An old joke asks: “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?”

Answer: “Practice.”

This story asks: “How do you get to a monastery?”

Answer: “Peddle.”

There are many ways to discern a religious vocation, and the woman in this item decided the best way was to use her legs. This comes to us from The Catholic Spirit in St. Paul:

Stephanie Hart is on the road to discerning whether she has a calling to the religious life — both literally and figuratively.

That road will take her about 650 miles across four states, as the 27-year-old massage therapist bikes from her home in Miles City, Mont., to St. Joseph, Minn., where she will join the Sisters of St. Benedict for a yearlong postulancy to discern whether she has a permanent call to religious life.

It may be an unusual way to embark on a vocation, but Hart said she is looking forward to traveling on the open road.

“I guess what I’m hoping for myself during this time is mostly to just be — to allow whatever thoughts to come that need to come,” said Hart, who left Aug. 11 and hopes to arrive by Aug. 24.

“I’m really looking forward to this time and the slower pace of this transition,” she told The Catholic Spirit in a telephone interview Aug. 9. “I have about two weeks, pedal stroke by pedal stroke, to begin to acclimate.”

Hart, a 2002 graduate of the College of St. Benedict in St. Joseph, said she also plans to pray and enjoy the scenery as she journeys from Montana through the Dakotas and into Minnesota. Along the way, she will post reflections and photos on the blog she created to document her adventure.

In her first entry, posted July 30, Hart said her family has been supportive of her decision to move to the monastery, but her father, Dean, wasn’t enthusiastic about his daughter biking solo in the dog days of August along long stretches of open highway.

He suggested that Stephanie’s mother, Ellen, an avid biker, join her. Then younger sister, Cindy, wanted to participate, too. The three trained for months by doing practice runs.

Hart biked to the monastery from the Twin Cities, where she moved to enroll in massage therapy school and lived until last month. During that time she attended St. Stephen in Minneapolis and often assisted with music ministry at St. Frances Cabrini, also in Minneapolis.

While they’re on the road, Dean will ride behind in a camper and serve as their main cook and general support crew.

Hart said she got to know the sisters at the monastery pretty well during her time at the College of St. Benedict. She attended Liturgy of the Hours in the evenings and sang in the monastic choir.

What attracted her to the sisters’ way of life? “I think it’s the primacy of the prayer life — that the prayer feeds their work and then their work feeds the prayer,” Hart said. “They aim for that balance. These are women with very full lives.”

Women with very full lives, soon to be joined, it seems, by a woman with very strong legs. Good luck, Stephanie! We’re praying for you.

Photo: Stephanie Hart (on the right) from Biking To The Monastery