alternate reality

It's Monday. I'm back at the Novitiate. Getting back into the swing of things. Delving into my piles of reading. Ran across these words on the vows by Sandra Schnieders, IHM in Passion for Christ, Passion for Humanity, writings from the International Congress on Consecrated Life.

Religious construct their alternate world by the profession of vows. Profession is the solemn and public act by which individuals integrate their life into the reality that began in the charismatic vision of a Founder or Foundress, and has been lived into reality by generations of religious within a particular community. By their personal and corporate living of the vows, they create the distinctive and characteristic lifestyle by which they participate in the Church's mission of witnessing to and realizing the Reign of God in this world. ...

The vows ... are Gospel-based global metaphors for the stance religious take toward the fundamental coordiantes of human existence, material goods, sexuality and power. It is through these metaphors that we imagine and construct the living parable of religious life as an alternate world not just a different way of living in this world. The world of Jesus' parables, the Reign of God he presents, is a world of endless forgiveness, of abundant refreshment at the wedding feast of eternal life where the last are first and the marginalized included, and of equality and dignity for all.