Different orders

I've been wondering lately about visiting communities. It's like all these questions are going around in my mind: how many should I visit, should I visit different kinds of orders, when should I visit them. I want to visit soon but that may not be possible to do other than for short periods of time because of my university commitments.

So far I've pretty much only wanted to look at Benedictine communities. I've been reading the Rule of Saint Benedict and something kind of just spoke to me, which is weird because it's not even a spiritual rule but very much a disciplinary one. But sometimes you can't question these things too much, they are what they are. And I had my two communities I want to visit because I thought to myself I want to get an idea of the different communities to see what is out there rather than just jumping in with the first community I visit (which I can totally see myself doing, I get overexcited sometimes). So that seemed sensible. But now I'm wondering if maybe I should visit a different kind of community as well. I have been to one cloistered community as part of an RCIA retreat where we went to loads of different churches across the city and we visited the Carmelite monastery and got to meet one of the sisters. Honestly it didn't exactly endear me to religious life, the word "silence" was used far too often for my liking (nice oxymoron there). But on some level I do wonder if that experience stuck with me somehow because until then I had only ever known apostolic sisters from having gone to a Loreto school. Recently the idea has kind of come to me that maybe I should visit some Carmelites as well. I keep thinking about a community I came across in my research and thinking about going there. After the Benedictine communities it was one of the other ones I felt more drawn to.

Why are there just so many orders? It's so difficult to figure out where you're meant to be!

I've got a big assignment due Wednesday so I may not be blogging again until then. Until then, God Bless.