The following is adapted from a feature article in the Swedish War Cry, September, 2011
A ‘protest’ is how Mother Tyra Antonio defines her home, the convent Mariavall. It’s a protest against the life forcing us forward with its demands, stress and constant seeking for the fortune that is ‘inner joy and peace’. But it’s a fortune, she maintains, that can’t be found, not even in a cloister. Mother Tyra is responsible for the operation of the cloister but makes no major decisions without consulting with all of the sisters. “On first visiting her it’s a bit like climbing into a middle-ages film.
Mother Tyra shares that. “ sometimes people see us as rather strange and unrealistic, almost as if we were not human. But that’s completely wrong. In fact all who enter the cloister become in actuality more human than they were before.”
Mother Tyra Antonio knows precisely what she is talking about. She has lived her life inside the cloisters walls for 60 years and the decision to do so was for her rather simple. The first time she visited the cloister as a 25 year old she was certain this was to be her ‘calling’ and place and she has never missed neither matrimony or anything else. She deems that entering in to a cloister(ed) life as in fact, going out. Out into something much larger. Out into a consciousness that the entire human race belong to each other. That we are all created by God and carry within us a living spark of God. That we all weep, enjoy times of joy and die. To increase the consciousness about all, everything’s enormity, diminishes our concerns daily, to their correct size.
We humans are very small in reality like a snowflake in space…
What in fact is ones fortune; joy? It’s not adequate to talk about what makes me happy because happiness does not exist. Say for instance that joy is for you to ride in a speeding motor boat, but after a while you tire of it. Then you want to have terra firma under your feet. And that’s the case with everything you think is that type joy; it is extremely shallow. And joy without suffering is for the most part nothing, just as insignificant as love without suffering is. That type of happiness (joy) is not long lasting and instead we live in happy recollections instead of living in the present.
Mother Tyra Antonia maintains that seeking happiness has become a drug in society just as strong as alcohol or narcotics; that people actually believe, ‘if I had that or another thing, I would be happy’, while Jesus says: ‘joyful (blessed) are the poor’.
If one is poor everything becomes a gift, even waking up in the morning. Blessedness has nothing to do with comfort. If one lives to simply achieve self-realization (actualization) where then has the gift gone? Why do people seek out fleeting experiences of happiness? Because they are not satisfied.
I believe it is because people are seeking God even if they are not aware of it. Why do people become dependent upon drugs and alcohol? Because they seek something more, and I believe that something more is the Divine spark that makes us seek even among those things that are unhealthy.
The only thing we can depend on is the reality that, we can’t depend on anything. Instead I strive after blessings that encompass us all, to live and in that life one can’t dismiss or be separated from joy and blessedness.
Translation/adaption: Sven Ljungholm
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