This nun makes a habit of keeping life fun.
Sister Monica Clare is still surprised when outsiders don’t believe how superiorly hip it is inside the convent, like one who thought nuns were forbidden to use electricity.
“People have interesting ideas about the way nuns live,” the 59-year-old Sister Superior at the Community of St. John Baptist in Mendham, New Jersey, told The Post.
“We’re not Amish — we’re nuns. We have a treadmill, we use iPhones and even stream Netflix and Hulu!”
“We have an old, donated treadmill and, yes, I wore my habit while exercising, but I stopped because it started accelerating to 50 mph in the middle of a workout,” she added, noting she generally wears black Asics.
As for what’s on TV at the convent: “All the sisters love ‘Call the Midwife!’” she said.
That a nun can have fun is another misperception of monastic life that Sister Monica Clare, born Claudette Powell, has been aiming to dispel on social media and in her newly-released book, “A Change of Habit: Leaving Behind My Husband, Career, and Everything I Owned to Become a Nun.”
Online, the Episcopalian nun posts informative and often hilarious TikToks on @nunsenseforthepeople, covering everything from her skin care regimen to what she keeps in the oversized pockets of her habit. (She always keeps lip balm, a Swiss army knife with a USB drive and cough drops on hand).
“Some of the nuns don’t get my weird sense of humor, but I worked in advertising when social media was created, so I can speak that language,” she said, with her gentle Southern accent, adding that most of her 200,000 followers are Gen X women.
As for that skin care routine, there is none; “I just avoid the sun, I do not drink or smoke, and I do not eat sugar. Maybe that helps stave off the wrinkles,” she joked.
Cutting down her coffee consumption has helped as well. She used to drink six cups of coffee a day and now drinks just one due to her high blood pressure — though “all the sisters drink a tremendous amount of coffee,” she said.
Most importantly, she wants everyone to know nuns are regular humans, too. “We have Mondays off, so the Sisters can wear ‘people clothes’ on Mondays and on vacations,” she said.
Sister act
Soon to be an ordained priest, Sister Monica Clare is on a mission to educate about convent life — and encourages her fellow nuns at her progressive order to do the same. For example, she’s asked them to abandon the rule against complimenting one another. Now they not only praise each other, but they give thanks and hugs, too.
“People think nuns are stern — that we hit people with rulers,” she said. “They think that we can’t be happy if we choose celibacy, that we must be angry all the time, but that’s not how it is.”
When she was approached about writing a memoir, the first thing she did was ask the other nine nuns she lives with at her rural convent to weigh in.
“Two were very against it,” she said. “They expressed fears that the book would prompt too much unwanted publicity.”
Still, Sister Monica Clare was determined to share her heart-wrenching story of growing up in Rome, Georgia, with an abusive father. She used pseudonyms when describing the fellow nuns who were adamantly against her writing the book.
“I’ve told my story to my therapists and I’ve been in Al-Anon for friends and families of addicts for years,” she said. “Writing it all down felt different, especially the stuff from my childhood. There were times I would get so emotional I would start crying — even 50 years later, this still has potency.”
Altar ego
It was when she was a child that she became fascinated with books and movies about nuns — she described her family as the chaos and the church the order. As a ‘70s kid, she saw herself in “The Flying Nun” and “A Nun’s Life” starring Audrey Hepburn.
After studying acting at NYU, she moved to Los Angeles and worked as a nanny while auditioning for roles.
For a time, she became a stand-up comedian and took classes with the legendary Groundlings troupe alongside Jennifer Coolidge and Cheri Oteri. It was then that she met the man she would soon marry.
While her life seemed glamorous on the surface, she said she felt like an outsider most of the time, recalling one night she was invited for drinks at the Mondrian Hotel in West Hollywood.
“I don’t drink, which is the number-one way of not fitting in,” she recalled. “I would get so tense and, when I have social anxiety, I start sweating and turn red. After nights like these, I would think, ‘I’m not cut out for this. I don’t belong here.’”
Painfully shy, she also remembers feeling like she had nothing to say when hanging out with the other Groundlings performers.
“I would see how at ease the others were,” she said. “I couldn’t find an inroad to say something. I remember one time Kathy Griffin was holding court and, again, I hadn’t said a word. She pointed right at me and jokingly said, ‘She never shuts up!’”
After years of spinning her wheels auditioning for acting roles without breaking into the business, she eventually let that dream go. To pay the bills, she ended up working full time as a photo editor at various Hollywood advertising agencies for two decades.
“I used to call it my life-sapping day job because it would deplete me so horribly,” she said. “I used to have to slip in time between jobs to pray and do church things.”
Change of habit
She longed to make a change, so she started contacting convents to inquire about becoming a nun and joined an Episcopal Church in Beverly Hills, California.
What she didn’t know is that her “gentle, seemingly devoted” husband had been cheating on her with several other women. In 1999, when her marriage ended, she said she truly hit rock bottom.
“At the time, I was in my early thirties and I felt like something had to change,” she said.
She continued calling convents, asking if she would still be allowed to see her family, play the guitar and use a computer should she fit the requirements of becoming a nun.
“I asked what I would have to give up. I didn’t realize I would have to give up everything, from buying new clothes to having my own bank account.”
Committing to a vow of poverty, chastity and obedience was one thing. Paying off $150,000 in debt was also a requirement of joining the convent, a task that took her a decade to achieve.
“I never earned the big bucks in advertising,” she said. “Throughout my career, I had side gigs and part-time jobs and I still had a hard time paying the bills. I was already living a frugal life, but to join the convent, I had to become even more frugal.”
For Sister Monica Clare, a simpler, quieter life has been well worth it. So is the fact that the entire proceeds from the sale of her book will go right back to the convent that has become her home for life.
“When I was a little kid, I wanted to be a nun and I thought for a long time that it would never happen,” she said.
“It’s so liberating that I get to do this meaningful work for God 24/7.”
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