Recently I shared with the sisters in my local community a song I learned in third grade about the kookaburra bird. Little did I know that the kookaburra would teach me a lesson a few days later.

Elizabeth Johnson is retiring from full-time teaching and university-related work so she can better attend to her own quest for God, both spiritually as a Sister of St. Joseph and as an academic theologian — two vocations that cannot be separated for her.

Notes from the Field - The communal section of Pendus is rural and reaching it can mean multiple modes of transportation and an entire day of travel. But when I talk to people there, I find they are amazingly mobile, connected to the larger cities in Haiti and to countries across the ocean.

"Sometimes, when we are together, it is the only time they are not working. Every day, they are working and working, and then we come to church and we sing together."

Amman, Jordan - A nurse from Sri Lanka, Salvatorian Sr. Theresa Perera spends weekdays helping migrant workers obtain the health care they need with Caritas Jordan and weekends planning gatherings and outings to ensure they have a bit of fun amid their busy work schedule.

Fighting for women's humanity is often like "fanning the face of the sun with a feather. But someone has to do it."

In the time it takes you to read this article, about a hundred people around the world will be forced to leave their homes because of persecution, war or violence. In fact, more people are displaced now than at any other time in human history.

GSR Today - Sisters are constantly on the front lines of justice issues and are extremely effective in creating systemic change. This is true historically and continues to be true today.

During a two-year program on aging, illness and death, I invited sisters in my community's assisted living convent to participate in small groups to share their experiences. I was fascinated by their responses.

Sr. Aisha Kavalakatt of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth started organizing women's empowerment groups in the village of Koshi Dekha, Nepal, in 2014. When the 7.8-magnitude earthquake April 25, 2015, leveled hundreds of villages and killed about 9,000 people in the small mountainous country, she pushed through blocked roads and returned to the village of 1,700 people five days later to help with recovery. She says she won't be needed soon, expecting Koshi Dekha to be self-sufficient by 2020.