Sally Field was the most adorable of them all, with her uncannily aerodynamic wimple that gave her the ability to go airborne and zoom around doing good deeds. She was quite the ur-feminist superhero, that Flying Nun of the '60s.
There have been other instances of nuns depicted in various ways in media and culture as well.
The nuns from The Sound of Music spring to mind, of course. They not only sang beautifully and helped Maria find her true calling, but also, when the chips were down, foiled the Nazis by sabotaging their Nazi-mobiles, so they couldn't hunt down the von Trapp family. Good folks to have on your side, those nuns.
Occasionally we even get to see a realistic and inspirational depiction like Susan Sarandon as Sister Helen Prejean, a true-life crusader in Dead Man Walking.
Often, though, you hear about nuns only in jokes about them being mean to schoolchildren -- a cheap and, frankly, offensive avenue of humor. Some of us private school alumni become sensitive to the absurd reductionism: when we tell people we went to Catholic school, they react with hackneyed pathos.
In my high school, we still had nuns who taught us many subjects. They taught us how to savor poetry and other literature. They taught us to enjoy and appreciate science, not to fear it or regard it as an enemy of faith.
They taught my classmates and me to study, enjoy and treasure the Bible, and to see the good in religious traditions other than our own. Spiritually, they taught us to value forgiveness and eschew hard feelings and anger. All of these things, and more, the sisters taught by sheer example of love, service and Christian life.
Not one of them was ever a tyrant or despot. My nuns were fresh out of Vatican II, so they reveled in flinging open the windows of the church; these were the nuns of guitars, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and Siddartha's Quest. Those were the days, my friend.
Nuns work as administrators or chaplains and in myriad sorts of pastoral ministries. It's not only Catholics who have nuns, I should point out. The Orthodox have them, as do we Episcopalians/Anglicans.
Sisters may not seem very famous or numerous anymore, but their halcyon days will be back. Their vocation is not glamorous, but it can be spiritually glorious for those women who are called to it.
Real nuns -- real flesh and blood women -- don't fly, but many of them are heroes. If you try, you can look and you will find one. Give her a hug.
Shakespeare wrote about people (Jews) who were misunderstood: "Prick us, do we not bleed? Tickle us, do we not laugh?" So I speak to you now of religious Christian women, and I urge you: tickle a nun.
* Father Bruce Chabot is rector/pastor of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Navasota.
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