Wondering how God is calling you? Are you curious about how your job or set of relationships is really a vocation? Do you want some awesome discussions around faith in real-life and more? Think hanging out with Catholic sisters and a fun thoughtful, faith community is cool? Then you are in the right place! Welcome! Explore and be sure to visit with us every weekday at 6 pm CT in our chat room.
Where to begin?
I am just beginning to resurface after IHM Community Days and have no idea where to begin! I have a major backlog of email, mail, comments, laundry, phone calls, household chores, errands, etc. Yikes!
I’ll get myself together sooner or later!
In the meantime I have a few ideas about which I’d appreciate having your input as Sister Maxine and I move forward with growing A Nun’s Life. Here they are in no particular order:
- ¿Hablas espanol? We are very aware that Spanish is a major language in the United States (not to mention in other countries). We’re in the process of expanding our own ability to understand the language and are wondering if the A Nun’s Life community has ideas around this. Would it help to have a translation button or some posts written in English and Spanish? What else? Any suggestions around good resources for using Spanish on websites?
- Donations accepted. A Nun’s Life Ministry is moving toward becoming a full-time self-sustaining ministry. We are currently brainstorming ways to offer new stuff (e.g. podcasts) and to financially support the ministry. The blog of course will always be as it is — no ads, no commercials, no fees. But as we expand, we have to find ways to fund stuff. So a couple questions … would you be okay with a “Donate” button on the home page (currently it’s tucked away here)? What other ideas do you have that could help us with revenue generation so that we can continue and grow A Nun’s Life?
- New Features. As mentioned, we are working on a podcast series that is going to be awesome (once we figure out the logistics)! What else would you like to see A Nun’s Life offer? What would help you or interest you or excite you?
- Topics and Issues. What kinds of topics and issues would you like us to address? We write on a variety of things here and are always open to addressing the things on your mind and heart. Let us know!
I am deeply grateful for each one of you. It is always a delight to work on A Nun’s Life because we have the opportunity to get to know you and to engage with one another around faith and life.
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{ 23 comments }
First of all Sister let me congratulate you for these work (as I have done some times before) I think t is a very important ministry and you’ve managed to get all around the world. I have a few minutes now later I’ll bring more sugestions, but for now I wanted to speak about the first one, which touches me in particular (given the fact that I’m from Argentina) Of course it’d help if it had some articles translated, it’d be able to open its doors to a lot more people. Anyway, the worst problem comes when commenting in English, I undertand English perfectly, and if I really try I can be understood in English, but there are some delicate topics (the one this blog treats in particular) which is better to express in our mother tongue, I should give it a deeper thought… but it’d be really great to be able to comment in our own language… the problem is that you need to understand what we want to say…
In what respects to articles in spanish count with my help if you need tranlation, that is something I can do…
Ok, thats all for now, I’ll be back with more suggestions!
Thanks again for this beautiful space you give us!
Dear S. Julie,
Glad you are back, but I know the feeling of not knowing where to start. You’ll get there…
It is good to hear a Nun’s Life is growing. It is certainly needed and I am sure you did not have a crystal ball to know where things would lead.
I like the Spanish language idea. Although I am American, I grew up in Central America. I know that my deepest thoughts happen in Spanish and not in English. There are vocation seekers who speak Spanish as well and it would be good to give them a hand.
I like the other suggestions as well. I think the donation button will be important to continue to sustain the ministry.
Sr. Liza
Sr. Julie-
Adding Spanish is a great idea, and will definitely make the site more welcoming to many. Most of the automated translation services are not really appropriate or good for these circumstances. You will probably need a fluent speaker. You will also need to decide which geographical Spanish will be used. I imagine you will want to use a Latin American Spanish, but even Mexican, Puerto Rican, South American and Cuban Spanish differ. Ideally, you would like a person with experience in writing a “generic” Spanish that is most comfortably understood by most Spanish speakers on this side of the Atlantic.
The donation button can only help in raising sums for your efforts. Initially, there was a link allowing persons to make automatic periodic donations, but I understand it did not work. Being able to reinstate that and making it operable might help and allow you to anticipate a regular stream of income/donations. The PayPal service as it currently exists works for me. After the first donation, your website appears in the “address book” making subsequent donations more streamlined.
In terms of new features and topics, I think that features on other young women, from various orders and congregations, entering religious life can assist other young women website users on the discernment process. Similarly, webcasts showing the diversity among sisters and nuns in their work, practices and activities can demonstrate that there is likely to be a niche for just about every woman seeking a religious community to join.
Another publicity and fund raising idea might be to market certain items (e.g.- shirts, pins, caps, etc.) with references to your website and women religious vocations. I believe there are some web-based stores that can assist with that and utilize PayPal or similar services.
Lastly, there are some organizations that try to help women and men who are discerning their vocation. Some of these provide for educational loan payments and other financial assistance to those entering religious communities. Perhaps they would also be willing to provide some funding for A Nun’s Life. I do think that your site is the preeminent site for women considering becoming sisters/nuns.
Best of luck and prayers in all these endeavors.
Hello again,
I think the donation button is an excellent idea…
In what respectos to the topics and issues I think the way you have been working so far is great, the method of asking and answering questions is fantastic and almost everyone gets their opportunity to solve their doubts. The topics you choose are also very appropiate.
Nun day is a fantastic idea too, because we get opportunity to know what’s around.
Probably I’d add links to other nun spaces in spanish and other resources in sapnish as well and when suggesting books and that sort of things try to search for a spanish edition or, if only in English, where it can be found internationally.
I’ll have you in my preyers so that this work of love can get to many hearts.
As I said before, I offer to translate from English to Spanish, I can write in a neutral spanish undertandable for most spanish speakers… the other way round, from spanish to English (thinking of comments) I can but not in a perfect English…
Blessings in Jesus, our dearest friend,
Amparo
I am not really into the spanish speaking scene, rather into the portuguese speaking one
[although I understand spanish, but if I attempt to speak, its rather portuguese with a spanish accent 
]
But since most portuguese speakers are easily able to und1rstand spanish, I also vote for some bilingual aspects on this blog
And me as well, although I was neither raised english or portuguese/spanish speaking, but having spend quite some time in the americas, I learned how to pray in portuguese and have – as sr. Liza stated it – some of my deepest thoughts happening in portuguese.
So I would love to read some spanish from time to time
OH and talking about podcasts! This is a great idea!
I have been listening to this one for almost three years now, almost daily:
http://www.pray-as-you-go.org/index.htm
If you do not know it already, you might have a look at it. I really love to pray with this podcast.
Maybe you could do something “similar” specific to topics of the spirituality of your congregation? Maybe your foundress has some great quotes or something? With music that is sung by some of your sisters or maybe you already have a cd with “community songs” or something similar? And then maybe make a 10-15 prayer session out of it, with texts, a reflection on the text, etc. (I guess one has to look carefully about all copyright questions here, especially with music!)
Thinking of it in a broader sense, one could also ask sisters of other orders to send you written meditations and music and you make a podcast out of it –
like ” pray with the benedictines” “pray with the ihm sisters” “pray with the carmiltes” , etc.
I would be interested in Sister Mom’s. I was discouraged to consider my calling, by the calling still is there! I am single, divorced (annulment could be obtained) and have three grown children 26, 26, 22. I am 54 and would love to find a way to serve!
Hi Kim, Thanks for writing! We have two Sister Moms in our community. Also there’s another blogging nun, our friend Sister Hildegard, who is a Sister Mom! Do visit her blog, Monastic Musings. If you are interested in pursuing a call to religious life, I encourage you to act soon because you are on the later end of the age range. Check out the post Becoming a Nun after 40-ish. You will need to have an annulment in order to enter a religious community. If you chose not to pursue religious life, there are a variety of ways to serve as a lay leader and/or in association with a religious community.
Hi Sister Julie!
First, thank you for all you do to make A Nun’s Life one of the most welcoming and catholic blogs in the Catholic blogosphere. I think it’s great that you are looking to develop it into a full time ministry and would be happy to help support it.
A thought about a possible future feature…Why not let A Nun’s Life be a venue for women religious from all over to tell their stories? Having been taught by sisters when I was a child and having ministered with them as an adult, I have heard the most amazing (and many times, very funny) stories about their lives and work. I particularly have been inspired by the stories of the many sacrifices made by these women of faith and have laughed sometimes to tears when hearing about their lives on mission or in formation. Why not let sisters tell these stories to the world or at least to the blogosphere? It could be done in writing or as a video, maybe interviewing the sister about her life. I think that, since so much good has been done by these women, the world should hear their stories.
Best wishes and thanks again for all the good you do through A Nun’s Life.
Hi Sister Julie,
Welcome back to your online community after a week devoted to your IHM community. The absence of new postings on your blog in the past week has given me a taste of what cyberspace would be like for me if you weren’t here, so in my opinion there couldn’t be a better time for us to share our ideas for growing A Nun’s Life.
As a Quaker in Britain I’ve been following A Nun’s Life for several months now, and your site has become the most precious sacred space on my computer. I looked at many nuns’ and monks’ blogs before choosing yours as my source of daily inspiration on the web, and one of the reasons why I chose A Nun’s Life was because your site is so beautifully written and designed. You have a real talent for this ministry and the opportunities for you to grow your online community, given reliable sources of revenue generation to make your site self-sustaining, seem to me to be very exciting indeed.
It follows that those of us who treasure your online community – and you told us in April that your blog was attracting 1500 visitors a day – have an important role to play now in encouraging and supporting this extraordinarily valuable sacred space. Here in Britain, for instance, I’ve seen no other religious blog which compares with yours, and I’m certain that A Nun’s Life would quickly attract a much wider audience if the site was better publicised. I’d be happy to discuss practical ideas for this with you when the time is right.
Certainly it must be right for you to give more prominence on your site to the need for donations. Many of your readers may need to be reminded that yours is a personal blog, not sponsored by or connected to the religious order to which you belong. It might help, too, for you to spell out clearly what more you could achieve with better funding, perhaps by outlining the likely cost of implementing some of your ideas for the future. We’re more likely to respond with appropriate donations if we know what our money could buy.
Besides giving more prominence to the Donate button, you might want to look at ways in which some of us could become regular donors – perhaps through a scheme for Friends, Sponsors or Supporters of A Nun’s Life. Inevitably such a scheme would require some administration, but the benefits of an assured regular income stream could be considerable. And perhaps the task of administering such a scheme wouldn’t necessarily have to fall on your own shoulders, if a member of your online community was prepared to help under your direction.
Personally I’m less inclined to suggest improvements and new features for A Nun’s Life because I feel that the site is exceptional already, and because I’m certain that you’ll have several great ideas of your own up your sleeve. However, as a journalist I would caution against transforming your site into a place where other religious share their stories, because the hallmarks of your site are your personality, your approach, and your way with words.
I’m off on holiday now for a fortnight and I’ll be keenly looking forward to discovering the progress of this thread when I return. In the meantime I keep you in my prayers as you seek to discern new ways forward for this ministry, which seems to me to have abundant possibilities.
I suggest you do not use translation programs online. We have all struggled through those instruction booklets and seen what happens when Chinese is fed through one of these (my most recent experience was putting together a computer table). Why not invite nuns and discerners who speak Spanish to be guest contributors and write about their own unique experiences.
Hi to all,
A Nun’s Life should be a refuge for people. The world is in a spiritual famine. Everywhere I go, I see a hardness in people including my best friend from college whom used to be a very strong Christian. Values, morals, purity, and innocence are practically gone these days. A Nun’s Life should spark a revival in our current stage of our US history. Christians are forced into silence because of their beliefs and mocked because of their values. I see A Nun’s Life spear-heading a revival. How do you do this? I believe a Nun’s Life should get involved with re-programming people by taking hold of television, newspapers, magazines, and all types of media to create a new family friendly Hollywood. Perhaps down the line A Nun’s Life could flood the media world with messages of true hope, peace, and love. I would like to see A Nun’s Life address the issue of sexuality aggressively with what the Bible says about it. And reach young children and adolescents that it is OK to stay celebant. Give the message that you can have a very happy fulfilled life without a relationship and the sexuality that goes with it, when you are fully, whole, and complete with God. We are so backwards and the message needs to be that God must come first. Until then we as a nation we continue to the abyss. A Nun’s Life should convey the message of Hope and be used by God for a true revival. Those are my thoughts and concerns with the way the world is going and how a Nun’s Life can help…
Carol
The Sisters of the Holy Family use a donation system by Charitable Habits, Inc. You can do monthly donations, donate now button and other stuff with them. it’s secure and very clear and easy to use. I found them at the National Catholic Development Conference last year. If you decide to do a donation through the site button or ask for voluntary subscriptions… i highly recommend them. They work with many Catholic institutions and orders.
As for Spanish version, I’d get someone who is a native speaker and have them start a similar Blog… and then mirror (in translation) your posts, and also you mirror (in English) their posts in English. That way you each get he benefit of double as many posts, and widening your audience.
Thanks for your site. It’s amazing!
peace,
Linda
Thanks, Linda. Those are great suggestions. Will look into Charitable Habits. Still pondering the possibilities with Spanish. I like the idea of a mirror site that goes both ways.
Carol,
I think you’re formulating a revolution too great for a blog run by a Catholic sister.
Sr. Julie (imagine me standing to address you the way I used to address the sisters in grammar school),
I think the topics covered currently are exactly the kind you should be covering. Read the responces; everyone likes what you’re doing. Sure, add some Spanish. A donate button is a good idea, too. If you need an assistant, let me know. I’m out of work; and I have a B.A. in religious studies.
Julie, welcome back, and you’ll be in my prayers as you discern where to go next. Don’t take on too much; let the spirit lead you. My personal preference would be for you not to sell “stuff” with a logo or whatever related to the site, as I think we are all trying to live more simply and I’m not sure how that would “fit” with the IHM commitment to sustainability….
If you do expand, you might want to think about setting up an advisory council or board which can support you and serve as a sounding board as your ministry and policies evolve.
Regardless, this is evolving into a wonderful site and a unique ministry–hooray!
well, sister, you asked! lol.
Hi Jack,
Nothing is impossible for God. In our own strength it is impossible, though…
Carol
I have a comment regarding topics. My favorite posts are the ones about what it is like to be a nun and the humorous ones such as the photo caption contest and you may be a nun if… I would love to see more of these types of posts.
Sister Julie,
I’m sixteen & an incoming junior in high school facing so many oppurtunities in regards to relationships & careers – boys & time as well as mind consuming schedules… I’m becoming an ambitious person. I want to do and excell in alot of things: acting, music, drawing, writing, speaking… I want to do sooooooo much… Never did I once think two weeks before now that I would actually take up, pray, and discern about the “seemingly” crazy idea to be a nun. I’m still doing so, and I think it’s going to take awhile (because commitment has a strong meaning for me)…
I’ve been facing alot of inner turmoil & asking alot of questions… And to just let my feelings about this site known to you: THANKYOUTHANKYOU! ‘Cause I came across this site about two hours ago after such a roller coaster weekend with my emotions & just things going on here & there… After just listening to ” A Higher Me ” by Youtube’s Stacie & Robbie as well as reflecting on ” I Promise ” by Jaci Velasquez… And the things I learned throughout my weekend…
This allowed a sigh to come out of this worked up little person [:
I’ll pray for you & your excellent way of spreading God’s Love. Thank God for his blessings, including the blessing of your guidance. While becoming a nun still is an if-fy for me; you, your Godgiven talent, and your influences from your sisterhood has made it a bit clearer for me…
Whatever is in store for the future : I place in God’s hands.
You’ve probably been told this before, but
Thank you for letting God move you & starting this up [:
I agree with Therese — my primary reason for visiting A Nun’s Life is, well, to find out about a nun’s life!
I do like ventures out of the specific topic of “we do this, this, and this as nuns” — of course, because God permeates all lifestyles and should be focused on! But I hope that the blog stays very focused on describing and promoting religious life. Having “Nunday” helps to see the diversity of religious life, so I’d definitely keep that going.
As for the Spanish language idea, I think it’s brilliant (I have been learning the language and I think it’s the most beautiful in the world — so much easier to pray in, for me). Perhaps if you have a sister that speaks Spanish in your congregation, A Nun’s Life could have a “sister website” that is written in Spanish. Not necessarily a translation of what is on this website, because I think it would be important to have topics and features that are particularly helpful to the Spanish-speaking community.
Just my input. Thank you, Sr. Julie, for all that you do. It makes more of a difference than you know!
Keziah
Hey, Julie, good to see a new posting. I am glad there is a favorable response so far to an expansion of language, especially Spanish. I would take up the generous offer from some of your Spanish speaking readers to help in ‘rendering’ some of your comments into their native language. Go for it!
Hello again, Sister Julie. I have noticed there are a lot of young discerning women on this blog and the Vocation Forum, and while I think the interaction between generations is beautiful and beneficial on both sides, perhaps you may want to consider a focus on youth as one of many possibilities for you to explore. Just a suggestion, but I thought I’d bring attention to that because there are very few young discerning women who find a discerning community easily…and I think that A Nun’s Life could be a great ministry for them.
Again, just a suggestion! I think you do an excellent job with this already, but I felt obliged to mention it.
Keziah