Columns

Horizons - The pandemic continues to unfold, and recent protests against racism are increasing. But I continue to find glimmers of hope in both scenarios, in part because I was able to continue to teach theology to my high school students online.

Training a grownup human being is not easy, and the formation of a religious woman is even more complicated. With God's grace, we try our best to create opportunities for young sisters to learn to be messengers of God.

No one could have told us in early March that we would be celebrating Palm Sunday and the Triduum through livestream. We probably would have said it could never happen. Yet, it did!

Gifted moments in community, ministry and prayer have come with a shared life with the Appalachian community. Being a paramedic helped me to form a trusting relationship, and the community took me in as family.

Living with this kind of willingness to "let go" is one of the greatest challenges we all face in life. We hold onto many things: a person dear to us, our accumulated insignificant possessions, or our own fame. It's difficult to let go of them.

Horizons - This work of becoming anti-racist is for the long haul and is not meant to make me feel better, but to commit to making our society better and our human family whole.

"I can't breathe" is the most desperate plea for life. "I can't breathe" is a plea for another human to come to aid, to be compassionate, to stand with and act in a desperate moment.

A job interview question sparked a lively conversation about imagining ourselves as functional kitchen appliances.

Our lives have paused and are at a standstill but our spirits are alive. We see glimmers of hope even amidst this crisis, and we see that giving hope is our new ministry. 

Contemplate This - The grief of lost lives and lost opportunity can be numbing. One can feel helpless. But we cannot let the grief become toxic and disempowering. We need to continue our work with compassionate eyes.

Horizons - God provides not because we will it or because we see the world through rose-colored glasses, but because faith allows us to be free, to trust that all will be well and also to know our part in the work of God.

We recently had the last meeting of the Palliative Care-COVID Support Care Team, which had been put in place to answer the needs of patients and their families. I left with an overwhelming sense of gratitude, relief and loss.

In 1995, the Dominican Sisters of Hope acted on the call to start a new congregation. This anniversary year will be a time to explore how we are being called to go deeper into hope, and find more life.

The destiny of our two peoples had become intertwined and continues to do good today. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, ravishing our broken world, this story has again surfaced into Irish consciousness. Little did we realize what the Choctaw story told when they led the Famine Walk in 1990 would awaken in the Irish worldwide.

Horizons - What might commitment look like for all of us in the midst of this massive, disruptive global transition? How might the current crisis be a catalyst to push that evolution forward, opening hearts and minds to new possibilities?

We are in this together. It will end. Maybe we are still in Easter Saturday, waiting for the new day to dawn when we can again go out, unite with our loved ones and live as before. But it will not be as before.

When multiple plans for a hands-on reconciliation service at our high school focusing on right relationships — and the planet — were thwarted by weather, we found a way.

St. Francis Convent employees' Green Committee initiated the Green Fair Folk Festival in 2006 with "the hope to inform and inspire members of the St. Francis community and the community of Little Falls with tools to live lives that are earth-friendly."

"When death comes for me," he said, "I'm curious to meet her. I'm the last of my family and friends. I'm no longer afraid of dying alone. Within me," he looked down at his feet, "there is no alone. Same within within you." That was as clear a homily as I ever heard from my fisherman friend.

Horizons - I marvel at how smells, tastes and combinations of ingredients connect us so intimately with people and places from the past. They help us remember. I yearned for this connection when my grandma died of COVID-19.