An interfaith retreat center run by the Immaculate Heart Community is among the estimated 1,000 structures either destroyed or damaged last week by mudslides in Southern California that also killed at least 20 people. The center's original stone house was untouched, however.

"We are emissaries of the Prince of Peace, and we bear candles lit with his everlasting light."

As I look at the future of religious life, I want to share a touchstone moment that happened right before I took my first vows. It took time to fully understand what it meant, but the experience has reassured and comforted me in times of great change. Several years later, I was finally able to put my reflections on this experience in writing.

Forty sisters in India from different congregations are working to make the Catholic faith more accessible to people who are deaf or have partial hearing loss, including using sign language during Mass. They serve in the Syro-Malabar Church, one of three Catholic rites in India; its synod approved offering Mass in sign language last year. They also provide marriage counseling, interpretation and legal advocacy to the wider deaf community.

"There are three urgent and indeed great problems that we face not only in the United States of America but all over the world today. That is the problem of racism, the problem of poverty and the problem of war."

GSR Today - The situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo is a crisis; sisters are doing what they can to help save people, especially orphans, amid the burning of villages, brutalization and rape of women, militias' conscription of children, and the targeting of Catholic convents, schools and clinics.

See for Yourself - Can you imagine having two different work crews for the same job, one "nice" and one "not so great?" During a lunch break at a recent conference, I had the chance to chat with one of the event planners. Because the lunch items were just delicious and so nicely presented, I wanted to thank the planners.

While my body is working hard to heal, any type of positive message will be helpful. So I turn my grateful thoughts to the places on my body where I hurt the most. My jaw, my hand, my nose. Thank you, thank you, thank you. 

"We have to deal with chaos now because only out of chaos is going to come the creativity of the future."

Appreciation - Advocate for the marginalized, well-known health care lobbyist on Capitol Hill, president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious during heightened scrutiny of religious life, a "center of power," Sr. Catherine Pinkerton modeled how to stand on the line of "what is and what is yet to be" in justice and care of people.