While the gifts we receive are many and varied, the more we practice thanksgiving, the more we find that part and parcel to the gifts we receive is the gift of gratitude itself.

Having been a business traveler over a lifetime of health care and leadership ministries, I am no stranger getting around in cities across the country. However, the opportunity these days with Uber and Lyft bring an incredibly rich interpersonal dynamic that in my opinion has never been available through taxi or shuttle bus rides prior.

"Sometimes we are tempted to find excuses and complain, acting as if we could only be happy if a thousand conditions were met. To some extent this is because our 'technological society has succeeded in multiplying occasions of pleasure, yet has found it very difficult to engender joy.' I can say that the most beautiful and natural expressions of joy which I have seen in my life were in poor people who had little to hold on to. I also think of the real joy shown by others who, even amid pressing professional obligations, were able to preserve, in detachment and simplicity, a heart full of faith."

"We thank you and praise you for a people of many colors and cultures and gifts who enriched one another's understanding of life rather than set out to set one against the other."

Never would I have expected my Presentation community to ask me to be a registered lobbyist at our South Dakota State Legislature! Our foundress, Nano Nagle, said, "If I could be of service in saving souls in any part of the globe, I would willingly do all in my power." But to the state legislature?

Notre Dame de Namur Sr. Mary Johnson and Immaculate Heart of Mary Sr. Sandra Schneiders told the Religious Formation Conference that the structure of religious formation needs to be reimagined. The heart of their proposal is a process that includes graduate-level theology, with novices in intercongregational programs.

Notes from the Field - I was on mission in Jordan for about four months. On Sept. 5, I took a bus to the Salesian Sisters' house in Nazareth, my next mission site. I have heard great things about the sisters' community in Nazareth and, although I was going to miss all the wonderful people I met in Jordan, I was excited about this new mission, which is completely different than the one I had before.

"We encounter the God of mystery only if we encounter others who are different from us."

The present and future of religious life must always be focused on the ministry of encounter, speakers told members of the Religious Formation Conference at their annual national congress Nov. 17-18 in Milwaukee.