I was in the wake of the season of El Día de Los Muertos when I attended the Living Cosmology: Christian Responses to Journey of the Universe conference at Yale Divinity School, Nov. 7-9. When Sr. Miriam Therese McGillis, who was on a panel for Seeds, Food and Soil, brought forth baskets of drying marigolds to share with participants I was very moved and surprised. Miriam and the marigolds captured participants through her intimate sharing of her spiritual journey to embrace the sacred word of the book of nature at the tutelage of Fr. Thomas Berry.

It could be the scene of an ordinary school day anywhere. Just a few days before Christmas, the younger students were making decorations and singing carols downstairs, while the older ones were taking their final exams upstairs. But for the Syrian refugee children at the Good Shepherd Social Center in Deir al-Ahmar, getting an education is something many of their young compatriots are missing. "It started with a storm," said Good Shepherd Sr. Micheline Lattouf, who heads the center

GSR Today - I’ll give you three guesses for naming the No. 1 mainstream media story this week concerning women religious. Actually, you don’t even need three. The Vatican’s report on the apostolic visitation released Tuesday accounted for most of this week’s news about nuns and merited the same type of headlines from the mainstream media that it did from the non-secular press.

That first Sunday night it appeared. In the stillness of the final day of November it had taken its place, where it was to remain for the coming four weeks of Advent. There in the chapel, a tiny manger had appeared. No wise men, no family, not even any animals. Simply, a manger.

Commentary - So much has already been said about the content of the report from the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life. I want to delve a bit below the surface of both the process and the text itself to engage what I think are some of the deeper issues and concerns and hopes that invite and challenge us for the future.

Opponents and supporters of the pending sale of six Catholic hospitals in California to Prime Healthcare Services escalated their actions and their rhetoric this week as the February deadline nears for the state's attorney general to rule on the sale. The Daughters of Charity Health System (DCHS), which owns the six hospitals, says the sale to Prime is the only way to keep the hospitals open. Together, the four hospitals in northern California and two in southern California are running a monthly debt of $10 million, a cost DCHS says is not sustainable.

See for Yourself - As Thanksgiving week approached, any number of faculty and staff at the university where I work asked me what I was going to be doing for the Thanksgiving holiday break. I replied, “I’ll be judging a beauty pageant.” The incredulous reactions were something like, “You? Judging a beauty pageant? What does a nun know about doing that?”

Troubled Filipino Worker in Japan? Call Sr. Marcy. If you are a Filipino migrant worker in Japan who has had troubles with immigration, chances are you have heard of Sr. Marcy Jacinto. She is the Mercedarian Missionaries of Berriz nun from Zamboanga City, southern Philippines, whose name and mobile phone number are circulating in detention centers for undocumented migrants in Japan, or in homes of families of problematic Filipino workers.

Well, I'll admit it, the Vatican's apostolic visitation report has been on my mind. For over two years, my community's leadership diverted precious time, energy and resources away from sorely needed ministry to the marginalized to address a searching Vatican inquiry that we had neither chosen nor had a part in shaping. Over these past stressful years, my feelings veered widely from anxiety, to sorrow, to anger, to pain. I was regularly sustained, however, by various sister leaders around the U.S. who, although also deeply affected, seemed imbued with an impressive calm.