Putting On my Bowling Shoes

Young Nun Valentine's Day Fun

Many moons ago, before the thought of becoming a Catholic Sister ever entered my mind, I was a run of the mill bureaucrat working a fairly boring government job with some great people.  Every month or so, we'd head out after work to go bowling.  It was a blast.  I'm not a very good bowler, but with this bunch of people, some of whom were excellent bowlers and one a former state champion, it was fun.  What wasn't so fun was renting shoes.  You see, I'm tall and as my mother was fond of saying, tall girls have big feet. So more often then not, I'd end up renting men's shoes.  Eventually the thought of renting shoes that had to be sanitized before each user led me to buy my own pair of bowling shoes.  Shortly thereafter, for reasons that I've been told are entirely unrelated to my purchase, we stopped our regular bowling outings.  But I still had these snazzy black suede bowling shoes.  As a result, in the decade + since I bought my own pair of bowling shoes, they have been used sparingly.  Yet whenever there is a chance to practice my not-so-good bowling skills, either on a visit with my niece who was living in Europe at the time or with my CSJP Sisters on St. Joseph's Day, my shoes and I are there.

I packed my shoes when I moved to Chicago to go to grad school.  And tonight I'm happy to report that they came off the shelf for a night of young nun bowling.  I have a good group of friends from Giving Voice, younger religious from different communities, who are living here in Chicago.  Tonight three of us went out bowling to celebrate Valentine's Day.  I couldn't have imagined a better way to spend the evening.  Was I a superstar bowler? No.  But I'm satisfied with my respective scores of 84 and 85.  As one of my friends who is a pretty good bowler said, at least I'm consistent!  An added bonus was to discover that there was also a skeeball machine at the bowling alley.  I only played two games of skeeball but earned a 220 and a 180.  I'm a much better skeeball player than I am a bowler!

Soon I'm hoping to give my shoes another test drive with some seminarian friends of mine from the philosophy class I took last Semester.  And who knows, there might be some more young nun bowling in my future as well!

All in all this was a good night to cap off a pretty intense first week of the Spring Semester.  I'm taking some GREAT classes, but the topics are pretty serious: Ethics of Power and Racism; Ministry, Spirituality and Human Rights Abuse Survivors; Methods in Theology & Ethics; and Sexual Ethics.  I think I might need something like periodic bowling outings to help decompress from all deep conversations and heavy reading lists!