"The daily unfolding has a beauty of its own as time slowly blossoms into full flower."

Jesus and Buddha, it has been said, discovered the same spiritual landscape. With that wisdom tucked away in my heart I have taken myself twice a week for the last two years to zazen, otherwise known as Buddhist sitting meditation, with an interfaith prayer group that meets close to my home.

Notes from the Field - “Live and Learn,” the saying goes, so I try to learn from where I live and observe my surroundings to gain knowledge from them. That said, there are a few things I have learned from living in a developing country that I didn’t know before I came to Ethiopia. For one, it's not easy to run a mission.

Sr. Mary Dominic Nguyen Thi Hao of the Congregation of Our Lady of the Missions has cared for sex workers in Ho Chi Minh City for 10 years. Her ministry focuses more on teaching about disease prevention than lecturing on moral lessons, since the women tend to be poor and uneducated. Hao, 73, also performs pro-life work by setting up houses for women experiencing unwanted pregnancies to live under her support until they give birth.

"Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after another."

Guatemala, a country about the size of the state of Virginia, is today in a particularly heightened crisis of corruption, government upheaval, militarization and community resistance. In the 1990s, the government lowered royalties on mineral wealth to 1 percent. Successive governments have granted hundreds of mining licenses as well as rights to flood farmland for hydroelectric power. As community resistance has grown to these and other injustices, the military has turned on its citizens while ignoring or even supporting the drug cartels.

GSR Today - This past April, as a board member of the Hilton Foundation Board I had the privilege of visiting early child development projects in Zambia, a special area of funding for the foundation. As a board we had received reports on progress being made by our various projects, but seeing children in person was a special experience.

When the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate started tracking the ages of women and men religious in the United States in 2010, it was already clear that fewer women were joining religious life. This made the average age of women in religious life higher and higher with each passing year, during a time when fewer and fewer young women were joining. But CARA data also showed that women professing final vows were themselves older — much older — than before.

"Simplicity — colors faded. And our beauty?"

“Why did you decide to become a Catholic sister?” This question has been asked of me many times in the 10 years since I began my vocation journey. It is really a very complex and multi-layered question of identity, call and response. Over the years, however, I’ve realized that the simplest and most honest answer is this: It is as a Sister of St. Joseph of Peace that I can become the person God dreams I can be.