Although the official letter has not come yet, I am excited about being accepted as a novice with the Dominican Sisters of San Rafael. It is not an easy process and takes a lot of hard work, patience, and testing similar to becoming a Padawan assigned to a Jedi.
First there is an important time of testing such as Anakin went through with the Jedi Council when they are examining him, and considering if he would be a good fit and was emotionally stable enough to enter.
Candidates / Postulants have a similar journey of psychiatric examinations, writing, interviews, and trial periods. After a year or two of living in the formation house (like the younglings in the Jedi Temple learning in groups with Master Yoda) the next testing begins. There is more writing, goal setting, interviews, and going to see the formation team which is kind of like going to speak with the Jedi Council only you get to sit down and there isn’t a sunset view of Coruscant out the windows. After that the Council deliberates and votes.
The result in this case seems to be that I will be accepted into the novitiate, which means I will be going to the collaborative novitiate in St. Louis with a group of other novices. I have been a Padawan on my own in a way so far, so it will be great to meet some others!
Someday I might make it to temporary profession which is sort of like Jedi–the trials are much more intense–and hopefully eventually to final profession which is like Jedi Master and takes about as much time. It will be many years before I would even be up for that, and a long road ahead, but this was an important next step and one that I am quite excited about.
Have questions about what a novice is? Wondering if I will wear the one braid? Post comments below!
That being said, the premise that a group of Medusa worshipers could put up a front as a religious order is rather overdone in scifi yet still intriguing. I can understand that after what I assume to be years of heavily cloistered structure, a few would want to do something a bit mad to compensate if they did not have access to proper psychological assistance. Normally that would be things like creating stained glass or risking a life to save orphans, rather than starting an odd sort of cult. Such a thing would be almost impossible to hide in the closeness of community life—thus the idea that all the nuns were Medusa cultists makes a sort of sense. Had their fake front been better it may have been at least plausible within the Doctor Who universe. The main problem is that scifi shows this sort of half-crazed cult type nun so often that it is no longer odd. You kind of have to show that 99% of them are totally normal and hard working in order for it to have an impact. Viewers assume anyone in a habit is showing up as a villain at this point, so if a writer took the time to add in someone ethical and normal they would probably surprise the entire scifi geek audience.
Although the episode’s setting is fabulous with the old house and secret hiding spaces, it is also another check mark on the cliche list. We’ve got over-the-top habits (check) lunatic religious fervor (check) idiotic easy to trick women (check) secret evil master plan (check) and oh yes creepy random old convent (check). What is hilarious is the fact that this is so often applied to what are portrayed as current “modern” sisters. I’ve been to a lot of convents and guess what—many aren’t even in habits any more, or if they are it is a modified modern version. Sisters do not have lunatic fervor that clouds their judgement and are often almost overpoweringly intelligent reasonable women who oh yes are not evil. They also do live in houses built a few years ago that are even listed green buildings. Yes—nuns have heating and electricity and even things like wireless internet! They do not live in Gothic mansions with spiderwebs! (Although that would be kind of cool). While I love Sarah Jane, this was a bit of a flop in my mind, because they just plucked out “Medieval Sister” cutouts and pasted them into the story. The kids were wearing jeans, why weren’t the Sisters? I guess it is not as visually stunning. But do you know what would be really stunning? Actually portraying Sisters! Yup. I know I’d be amazed.
Dune
They are also an order concerned with discipline of the mind and body. Their semi-martial arts style training requires constant practice and perfectly knowing every muscle. That is not a bad thing, in fact during my years of dance training we would often do similar exercises trying to isolate certain muscles and become more aware of what is moving, often through study of anatomy. Sometimes Sisters can be pretty lax about physical training, so the Bene Gesserits set a good example in that area.
It really works! So next time you hear Bene Gesserit, don’t just think of a bunch of plotting women—there is a richness to their culture as well. A good example is Irulan—she made some bad decisions based on love for a man she could never have, but fully regretted it later and made up for it with teaching and loving his children. I like to think her mental and physical discipline helped with that transformation. What do you think about Bene Gesserits? Are they villains, or a religious order of women who sometimes go to an extreme based on poor choices?
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