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.
AS048 Ask Sister – images of God, dreaming about Jesus, discerning priesthood and/or romance, Blessed Mary v. Mary Magdalen, serving God in blue jeans
AS048 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on November 12, 2010. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: images of God, dreaming about Jesus, priesthood and/or romance, Blessed Mary v. Mary Magdalen, becoming Catholic, serving God in blue jeans!
Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Subscribe to A Nun’s Life Podcasts:
Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!
This is a special Ask Sister IHM Edition which was broadcast from the IHM Motherhouse in Monroe, Michigan, before a live studio audience of IHM Sisters. In addition hosts Sisters Maxine and Julie were joined by their IHM Sisters Theresa Koernke and Angela Hibbard, both trained in theology and in liturgy.
Here are some of the questions we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:
- Is it okay to be more of a “Mary Magdalen” than a “Blessed Mary,” that is, to be not quite so perfect, to serve God and still wear our blue jeans?
- What is your image of God? Can we have more than one image of God? Do our images of God ever change?
- Can you discern a calling to become a priest and have a romantic relationship simultaneously?
- What does it mean if you have dreams about Jesus? And what do nuns dream about?
- I’m on the fence about becoming Catholic. What should I do? What questions would be helpful for me to ask to help me figure out what to do?
Do you have a question for us? Call our toll-free Voicemail Hotline at 888-703-4732 and leave a voicemail for us with your question. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also send us an email or comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.
Previous post: A Reflection on Home — IHM Home
Next post: Soul Size
Get your nun schwag! -- We've got cool nunly items including this awesome mug at 
{ 6 comments }
LOL!–”What do nuns dream about?” I guess it depends on what we ate before going to bed the night before!
Sister Julie, Sister Maxine and all dear friends at NLM,
I love inspirational, thought provoking questions that cause us to take a moment or more to reflect. At least one seems to surface every week at NLM. I offer my contribution to the Image of God question.
While I was growing up, the Image of God was an elderly man with a beard and a smile or Jesus on the Crucifix or a picture of Jesus praying. Then, the image of the Hoy Spirit, usually in the form of a dove or the glow of fire on a candle was added.
Now … there are no limits to the images I have of God. He is present on the crucifix in Church, Chapel and Rosary beads and in the Monstrance and the beautiful solitude of Adoration. God is present in the faces of my family, friends (including new friends here at NLM and my neighbors, especially when they are celebrating or are suffering.
God is present in the glorious seasons here in PA (e.g. brilliant reds, oranges, yellows and yes, even the purples of autumn). God’s image is in the animals … deer, rabbits, dogs, cats, horses, and sheep as I walk through my neighborhood or drive through Chester County. He is the vast sky, fields and oceans, in the sun, moon and stars and in the grass, flowers, trees, leaves and snow.
God is in my calm breathing during sleep or meditation and in my intense breathing during power walks or if I am worried about someone or some situation. I see him in people, animals, and rainbows in the sky or in puddles, candle lights, in holding a new infant or hugging my father, brothers and sister. I hear him in beautiful musical voices and instruments and the excitement in the voices of children in my class when they read or share a story. I smell him in home baked food and freshly grown or cut grass and flowers, in the crisp cold air before and after a snowfall and in the soft, gentle evening breeze after a warm summer day.
I am grateful for the many images that have developed during my lifetime and look6 forward to those that will still surprise me.
See everyone at 6PM CT for “Ask Sister”.
Live well, laugh often and love much,
Kathleen
Kathleen, I so enjoyed reading your beautiful description of all the many ways that you see God in your life. Maybe that is the best answer to the image question – we can choose to see God in everything. I am curious if you find that there is any one particular image, perhaps the ones of your youth or others, that you return to in particular when you want to bring yourself back to that place of feeling in connection with God. Or do you simply feel connected all the time through all the many daily details that you described?
Leigh
Morning Leigh,
Another wonderful question. I’d say that much (not all) of the time now, I am blessed to see God in everyone and everything. It is a choice I make and pray for each day. It didn’t happen overnight. It took years of guidance, encouragement, collaboration from/with my family, friends (including my newest friends at NLM). Reading the gospels and listening to homilies, partnering with a wonderful Spiritual Director, praying for gifts of the Hoy Spirit, living through ups and downs in my life and with others have helped greatly. God was/is always there. But, I wasn’t focusing on that awareness.
If I had to choose a specific image, it would be my newest. During meditation, Jesus and I meet every morning and sit on a blanket on a lovely hill side. We enjoy the sun shine, blue skies, trees bowing gently in the warm fresh air, animals walking freely through the woods and listen to the bubbling brook.
I am joyful and peaceful. I read the gospel as if Jesus is personally telling me the story as it occurred when he was on earth. And then, I tell him about my joys and sorrows and try to listen to what Jesus wishes to share with me. Admittedly, I don’t listen as well as I should but I am getting a lil’ better.
As I just celebrated 58 years of life here on God’s beautiful earth, I appreciate all who have and continue to remind me … that along with other life experiences, there is wisdom in aging and it is a blessing.
How about yours? Do you have one that is special for you or are there many?
God bless you with much love, joy, hope and peace today and always Leigh.
Kathleen
A blanket on a hill, what a wonderful, vivid and personal image! I immediately wanted to join you there. I’m glad to hear that images evolve naturally over time, and as we get older. I’m struggling somewhat with images and opening myself to the ones that resonate for me, while at the same time knowing that an image is only that, not the real thing. The mind and heart are in a bit of a tug of war over that one. One image that seems to create a feeling of love for God within me is the Christ Pantocrator – there is something about the formal yet organic nature of this image that allows me to feel that connection to the divine, much more than more realistic portrayals of Jesus. There is a quote in Patricia Hampl’s memoir Virgin Time – in search of the contemplate life, in which someone tells her that the images can’t be analyzed or ‘smoothed out’ for modern tastes – you have to get inside them as they are. It feels a bit like that.
I wonder whether others experience that how we image God is not necessarily how we actually relate to God in practice. For me the image is a way to try to describe to myself, by analogy, what is happening in that relationship, to hold up by comparison something which cannot be captured in words with something than can.
A flicker (a woodpecker – large, speckled brown and white, with a big black heart shaped spot on its chest, and a long slender beak) has been assaulting the bird-feeder just outside my office window. When it comes down to feed it crashes into the feeder, sending it swinging wildly. The bird has trouble finding footing on something designed for much smaller birds, but eventually grasps some part of the feeder in its claws, and bends down, inserts that beak into the tiny holes meant for finches and juncos.
In the last few days I’ve decided that flicker is my current image of the Holy Spirit – the way it banged into the hanging seed tubes reminded me of what it was to turn over in the night last night and feel the almost palpable blow of awareness of God’s presence holding me. And that long, needle-like beak inserted into the tiny feeding spaces is something like that piercing pain in my heart through the night – probing, “sharper than any double-edged sword, penetrating even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow.”
But when I pray, I don’t address the bird – or the waves on the beach – or any of the other images which remind me of God. I can only say “I love you” to the personal God who has pursued me and whom I have pursued all my life. Which leaves me with some issues about pronouns, etc. since whatever else God is to me, (s)he is not an “IT” – God is a WHO/THOU – and that leaves me with the unsatisfactory choice of gendered pronouns.