I go into the junior high schools teeming with horndog adolescents and get them combat ready, before those little 7th grade grunts start lining up for maneuvers and target practice because. The girls hold the power, and I give them the rules:

The only areas to be touched are the hands, hair and waist but only when dancing.
If the enemy moves in for a kiss, yell incoming and hit the dirt.
When sitting or dancing, leave room for the Holy Ghost.
You’ve got to defend those hills.
Keep those bastards above sea level or die trying.
If the enemy makes it past all the checkpoints, be prepared to launch a full frontal assault on any vulnerable or exposed areas or make a full retreat.

     My book Father, Your Purse Is On Fire is the first to be banned by the Vatican and the Boston diocese. Apparently the Holy Father felt I was too harsh in some of my criticisms. Here is an excerpt. You be the judge:
For years I had a friend, Father Chester Hands. But it always bothered me that he was given a restored mansion to live in and the other sisters and I paid rent to the parish for the duplex we called home. I struggled to accept that he could afford to smoke Cubans while I was grubbing unfiltered camels after the AA meeting in the church basement. But I let all that go, because we shared an interest in Nintendo and singer-songwriter Jewel, until I saw his picture and posting on both match.com and e-harmony. He was posing as a thirty-something high school gym teacher, and I did not see how he could pull that off. The thought that some unwitting woman was about to walk into a TGI Friday’s thinking she was about to meet a buff Bruce Willis type, only to meet a bony, charisma-challenged David Spade type drowning in an oversized Hawaiian shirt was more than I could bear. So I set up a meeting with him, describing myself as a waitress just out of rehab, vulnerable but open to love. I told him that I was a spiritual woman, that I felt my body is a temple and he was invited over for midnight services. He showed up and after that it was shock and awe, people. Shock and awe. But the Bishop busted me. The bishop gives me penance. Shredding files for Father Hands.

But I believe in my work. And I feel that if I can help just one little girl because of all I’ve been through, it will have been worth it. Like little Susie McGreedy. She never got less than an A on her schoolwork. She was always praying in church after school. She never spoke out of turn. And on her birthday she had a wonderful picnic planned for the whole class, but it rained and rained that day. And she said “Sister, why is it raining on my birthday?’ and I said “Because God is crying, dear.” And she said “why is God crying?” and I said “We can’t be sure, but its probably because of something you did wrong.” And I told her to make an examination of conscience. Because I didn’t want that little brown-noser to think I didn’t know what she was trying to do.
     Working with children all these years has been my offering to the Lord. But my reward is having captured the heart of a small child. Which I keep in a jar on my desk.