Everyone from nuns to meter readers are blogging

Check out this article in the Toledo Blade: "Everyone from nuns to meter readers are blogging about work." It features bloggy friend Julie and yours truly. I was cleaning out our novitiate refrigerator last week when the reporter called. Given that my mind was preoccupied with organizing food stuffs, I'm pleasantly surprised that I sound mildly coherent in the article!

Indeed, there are enough nuns keeping blogs that SisterBloggers alone, an online network of like-minded blogs from Catholic and Episcopalian nuns, boasts nearly two dozen members. Vieira's own site links to more than 30. "I think religious women are wanting to tell their story" said Sister Susan Francois, 34, who started SisterBloggers three years ago, and belongs to the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace in New Jersey.

She said she started her blog when she was "discerning a religious vocation for myself and decided to share my story." She said the majority of the nuns who are part of SisterBloggers are in their 20s and 30s, but she's surprised how universal the experiences sound, "even though the communities are very different." Some nuns use their blogs to provide daily prayer. Many wrestle with what it means to live a devout life; on the Web site Sister Mary Alternative, Sister Jen explains she's a post-modern nun "testing my vocation to religious life." And others, like Sister Julie's site, are committed to debunking the notion that a nun's life is one of solitude and uptight elderly women with sour faces.