On Inner Beauty

From Anne Cadet newsletter Anne's Cafe.  There's a number of great things her about silence in life, interior beauty (Compassion, generosity, humility. Ease and joy and serenity. The courage to face everything. Honesty. Integrity.) outer beauty (Serenity and joy are visible in people’s bodies. Ease with oneself. )  and "divine sandpaper" of living in a community.

BEAUTY TIPS FROM NUNS: SISTER SHANE PHELAN

Shane Phelan, 64, earned her PhD. in political science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst before teaching women’s studies and political theory at the University of New Mexico. She left academia to join a New Jersey convent in 2000. She was ordained as an Episcopalian priest in 2009 and served a New Jersey parish for two years before co-founding an ecumenical spiritual community, Companions of Mary the Apostle, in West Park, New York.

 So a little about you. On a scale of 1-10, how tired are you of the question, ‘Why did you become a nun at age 44?’

I must not be too tired of it—I’m writing a memoir! I became a nun because I fell for Jesus. I let myself fall in love. I knew I was at an end in my career and I didn’t know what else there was. I was praying to know what else to do and eventually I realized that I wanted to pray, and be with people who prayed.

Then out of the blue I heard this little voice say, ‘You should be a nun’.

How did you respond?

I said ‘God, if this is you, tell me what to do with Max, my dog.’ I went off to school that day and three times I told friends this weird story and three times they said, ‘Well, if you decide to do that, I would take Max.’ Okay, fine!

So now that you’ve been a nun for two decades, what would you say makes a person beautiful inside?

Beauty in a person is the fruits of the spirit: Compassion, generosity, humility. Ease and joy and serenity. The courage to face everything. Honesty. Integrity.

What’s one thing I can practice to get all of that?

Wow. I think one huge thing is really being in an intimate relationship with other people. Whether it’s living in a community or living with one other. That’s where I get to practice.

There’s a saying in religious communities about ‘divine sandpaper.’ It’s that intensity of being accountable to other people for how I am and how I’m being. That’s what I attribute all my growth to. If I were living alone, I wouldn’t notice some of my rough edges. I could ignore them or deny them. I could just go on my way.

For those who live alone, what’s another way to cultivate inner beauty?

Silence. In our community, we wrote a rule: Not just silence in terms of sound, but including all of our devices. So during our hours of silence, roughly 8 pm to 7 am, we try to refrain from using our devices. I might want to check the weather or play a little game. But I’m trying to keep myself centered and open to the world.

And what makes a person beautiful on the outside?

Some of the same words. Serenity and joy are visible in people’s bodies. Ease with oneself. It’s easy to say ‘health’ and all of that. But I’ve known some truly beautiful people who are crippled with arthritis and in wheelchairs. It’s the person showing through their face. It’s in their energy.

You lost 65 pounds. That’s like an entire fourth grader! And you’ve kept the weight off for seven years.

It was a third of my body weight. I started at 210 pounds, now I hover between 145 and 150, and I’m five-foot-ten and a half.

How did you lose the weight?

I lost 50 pounds in Weight Watchers when I was in the convent, but I couldn’t keep it off. Several years later I did Weight Watchers again with an app and lost maybe 15 pounds, but it was excruciating because I was still consuming the foods that make me want more. Mostly sugar and flour.

Then I went to a recovery group for overeaters. My program sponsor basically put me on a boot camp plan, which I didn’t want. No sugar, no wheat, no refined carbohydrates, no artificial sweeteners. I could have fresh fruit but no fruit juice and no dried fruit. And there was a plan for how much to have at each meal.

The first 30 days are virtually carb-free and you’re in shock. But the weight just started to come off. I wasn’t hungry because of the protein and the amount of vegetables I was getting.

I had a mental goal in mind of 160 pounds, and 160 came and went. Finally I asked my sponsor, ‘When am I going to stop losing weight?’ She said, ‘When we start adding stuff in.’ But the important thing was to not change what was working. Instead of adding carbs, we added more protein and fat.

Do you ever eat sugar or carbs now?

I have oatmeal or toast in the morning, and at dinner I have gluten-free pasta or rice. But the trick is I have half a cup of it.

When was the last time you had a real dessert?

Things are so sweet to me now. I can have a baked apple with raisins and it’s like, wow! But the last time I had sugar was February 26, 2014.

Do you attribute your success entirely to the diet?

The other factor is I needed a community around me. My program sponsor said, ‘You’re going to call me three times a week. You’re going to write your food plan every day and send it to me. You’re going to call two others in the program every week.’ So I was enmeshed in accountable, loving relationships from the beginning.

Did you get universal support?

When I stopped drinking when I was 28, it was scandal. Everybody drank. And then when I stopped eating sugar, that was a scandal.

I had some eating buddies. We’d excuse each other having an extra piece of cake. So then they felt rebuked when I didn’t. They’d try to convince me that a little wouldn’t hurt.

Get over it! The food industry has made addicts of us all. So it’s really normal to weigh 50 percent more than you should. And it’s normal to eat all this junk and feel awful. You need a whole medical team to support you. There’s an industry around diabetes. So, I’m a scandal.

You look very happy when you say that.

I’ve spent my life being a scandal. I love it! But yes, I get this sense from others of, ‘You should be able to have a piece of cake now and then. What’s wrong with you?’

What’s wrong with me is I’m an addict and I don’t respond normally to those foods.

It must be a relief to have that decided.

The key for me is surrender. Acceptance and surrender. Yes, it’s really true. I’m better off without.

Some might say that if you’re being rigid and eliminating entire categories of food, that you’re not being spiritual. That you should be ‘eating intuitively’ or ‘listening to your body’.

Right. Would you tell someone who kept kosher that she wasn’t spiritual? That’s a rigid food plan. So is Halal. Those are food plans.

The other part for me is that my intuition was off before I started this program and it will get thrown off by eating certain things. It is akin to saying I’m going to pray every day and pray on a schedule, because it deepens my intuition and opens me to the world. It leaves me feeling clear and unclouded. So that I have intuition.