Paradise

I touched on this a little in one of my posts, but I thought it almost ironic how the "cultlike" description of Ruby, Oklahoma is still spot-on stereotypical of some small Oklahoma towns today.

When my fiance and I were house hunting, we got lost looking for a lisitng out i nthe boonies. We thought it was in Sand Springs, but it ended up being way far out, almost to Lake Keystone, in the backwoods of Oklahoma. We're talking donkeys tied up next to your pre-fab trailer. As we drove in, the people of the town glared at us. Sitting at the one and only stoplight was uncomfortable. It was almost as if they were hyper-aware that there were outsiders in town. As we were leaving, there were trucks parked across the road, blocking the way we came. It was almost as if they were yelling at us, "We don't want you here, get out!" We had to find an alternative route home that didn't go straight through their small town (thank you TomTom).

The point of this story is that I cannot BEGIN to imagine what it was like for those women living in that convent. They were the outsiders, not just for a few uncomfortable minutes, but their entire stay in the town of Ruby. I can only imagine what must have been done to them to make them feel unwelcome, awkward, and as if they had committed some unspeakable wrong.