Why did I leave my job at NASA to become a nun

Six. Five. Four. Wearing heels and a slightly pink carved black skirt, at age 25, I was the youngest person in a room filled with pants and ties. "What am I doing here?" M & # 39; I marveled. "How can I speak with a headset at Cape Canaveral?"

Three. Two. A. Lift-off. I was glued to my computer screen, simultaneously watching the vital signs of the satellite and a live video of the Florida launch pad. As a systems engineer, my role was to research and solve problems and to be a point of contact between other engineers. I sighed with relief when smoke escaped from the engines and the rocket disappeared from the frame. The real work can now begin: the space operations for which the satellite was designed.

Most people hear only the last 10 seconds of the countdown before launching a rocket. In reality, this lasts for hours and requires several days of rehearsal. The exhilarating few minutes are preceded by months of tedious work. From aerospace engineer to a nun, I followed a similar path. There is no 10-second version of my vocation story. This has included years of questioning and preparatory work, culminating in a few minutes of magical clarity, followed by actual operations, where a million yes's have to be given repeatedly after the initial commitment to religious life.

Most people hear only the last 10 seconds of the countdown before launching a rocket. In reality, this lasts for hours and requires several days of rehearsal.

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Shortly after the 2008 launch, I found myself working more slowly at a NASA subcontractor in Phoenix. The pace was slower, filled with meetings and booths. I began to feel restless and, after two years, I decided to go to Kenya with an organization called Mikinduri Children of Hope to help provide medical, dental services. and vision treatment in a small village. I was assured that even without medical training, I would be busy; and after countless hours watching a stationary metal satellite, I was eager to work with people.

I fell in love with Kenya. The countryside was lush and green in some places; There were bright colors painted on simple sheet metal buildings to announce Huggies and condoms. I saw in the Kenyan people what it means to radiate the love of God. It was something that I had neither seen nor felt in Phoenix. Before leaving Kenya, I decided to quit my job, give up the comfortable and steadily increasing salary and take a year off to look for joy.

After a year of family work, scrapbooking, yoga and road trips, I started working as an engineering professor at the University of the Island. Prince Edward Island. For six years, I mentored students when they discovered technical design while getting my PhD. I came back to Kenya every February and I involved as many students as possible in the trips so that they could develop their skills while helping the people who were really in need.

From aerospace engineer to a nun, I followed a similar path. There is no 10-second version of my vocation story.

I became more involved in the church and I was active in a new group of young adult diocesans. We went to Mass, gathered for meals and debated theological questions. But I saw this Catholic side as something I did on weekends. I considered my religion and profession as two separate parts of me rather than an integrated whole.

In 2015, I went on a weekend trip on the road with a few friends from the young adult group of my church, including a sister of the Congregation of Notre Dame. We spent a night in rustic cabins in Meat Cove, Nova Scotia, without electricity or running water, surrounded by an ocean filled with whales and a starry sky. Sitting on the porch, trying to solve the world's problems, the discussion focused on the theme of the ministry. But I had never felt the word applied to me. When I expressed my frustration with this word, my friends looked stunned.

"Your life is a ministry," they said.

I hesitated, "I teach engineering, that's all."

As if she saw me for the first time, the nun asked me, "Do you know what we are doing?" When I did not answer, she explained that "liberating education," the CND charism, encourages sisters to empower and educate their children. any form that frees the human spirit.

The concept of liberating education and the potential promise it represented for my future as a religious sister shook my whole world.

For a few exhilarating seconds, I saw all my life clearly integrated. I realized that I did not need to evangelize or mention God at work because I served my students and colleagues just by loving them and treating them as worthy and holy people. We had the take off.

The concept of liberating education and the potential promise it represented for my future as a religious sister shook my whole world. After almost two weeks of intense joy, I decided that it was not just an overhead retreat. I appeared at the sister's door and asked her to "sell me this religious thing". She laughed, we talked and I left with answers to my questions. Nearly four years later, I arrive at the end of my novitiate and I will make my first wishes this summer.

It is at this moment that the real work happens after the last exciting seconds of the countdown. In addition to prayer, classes and ministry, my duties were atypical: repairing toilets, replacing sinks, installing floors and painting walls. Before that, I was ashamed both when I was in church (because I was not doing more for the kingdom of God) and when I was at work (because they might think I was trying to proselytize).

Although I have never been discouraged from talking about religion at work or at school, no one has ever done it, nor me either. When we worked day and night in the last few months leading up to the launch of the satellite in 2008, none of the other engineers asked for free time on Sunday to go to church, so I did not go to church. I have never done either. The censorship imposed on me meant that I sacrificed sleep in order to find a service during my few hours off. During my last semester as a student PhD, I had to justify why I did not attend the Student Research Conference, prerequisite for graduation. I was too embarrassed to say that I was going on a pilgrimage to Medjugorje. I therefore murmured: "It's a matter of religion." Religion was such a taboo subject in the department that it was abandoned without another word.

The emptiness in which shame lay is now a closed vessel, slowly leading to scientific spiritual pursuits, allowing me to delve into both science from a spiritual point of view and spirituality in a scientific setting. Teilhard de Chardin, S.J., Ilia Delio, O.S.F. and Kathleen Deignan, C.N.D., were my first teachers in this integration and gave me a new way to amaze me about the universe. At the novitiate, I discovered scientists who examined their beliefs as if they were being examined under the microscope, exploring how their faith informed their science and their science informed their faith. I have read all the books that the library could offer on quantum physics, in order to better understand the great design being developed by our invisible but palpable God.

I've learned that the belief is not peculiar to those who consider themselves religious: I believe in a god of love, and quantum physicists believe that their specific theory is true, that 39, it is the theory of strings or quantum loop theory, although they have no concrete evidence of their existence.

People are often intrigued by the satellite transition to the novitiate, but the trip seems natural to me. I've always believed that God had given me both the compass and the tools I needed – and sometimes an energetic push in the right direction. Teilhard de Chardin, paleontologist, said, "God is at the end of my pen, my shovel, my paintbrush, my needle – my heart and my thoughts." My whiteboard marker, my spacebar, my key, my ear – my heart and always my thoughts.