Since 2006, large waves of refugees fleeing from brutal regimes in Eritrea, Sudan and Ethiopia have made their way to Israel, surviving harrowing journeys with smugglers in harsh desert conditions. Altogether, there are approximately 55,000 African asylum seekers in Israel, 35,000 from Eritrea alone. Sr. Azezet Kidane of Comboni Sisters was honored for her role in exposing existence of torture camps in Sinai desert. Now, she must help her community heal.

See for Yourself - Recently I happened to be heading toward downtown Cincinnati on I-75 south. I couldn’t tell you how many hundreds of times I’ve driven on I-75, as this is one of two major expressways through the city. I-75 starts in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and goes all the way to Florida, so Cincinnati is part of the north-south traverse of this major highway. 

"What if we were willing to shift our hold on our individual truth so as to affirm the emerging truth of the whole?"

Refugee children crossing our border and U.S. citizens trying to block them, Israelis and Palestinians, the Republicans and Democrats in Congress, Russians and Ukrainians, the Shias and the Shiites, Christian and Muslim. The list goes on as I ponder the atrocities that are continuing in the name of God, of country, of truth, of self-defense. In most cases there is no capacity to listen to the other, to engage the other, and so the stalemate continues and the violence increases. Locked into separate silos there is apparently no connection, no relationship. But I know that is not who we are or how we have to be. 

On October 3, I will be in Rome to participate in an international conference sponsored by the European Forum of Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender Christian Groups. The conference is planned to take place just prior to the general session of the extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family, Oct. 5-19, because one of the major areas of discussion at the synod will be same-sex couples and the education of their children.

GSR Today - There’s a lot to care about in the world, and it’s impossible to hold all of it. Many people made fun of CNN for its near obsessive coverage of a missing Malaysian plane this summer, and while I’m not entirely sure CNN’s motivation was pure, I think there’s something to be said for tenacity in the Internet Age.

Nuns on the Bus stop Thursday in Chicago and spend weekend traveling Michigan - Since leaving Iowa and making two stops in Minnesota, the bus spent Thursday in Chicago, where Sr. Simone Campbell and others talked with business leaders. This quote from Campbell's blog on the NETWORK page offers insight about how we judge success in our country: "We came to realize that the reason the CEOs keep wanting more in salary is not because of needing more money. Rather, we realized that entrepreneurs are very competitive and money becomes the measure of success. We discussed what could be a new measure of success so that we could distribute more of the money to those who are being left out."

Dominican Srs. Barbara Chenicek and Rita Schlitz, award-winning designers of sacred space, long ago embraced the notion that art is as much about what’s deleted as it is about what’s included – and added their own twist: by becoming one with the communities who hire them, they themselves disappear. They have designed space for Bon Secours Hospital in Grosse Pointe, Mich., and also for the Ursuline community in Chatham, Ontario. But when they were asked to renovate the Dominican Chapel of the Plains in Great Bend, Kan., they really began to think about their process.

The Kingdom is certainly “already but not yet.” People like Sr. Sarah Mulligan, SC, and her passionate colleagues are working for change throughout Guatemala, but it is an uphill battle. The corrupt government, Sarah says, does little to lift up its people living in economic poverty. I asked her what the administration’s response has been to the deluge of migrants fleeing north. She told me that initially the country’s leaders considered punishing families who send their children with a few years of jail time for “irresponsible parenting.” Resistance from human rights groups led them to nix the punishment, one that would thrust already suffering families into even greater desperation.

GSR Today - After Joe Biden left, media coverage of the Nuns on the Bus” tour fell largely on the shoulders of local media outlets, as well as Global Sisters Report. But women religious have been making other news this week as well.