“If I know so little about my family four generations ago, the assumption follows that in four generations, they will know little about me. It changes the way you think about your life.” On the first day of 2014, my dad made that comment in a casual discussion. I expect he was thinking more about wanting to be personally remembered by his descendants, but the comment resonated differently for me. Envisioning future generations dramatically reframes the question, “Is there life after death?”

"Peace is not a relationship of nations. It is a condition of mind brought about by a serenity of soul. . . ."

Although the flood of Central American refugee families arriving in El Paso this past summer has now dwindled to a slow but steady trickle, the local border community remains committed to raising a robust call for comprehensive immigration reform.

From A Nun's Life podcasts - More about how people choose vocations; In this clip from an episode of Ask Sister from May 2010, we respond to a listener who wonders if she can be a math professor plus a nun at the same time.

As I sat listening to Jennifer Haselberger accept FutureChurch's Fr. Louis J. Trivison Award on Sept. 19, I couldn't help but reflect how proud Father Louie would have been.

In an Inuvialuit hamlet on the Arctic Ocean in Canada's Northwest Territory, Sr. Fay Trombley has been ministering to an isolated mission of about 30 people for the past decade. After her retirement, the 74-year-old former seminary educator says she settled there not for the peace and solitude one could find in a place with only 950 people, but rather to fulfill a girlhood dream. A great deal of the pastoral care responsibilities Trombley has taken on in the last decade center on fostering hope and trust in Tuk, but her real ministry, she says, is simply being a constant, peaceful presence.

GSR Today - This week we meet a sister in Africa who fulfilled a lifelong dream by shaking “hands” with an elephant. Forgive me, but I’m just a little jealous.

I responded to the first inklings of a call to religious life as if playing the arcade game, Whac-a-mole. When God’s invitation started slowly popping up in different ways, like those little moles, I would promptly “swing my black mallet” and stuff them right back down. Eventually, the “vocation moments” were jumping up like maniacs all over the place until I couldn’t ignore them anymore. I reluctantly gave in and began to find my way through a discernment for which I didn’t quite feel prepared.

For the last seven years, Maryknoll Sr. Julia Shideler has been on mission in East Timor, teaching everything from English and Portuguese to theology, biology and geology. The tiny nation is one of the poorest in Asia (and Shideler’s district, Aileu, is one of the country’s least developed), but from her classroom, Shideler has a plan to break the cycle of poverty one student at a time. Shideler spoke to Global Sisters Report from the Maryknoll Sisters Center in New York, where she recently made her final vows and is now wrapping up a year-long period of reflection before heading back to East Timor next month.

See For Yourself - We’ve no doubt heard the old joke, “What’s the opposite of PROgress? CONgress!” While there may be a wily truth to that, the difference between pro- and con- spans globes. If I’m actually for something, just think what distance it would take to support the opposite view and be against something. Those opposites make for interesting conversations.