I share the fear of younger members that their religious communities are stuck. We are set in our ways and it is not exclusively that the "hierarchy won't let us change;" it is because we choose not to change. Will this entrenchment change without a deeper attention to primary relationships, a different commitment to common prayer, and a movement away from individualism to interdependence?

Four Kenyan sisters from the Little Daughters of St. Joseph Congregation run the Muyanza Health Center for the Byomba Diocese, but the missionary sisters are providing more than just health care. Seeing them as a rock of support for the community, residents have begun to accept the sisters into the fabric of their lives. In a country that is trying to outrun the shadow of its own history, trust can be the most precious commodity. And trust is something the sisters are slowly nurturing, despite their outsider status, as residents of Muyanza begin to reveal the terrible things they witnessed.

"Wisdom seeks the other, overcoming temptations to rigidity and closed-mindedness; it is open and in motion."

I was walking a path that thousands have walked for hundreds of years, moving among other religious people who put their fidelity into motion. There, among all those expressions of faith, I realized I wasn’t so sure what faith was.

See for Yourself - "I really like to clab," the energetic graduate-school candidate before me said confidently. "Some of my best successes throughout my undergraduate work came when I clabbed."

"The profound silence and stillness that surrounds me at these gatherings has nourished me deeply."

From A Nun's Life podcasts - Does God give you signs that you should be a nun? Listen to one Benedictine sister's story about coming from a family with more than a dozen religious cousins and relations.

"For as long as I can remember, I have always been interested in women religious," says sociologist Christine Gervais. Since a sister baptized her, "it's literally been a lifelong interest that began the day I was born."

I grew up in a home where Dad was an organizer, so we grew up expecting everything to be in order. Dad's workbench had a chalked outline for each tool, arranged from the smallest hammer or screwdriver to the largest. Before we could read, we would line up our Tinker Toy rods by size, shortest to longest. Our building blocks likewise were automatically sorted into small, medium and large.