I Sang in My Chains

About the Book

Marilyn Thomas entered the convent at the age of fourteen. It was the

best way, she thought, to begin her journey toward holiness. Only now,

after many years, is she able to see that what she was really looking for

was an escape. Life in the convent was not what she had anticipated. If

home had been ‘the mouth of the beast,’ the convent, where she spent the

next twenty-five years, was ‘the belly.’ A year after leaving the convent,

she got married. Twenty years into the marriage, she realized she was

still chained to “the beast,” still living a life of denial: poverty as a

denial of material wealth, celibacy as a denial of sex, and obedience as

a denial of her own will. What she discovers as she reflects upon her

life experience is that, when freely chosen, true poverty is about detached

appreciation of material things, true celibacy is about complete focus on

the needs and potential of others, and true obedience is about listening

for the voice of God however it appears in our lives. What the reader

will discover is an evolving woman who moves along her journey toward

holiness always singing despite the ‘chains.’

About the Author

Marilyn Thomas spent twenty-five years of her life as a Roman Catholic nun and twenty as a married woman. She is currently beginning her 23^rd year as a professor of Liberal Arts at Menlo College, Atherton, CA. She received her Ph.D. in English from the University of Minnesota, and has completed five post-doctoral fellowships: three at Oxford University, one at Cambridge University, and one at Yale. She was also a presenter at Oxford University’s Round Table Conference in 2008. Her published literary criticism ranges from literature to philosophy, from Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brönte, and Thomas Hardy to Kierkegaard and Feuerbach. She is also the author of Victorian Conscience: F.W. Robertson.