The Trekkie Mother The Marine Nun The Sensual Nun (Excerpted from Chapter Twelve: “The Mystic Mother Superior,” Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in Tucson, Arizona.) When Dawn Mills decided to become a nun at age twenty-two, she longed for an order that allowed women to sleep in. Knowing this desire was impractical, since all orders had morning prayers and usually morning mass, she settled on three criteria. “I said to God: ‘I want a contemplative community, but they can’t be cloistered because I do not have the nerve to tell my mother I can’t come home, and we have to sit and talk through a grille from now on,’ ” she said, speaking in an almost theatrical flair. “ ‘Also, none of this getting up at three o’clock in the morning. Three o’clock is a fine way to end a beautiful evening. It is a lousy way to start a day. And no vegetarian communities; I am not giving up meat and men in the same lifetime! If I can’t have a man, I get to eat steak.’ ”
She let the words hang in the air as she tried to read my face for the shock she, no doubt, was accustomed to receiving from women unfamiliar with her progressive attitude. When she was elected in 1995, Dawn was the youngest nun in not only her community but the entire order. A hip superior at forty-two, Dawn was unlike any who had ever ruled at the sixty-five-year-old Tucson monastery. Leading the aging community with a sardonic wit and contemporary philosophies, Dawn quickly developed a reputation among area orders as a woman who said whatever she thought, sometimes startling sisters with her candor. Her Tucson sisters viewed her as a bit quirky, a collector of plastic unicorns and spiders and a Star Trek fan. “I’ve been a Trekker longer than I’ve been a Catholic,” Dawn proudly told me, spreading her fingers to outline a V. “I mean I didn’t become a Catholic until 1972, and I’ve been watching Star Trek since 1964. Never missed a series or a movie.” Dawn is the kind of mother superior I would have wanted had I chosen to become a nun. She makes religious life seem an adventure, a personal journey. There aren’t all the hierarchal levels I heard about from other nuns who speak of God in reverential tones as though they fear Him, worship Him, adore Him, but do not consider themselves pals. Dawn talks as though chatting with God is as casual as gossiping with girlfriends. She makes God seem like a friend and not the Darth Vader figure so many religious people portray Him to be. She also isn’t afraid of tackling the big questions and seeking out answers that are more realistic than theoretical. She is a friend of gay clergy and a public advocate for married priests and women priests. Dawn hasn’t swallowed Catholicism or religious life whole. Her spirituality incorporates the vows in an intellectual, philosophical way that makes sense. She has transcended the institutional culture and makes the vows both personal and relevant. In short, she is the coolest mother superior I’ve ever met, and in that moment I wanted to become a nun just so I could hang out with her.