Friday, March 24, 2017

Pray Like This....



Pray like this....
  • Our Father
    • My hope, my joy, my love
    • Our hope, our joy, our love,
    • God who dreamed us into life
  • Holy is your name
    • Praise, glory and honor....
  • Thy kingdom come
    • on earth,
    • in me, through me
    • in us, through us....
  • Thy will be done
    • on earth,
    • in me, through me
    • in us, through us
  • Give us today our daily bread
    • Gift us with life, with wholeness, with holiness
    • Today, this day, every day
  • Forgive us trespasses
    • We fail to live up to your standards, to our own standards
    • Forgive us
    • And give us the grace to forgive
      • others
      • those who do us wrong
      • forgive and reconcile us to be once again brothers and sisters.

Pray always.
Pray alone and in groups.
Pray with and without words.
Pray.



Friday, March 17, 2017

Sisters and Sustainability

--by Christina Cappeci

The old farmers used to say you should leave a field better than you found it. Sometimes that called for heavy lifting. Other times it just meant picking up a rock as you crossed and placing it at the field’s edge.

That counsel stuck with Amy Hereford, who grew up on a 10-acre Missouri farm where sheep roamed and blackberries grew wild. She planted whatever vegetable seemed to be lacking.... Read more...

Friday, March 3, 2017

Celebrating Sisterhood

Join us!
I was chatting with our Sisters 2.0 group about the possibility of hosting a public conversation about religious life as we experience it. We talked about the unique perspective of younger women religious, which includes those now in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s. We have lived our entire religious life after that massive waves that entered in the 1940s-60s. We also lived our entire religious lives after Vatican II and after the renewal. We have always been few in number and have struggled to find our place in our communities with the overwhelming majority of sisters that are 20-50 years older than we are.
Help for the project comes from
an NCSW grant
With all our sisters, we share community, we share life and spirituality, and we share a mission as wide as the world and as far-reaching as the gospel. Yet our experience and our culture are very different. Our experience of religious life and our hopes for the future are shaped by these differences as well as our shared reality.
We decided to invite some of our members into the conversation which we will host online on March 8, 2017 at 7pm Central, the first day of National Catholic Sisters Week. We are grateful for a grant from NCSW to help promote this project.
Our IT department will provide
technical support
On March 8, we will host an online panel of the newer generations of sisters from around the country, sharing their best memories of religious life, their enthusiasm for religious life today and their hopes for religious life going forward. The recording will also be available after the live event.
I have the privilege of moderating our conversation. I'm working with my community's IT people to ensure that the technology works for us.
Our panelists will be:

  • Sr. Michelle Stachowiak, a Felician Sister for almost 29 years. She has served as a teacher and physical therapist, and has worked with the homeless and served in leadership in her own community.  Currently from Pittsburgh, she has lived and ministered in many parts of the US.
  • Sr. Ann Mare Paul, a Sister of Christian Charity. She too has served as a teacher, teaching theology at the high school and theology levels. Currently, she brings hope through her ministry in a Neighborhood center in one of the poorest cities of New Jersey.
  • Sr. María de Lourdes López Munguía, a Franciscan Missionary of Mary. She ministers as a psychologist and has served indigenous peoples, the incarcerated, victims of domestic violence and those struggling with drug addiction.  

To find out more about the program and to register, click here.

Peace,
Amy