Catching Up

Some of the younger women religious
at the 2013 GV Gathering

Sorry for the blog silence! As regular readers know, I've been busy as part of the planning/hosting team for the 2013 Giving Voice National Gathering, otherwise known as the "young nun conference."  If you're interested in what happened at this amazing opportunity for Catholic Sisters in their 20s, 30s, and 40s to creatively engage with their peers across congregations, check out our gathering blog.  I also was invited to offer a "harvest" of our time together on our last day.  I used images for my talk, which I've put together in this video.


To sum up, it was an incredible time with my religious life age peers that fills me with hope, energizes me with creative ideas, and makes be believe once again and always in the future of religious life.  We may be building the bridge as we are walking it, and we might not quite know where the bridge is headed, but we know that we are going there together, answering God's call, seeking to serve God's people in need and continue the mission of Jesus.

In the days since our gathering ended, I've been catching up.  Catching up on some of the follow-up from the conference, including updating our GV podcast channel and creating the GVTV YouTube channel.  Catching up with good friends as I stay in Portland for a few days (I took my Godson to see the Monsters U movie yesterday).  And catching up on some sleep.

Tomorrow I am headed north to Seattle to spend a few weeks catching up with my groovy CSJP Sisters.   I am so looking forward to that time with them.  My spirit needs a CSJP reset.

And so the next few weeks might continue to be slow on the blogging front as I catch up.  Or I might catch a wave of bloggy inspiritation and pop in more frequently.  I'm leaving that one up to the Spirit.

Young Nun Gathering

Our Giving Voice National gathering is just two days away!  We've already got some press from Catholic San Francisco, the diocesan news service in the Bay Area!

Young sisters to gather in Bay Area for national convention
July 3rd, 2013
Under-50 Catholic sisters will gather at Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont July 5-8 for the Giving Voice National Gathering. The sisters, most of whom are the youngest members of their religious orders, will pray and reflect on the future of mission and ministry in the church and society in the 21st century. Sister Yolanda Tarango, congregation leader of the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word and a renowned theologian, will share her insights on the conference theme of “Mission and Ministry in the 21st Century.” 

The four-day national gathering will bring together vowed women religious from across North America representing more than 30 religious orders. Participants will pray, reflect and creatively imagine what the future ministry of Catholic sisters might look like given the growing number of people living in poverty or on the margins on society as well as the increasing intercultural reality. The sisters themselves represent this intercultural reality, and simultaneous translation will allow English- and Spanish-speaking participants to share in their own language. 

Religious life is in the midst of an historic shift, as the large novitiate classes of the 1950s and 1960s age and fewer women enter religious life today. On July 8, the sisters will participate in an outdoor interactive exercise to imagine “going on a mission” in smaller numbers in the future. 

Giving Voice is a peer-led grassroots national organization of Catholic sisters under the age of 50 that creates spaces for younger women religious to give voice to their hopes, dreams and challenges in religious life. The July conference is the seventh national gathering of younger women religious organized since 1997 and the first to take place on the West Coast. Previous gatherings have taken place in Boston, Chicago, Cleveland and Milwaukee.
For more information, visit www.giving-voice.org. 

From July 5, 2013 issue of Catholic San Francisco.
- See more at: http://www.catholic-sf.org/ns.php?newsid=27&id=61576#sthash.2Dwfakgz.dpuf

By the way, we will be blogging a bit from the conference.  Follow along on our Giving Voice 2013 blog!

The Groove is in the Heart of Giving Voice

For the past year and a half I've been having periodic conference calls with some other young nuns to plan our Giving Voice national conference.  We've attended to all the details .. meeting space? Check.  Speaker? Check. Prayer, ritual, process, name tags? Check, check, check, check.

I'm headed to California in the morning to spend a few days with my old roommate before the conference starts on Friday.  I've still got some on the ground tasks to take care of, like shopping for supplies and setting up the sound system.

Speaking of the sound system, tonight I started creating a dance mix for our young nun fun.  Yes, that's right.  We dance.  I'm taking song requests, but the benefit of creating a dance mix is you get to make sure your favorites are included like this one from back in the day.




Somehow, making the dance mix made me realize ... the Giving Voice national gathering is almost upon us!  Please keep all the participants in your prayers for safe travel and that all the details may go smoothly and we may be open to the movement of the Spirit among us (and have some fun!).

The groove, after all, is in the heart.

Yay Family

I am on a mini weekend break with my big sis, her family and my 16 year old niece who is visiting from California. I have not been on a family vacation for a long time. It is always surprising to me how quickly a family road trip can reset your batteries.

Family fun is important. As we get older, distances get larger and we spend more time on our own lives/ families or helping out with Dad's medical issues. Hence we necessarily spend less family fun time together. But when I think back to my best memories of my own family, it is family trips to the beach or road trips that stand out most. It is important I think to step outside of our daily lives to come together for some family fun time.

Of course having kids along makes it a blast. So far we have spent time at the arcade (which to my delight and the dismay of my brother-in-law does not have any violent games!) And the water park. Tomorrow it is back to the water park. Then my niece and I are going to the spa to get pedicures before the family heads back to Chicago.

When we walked around the shops in town earlier today I saw a magnet that says "Yay Family." With all the ups and downs of family life it is good to remember the joyful fun part too!

Life Lessons

Sometimes life gets more complicated than we were planning on. Anyone who has dealt with an unexpected crisis know what I am talking about, whether it is an unexpected lay off, an extreme weather event, or even war. Just think about all those people in Syria or Afghanistan who went to work or school one day and ended up in the middle of a war zone instead. Just imagine how their lives and plans have been turned upside down.

More common I suppose are sudden illnesses and medical situations. Each of us has loved ones who are getting older, for example, and that is an unpredictable process. As tough as it is for the person facing the situation, it also can put a wrench in the plans of the loved one. But it can also help us refocus on what is truly important in life. It can reconnect us with family and help us put our very independent and important lives in perspective. We might realize that we can't do everything for example. We might ask for help when otherwise we are very independent thank you very much. We might have to slow down and focus on what is in front of us rather than everything that "needs" to get done.

My family has had our own share of these moments. Growing up I helped my mother care for her parents from middle school through high school.  Ten years ago my mom herself passed away after a three year struggle with cancer. And my dad has faced a variety of medical challenges in the decade since. My siblings and I have done our best to be supportive from a distance. It is not easy but it also a key part of being human.

I do not want to go into any details here (privacy and all) but my dad is in the midst of another one of those moments, which means my four older siblings and I are also in the midst of one of those tough times. Please keep us, and all families supporting a loved one through tough times, in your prayers.

Peace

Patience and a patient

Sorry for the blog silence. I have been otherwise occupied the past week. Without going into too much detail, I came to D.C. last Thursday to visit my Dad for Father's Day weekend. He had a medical situation and we ended up spending the whole weekend plus a couple of days in the hospital.

Most of our time was spent waiting. Waiting for tests. Waiting for results. Waiting for doctor's to explain said test results. Etc... It was frustrating for both of us, but at least I was there to experience the frustration with him and hopefully make it a little more bearable.  While I was in the chair next to the bed and not in the bed, it was an experience of solidarity and compassion building, as in the word's meaning as "suffering with." He's home now and I was able to shift some things around in my schedule to stay a little longer with him and get him settled.

Of course there are lots of things I should be doing at home. I am not even sure what all is on my to do list at this point, other then that I know it is quite long. But this is where I need to be right now. Developing patience as I companion the patient who is also my father.

Please keep my Dad in your prayers. I am also praying with and for all those without someone to keep them company in the hospital.

Clutter

Before I left for my trip to visit our Sisters in the UK, my life was a bit of a whirlwind, end of semester style. I was finishing projects on my to do list literally up to the minute I had to lock up and head downstairs to my airport shuttle.

One thing anyone who has lived with me knows is that when life gets busy for me, the clutter piles up. You have to cut back somewhere, right?

In any case, to make a long story short, I finally had a good chunk of time yesterday to clear some of the clutter. What a joy it was to open my eyes and see the clear space on the floor and even the clean dusted quality of the little table in my prayer space.

Sometimes we just need to stop and take the time to declutter our lives. I think that goes for the spiritual life too.

While I was in the UK I spent a week of retreat in contemplative prayer and dialogue with with my Sisters. The entire experience was one big graced moment, but perhaps the most significant was sitting in silent prayer together.

Sometimes words can get in the way for me, a type of clutter of their own. Yet the silence is always there, waiting. So in addition to deluttering my room, I am also making the comittment (again) to clear some space for silent sitting with God as part of my regular prayer practice.

Where do you need to clear and away clutter and make space in your life?

CSJP Novices

I was unable to make photos upload from my mobile phone onto the blog when I was in the UK.  Here is  a picture of the women who are in our Congregation Novitiate (now located in London) that I was visiting with last week. Please keep them in your prayers as they continue with their journey of initial formation.

CSJP Novices: Sister Katrina, (yours truly--not a novice!),
Sister Sheena, and Sister Juliana

Jet Lag

Early Sisters of St Joseph of Peace
travelling on the Great Northern Railroad

Greetings from Chicago.  I made my way home yesterday afternoon without much ado.  I continue to be amazed at jet travel. It's commonplace.  We take it for granted.  Morning I'm in the UK. Later that day I'm in the US.  Sure I'm a bit jet lagged and ready for my own bed, and have spent a great deal of money on the plane ticket, but it's relatively painless.

Then I think about our early Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace.  Within 10 years of our founding in 1884 we had Sisters in the UK, New Jersey and Washington State/British Columbia.  They didn't have the internet or even long distance telephones to communicate but wrote letters, which had to be copied by hand.  And they traveled by boat and train, long distances.  You might think, given the comparative difficulty of travelling, that they stayed put where they were.  But when you read the early stories of our Sisters you soon find yourselves amazed at their mobility and connection given that each province was 3,000 miles away from the next!

So today I'm a bit jet lagged to be sure, but I'm also filled with gratitude for having spent the past two weeks with our Sisters in the United Kingdom.

Founders Day

Today is a feast day in my religious congregation. In 1899 on this day, our founder Margaret Anna Cusack, known in religion as Mother Francis Clare, breathed her last.

It was a blessing to join with our CSJP Congregation Novitiate community today to celebrate this special day. This morning we prayed a special prayer in our office book for Margaret Anna. It was moving and I felt her presence. Sister Alexine, my former London housemate and now congregation novice director, created a lovely prayer space in the chapel.

This afternoon we went out for a celebratory feast day meal before I headed on a train back to Birmingham for the first leg of my journey back to Chicago.

These two week with our CSJP UK region has been very special. The time has both flown by and yet not. Perhaps it is all the deep conversations and renewed connections that contribute to that quality. In any case, my visit is almost over. Hopefully I will not have to wait another six years to come back to this side of the pond.

Companions

I am blessed to be spending this week in London with our Congregation novitiate community. We are working together on a project and in the process getting to know each other better.

It is amazing to me how God works in our lives and in our community. I clearly remember, when I first considered religious life in general and the CSJP community in particular, being concerned about the reality of diminishment and lack of vocations. How could I join my lot with this group? Yes thry are amazing women. But who would be my companions 15, 25, 50 years down the line?

Yet my heart was already caught up in love for the CSJP charism and community, and so I took the plunge. As luck (or God) would have it, I ended up entering with a group. Four of us made first vows within a few years of each other and now we have a new group of three in the novitiate discerning their call as Sisters of St Joseph of Peace.

It is an honor to hear their stories, both their lives until now and their first connection with our community. Like myself, each of them first connected with us via our website and then fell in love with our Sisters. The charism is very strong in the three of them in very unique ways. I am filled with gratitude and hope.

Please join me in praying for my new companions on their novitiate journey. And pray too for all women and men discerning a call to the crazy wonderful experiment that is religious life.

Facing the Future

In our CSJP constitutions we say that confident in God's faithful love, we face the future in gratitude and hope. This past week was an embodied experience of these words as we gathered for our Congregation retreat. I am filled with deep love, gratitude and awe at the workings of the spirit in our community. Words pretty much escape me except to say that we are living into our evolving future, and what a future it will be!

I am now spending a few days with our congregation novitiate community in London. This is also the same house where I lived for 3 months as a novice. My old housemate is now the novice director. I will be working with the novices on a special project these days. Stay tuned ...