"Sister Harney found a book on the vows — poverty, obedience, chastity — that she had bought once but never read."

"'I saw Alan creeping around with his cellphone to take a picture of the cover, and then next time I saw it Sarah had been reading it and it was full of Post-it notes all over,' Sister Harney said. 'Millennials were looking at it like this is the glue. They were looking for the secret sauce of how we do this.' The sisters began to see that the millennials wanted a road map for life and ritual, rather than a belief system. On one of the first nights, Sister Judy Carle said, one of the young people casually asked the sisters, 'So, what’s your spiritual practice?' 'That’s the first question, not, "What do you believe?"' she said... 'So many of the millennials would say, "I’m looking for rituals"'... [The millennial Sarah Jane Bradley said,] 'It sounds like it’s about taking orders, but the sisters helped me see it’s about preparing the heart for dialogue and a deep internal listening for truth... The vows opened up this portal in which to really appreciate how countercultural the lives these sisters have led are.' It’s hard to adopt practices that stem from vows without belief...  For example, the millennials became interested in the idea of discernment, a process the sisters use to sift and orient options to more closely listen for God’s call. [The millennial Adam Horowitz said,] 'But now I’ve heard millennials saying they need to "discern what I’m up to this afternoon"... And it’s so important we don’t dilute it.'"

From "These Millennials Got New Roommates. They’re Nuns/A project called Nuns and Nones moved religion-free millennials into a convent" (NYT).