Much can be said (and written) about seeking God’s blessings and seeking God’s ways. Countless questions about God and directed to God have been uttered — what is the meaning in life, my life? how can I give my life to God? what is God like? where is God? does God hear me, notice me?

Sometimes, when pursuing one of these Big Questions, we stumble upon blessings that we did not intentionally seek. For example, way back when, I spent time discerning how God was calling me to use my gifts in the world as a Catholic sister. I was happily committed in my life as a sister but was still trying to find my place in the world in regards to form or context of ministry. Through prayer, conversations with my sisters, retreat, and simply trying new things, I began moving toward a kind of “answer” to what I was seeking. In the midst of all that discernment, that “figuring out” where God was leading me, there were some unexpected blessings.

Like blogging.

I started a simple little blog more as a hobby and to learn more about Internet technologies. I had no expectations for the blog other than it would help me learn a few tricks. I certainly did not expect that I would be working full-time with the A Nun’s Life website and community some 3+ years later! The blog was one of those blessings I stumbled upon while I was trying to pursue this other question of what work I wanted to commit myself to as an IHM Sister. It seemed irrelevant at the time, a mere distraction, yet it was and continues to be a great blessing that has taken me, and my original question, to a new place.

What “blessing stumbled upon” have you had in life? In what ways is God calling you to not necessarily answer your original question but simply to live out of the new place in which you find yourself?

Footnote: Thoughts today inspired by Teresa of Avila (p. 62) and my nun Sister Maryfran Barber, IHM.

* * *

Join Sister Maxine, the A Nun’s Life community, and me for Praying with the Sisters podcast at 6 p.m. Central Time tonight (your time zone).

Father James Martin, SJ, has written a fine response to Paul Rudnick’s article “Fun with Nuns” in The New Yorker (July 20, 2009 issue). Rudnick’s article covers his efforts to get a screenplay (that would eventually end up as “Sister Act”) produced. But his attitude toward and descriptions of nuns is more than “slightly repellent” as Father Martin writes, it’s disparaging and insulting. It illustrates in bold relief negative stereotypes of Catholic nuns and sisters.

Pondering a possible screenplay using nuns, Rudnick muses that they can be “dictatorial, sexually repressed and scary.”  A grumpy elderly nun at a convent gift store looks like a “bat” or a “long fossilized chimp.”  “’I hate this!’ the chimp yipped,” he writes about the elderly woman who has taken vows of “silence, poverty and chastity” (fact checkers–you missed a vow: obedience) and has led what even she describes a “hard life.”  Rudnick admits that the prioress of Regina Laudis, which he visits to do a full two days’ research, is “kind and helpful,” but most of the article depicts the nuns—scratch that, all nuns–as at best cartoonish, at worst absurd.  “’Nuns,’ I declared,” writes Rudnick about his efforts to cajole studio execs into considering them attractive, “I’d do ‘em!”  (Later the same execs wonder which nuns in the upcoming movie are “f—able.”)

The nuns referred to are the sisters of the Regina Laudis monastery (read the A Nun’s Life post about Mother Delores Hart From Hollywood to Benedictine Monastery).

Do read Paul Rudnick’s piece Fun with Nuns (the link is to an abstract of the article — need to register for full article) and James Martin’s response The New Yorker Has Its “Fun with Nuns”.

Kudos to Sister Mary Alternative (an Episcopalian woman considering religious life) for starting this post: “You may be a nun if …” Here are some of her responses that I love!

You may be a nun if …

• you see nuns everywhere you go
• you see nuns so often that now even your friends are seeing them in airports and stuff
• you have the book of common prayer online version saved to your favorites on the blackberry

Here’s a few more from personal experience:

• have vocation/nun material hidden where no one can find it
• you want nothing to do with the idea of being a nun, but yet you find it strangely compelling too
• you know what it’s like to fall in love with a person or a lifework yet it feels like all the pieces aren’t quite together yet … something is missing
• you regularly engage in “nun surveillance“

How would you finish this sentence? “You may be a nun if … “

Blogging Nun Updates

Sister Macrina Walker, OCSO, a Cistercian monastic, is the author of the blog A Vow of Conversation. Sister Macrina blogs and reflects on her current theological reading as well as other topics on her “pilgrimage to the sources of Christian truth”.

Katholieke Universiteit Leuven is a blog by Sister Amy Hereford, CSJ, a Sister of Saint Joseph. Sister Amy is in a degree program in Canon Law at the Catholic Univerisity of Leuven.

Sister Colleen Clair, FMA, a Salesian sister, write the blog Happynun Thinks Aloud … a Salesian Sister’s Take on Stuff. Sister Colleen has some great photos. Be sure to check out her Flickr links.

You can find these blogs listed now on Blogs by Catholic Nuns.

A Nun’s Life Updates

A Nun’s Life launched a new page called How to Become a Catholic Nun. So many folks have asked me questions around this that I thought I’d pull together a page just for you! I’ll be updating the last part on formation soon.

The Vocation Forum is doing well. Vocation Forum is a place where you can explore vocations to religious life. This forum is for those who wonder if religious life is for them and for those who are actively discerning religious life. Check it out and meet others who are discerning their vocation.

Requests

If you write or know of a blog by a Catholic nun (or woman in discernment) please let me know. I like to keep my Blogs by Catholic Nuns up-to-date so you can easily find other blogging nuns. Only requirements are that the blog be updated regularly and that the blog not be entirely anonymous.

Send in your Nun Photos!! I continue to host “Nunday” on Mondays here at A Nun’s Life. We need more submissions from you! Read Nun Photos – Got em? Send em! for details. Click to see previous Nundays.

Greetings! Today I invite you to visit the Young Women and Catholicism blog where I offer an occasional reflection or two. The subject of my most recent post there is Waiting for Advent. Please stop by and offer your reflection on how you are preparing for Advent.

Blessings!

As a blogger and social media explorer, I inhabit the virtual world of the Internet on a daily basis. In a sense it’s really not virtual because real relationships and connections are made. But the people I meet online are usually known only by an avatar, a name, a few words of comment, and perhaps a blog of their own. Real people, but filtered through digital media — as am I.

So it is always a good, though unsettling experience, to connect with these same folks without the filter of digital media. This happened to me several times this week …

1. the host of a radio show read my comments, emailed me, then called me to see if I’d chat about the Miss Sister 2008 beauty pageant
2. an actor playing the role of a nun contacted me so that she could portray the nun as authentically as possible
3. a blogger whom I respect was at my place of ministry (When I met Julie D. of Happy Catholic that M&M commercial flashed through my mind where the M&Ms run into Santa and they say, “He DOES exist!”)

It takes a little getting used to because as with any filtered encounter (a picture, a website, a comment) one creates an image of the person in one’s mind — perfectly normal. But then when you learn more about the person, have an actually encounter with the flesh-and-blood person, it changes everything. Even a brief encounter with a real, live person can be so much more powerful than the virtual persons we are on the Internet. It gives me pause to think about how much our persons, our very presence communicates about who we are. It’s really quite cool and quite beautiful.

Hi All! I’m in the process of designing a new look for my blog. I’d like something that has a cleaner design and is both aesthetically pleasing and highly functional. I’m working with a professionally-designed theme which I hope to have live within a couple of weeks.

Since I’m in the process of tinkering with the blog, I’d like to know from you what you’d like to see in terms of features on the blog — not so much about the content (what I write) but how the blog works and the features or widgets that it has, the functionality.

If you’re not sure what I mean, check out other blogs — do you see something there that you’d like on A Nun’s Life — e.g.,

• a list of the most popular posts
• a seach-this-blog field
• more resources on vocations, religious communities, other bloggers, etc.
• a place to enter your email so you get an email when I write a new post
• a list of the most recent posts
• etc.

Anything else that you think,

“Gosh it would be so great if Sister Julie had ______ on her blog.”

or

“I would absolutely love to see ______ on A Nun’s Life.”

Please write them below in the comments section. Look forward to reading your ideas!

I am delighted to announce that one of our own blogging nuns, Sister Susan Rose Francois, CSJP, will be professing first vows in October. Sister Susan is currently a 2nd Year Novice with the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Peace and is the author of the popular blog Musings of a Discerning Woman. Sister Susan was one of the first people who linked to my blog, helping me to get started. She’s also one of the nuns behind the web ring (a network of websites) SisterBloggers.

I am very happy for Susan and think it’s way important to celebrate these moments — both for Susan and for religious life! Being a nun is a fabulous way of life and everytime a person commits to the life, it reaffirms my own life choice and my love of God and serving others. I think it is also an inspiration to people to know that religious life is alive and well and continues to be a viable way to live joyfully and radically, to be fully human, to serve God and others.

Be sure to visit Sister Susan’s blog — recently she wrote a great post about an article in America magazine– Religious Life in the Age of Facebook. I highly recommend you read the article and Susan’s post, especially if you are a religious and/or vocation director. (The America article is in the July 7, 2008 edition, available online only to subscribers.)

Blessings to you, Sister Susan, and upon the Sisters and mission of your community.

You may have noticed that things around the blog have changed a bit. I’ve made the leap of faith to hosting my own blog using WordPress.org open source software. Basically it means I have more control over my blog all the way down to the coding. My blog has all the same posts, comments, and content that was on my previous blog. Also, the web address is exactly the same as the old. And, if you have links to particular posts or pages, those are all in tact. What is different is the look and feel as well as a lot of “behind the scenes” things that help me do a better job of blogging and creating and responding to your ideas, questions, thoughts, etc.

For you the reader, the transition should be seamless … but if you notice any oddities, I’d be glad to know and figure out how to fix them. So here’s a quick look at the old and the new:

OLD

• my blog with “old” format
• can still be seen at http://nuns2day.wordpress.com
• won’t be updated

NEW

• my blog with “new” format
• the current live site at http://anunslife.org
• will be updated as usual

I still have a lot of tinkering to do, especially with the look of the new format. But for now, it has everything and over time it will continue to evolve. Any suggestions or feedback along the way is always helpful.

I am pleased to see that the Church is encouraging religious sisters and brothers to blog. Of course, many of us have been blogging for a while (see my list of Blogs by Catholic Nuns and Catholic Blogs’ list of Blogs by Religious).

Cardinal Urges Religious to Get Blogging

Says Internet Youth Forums Need Real Christian Message

ROME, OCT. 28, 2007 (Zenit.org) – Benedict XVI’s vicar for the Diocese of Rome expressed his hopes that religious men and women increase their use of information technology, and thus take advantage of what he called a new form of apostolate.

Cardinal Camillo Ruini spoke to the religious at the Pontifical Urbanian University during the diocesan gathering of the Union of Major Superiors of Italy, which represents 1,287 communities and 22,000 religious in Rome.

According to the Roman diocesan weekly RomaSette, Cardinal Ruini said: “A priest from Novara told me that the theme of ‘Jesus’ is very much discussed by youth in blogs. The focus, though, comes from destructive books that are widespread today, and not from Benedict XVI’s book ‘Jesus of Nazareth.’

“What will the idea of Christ be in 10 years if these ideas triumph?”

The true Jesus

The 76-year-old prelate admitted, “I don’t understand the Internet, but especially young religious ought to enter blogs and correct the opinions of the youth, showing them the true Jesus.”

“The teaching emergency is central in Benedict XVI’s concerns,” the cardinal said. “For him, education in the faith coincides with service to society, because to form someone in the faith means to form the human person.

“Simply giving motivations for living defeats nihilism and gives value to the human person, a value that is based on Christ himself, the fact that God became a man.”

The cardinal asserted that an educator’s testimony and content can matter more than pedagogical techniques.

He called for catechists to be creative in finding occasions for promoting Benedict XVI’s book, saying it shows the solidity of faith in the historical Jesus of the Gospels, and bases the identity of the Christian in a personal encounter with Jesus Christ.

Cardinal Ruini said that in Catholic schools, “the religious can witness to Christ in all their lessons, in the sciences, in history and even in Italian literature, in an inseparable union of faith and culture. Your creativity ought to find new techniques for the vocational challenge, which ought to develop in step with society.”

A while back I did an email interview for a book called Clear Blogging by Bob Walsh. It was just published this month. Bob has a blog at http://www.clearblogging.com/ with the full interview in his post “Spreading the Word, Online” (February 7, 2007) and details about his book. Check out Bob’s blog and learn more about this book. I think it is very timely and am looking forward to reading it.

As you may have noticed, I’ve been using a new “skin” for my blog. So far so good. I’m also trying to make this blog a bit more easy to navigate and to make resources on religious life more accessible.

I’ve added a page called “Blogs by Catholic Nuns” … it’s an annotated list of blogs that I’m aware of. Check out what other sisters are doing. If I’ve missed a blog or you see something that needs to be changed, please let me know.

A while back I wrote a page called “Nun or Sister?” which addresses the difference between the two terms and how they are often used interchangeably.

The sidebar of the blog is ever changing. I added “Recent Comments” because often people comment on past posts and it is not always easy to know where new comments are in the vast corpus of posts and comments. I also added “Decoding Formation” which is a little “series” I started a few months ago. Eventually I have to sort through “Categories” which are not as easy to define as one might think and have them more accurately reflect the content of posts.

What else would you like to see? Are there topics, resources, widgets, etc. that you would like to see addressed or used on this blog? I would be most grateful for your feedback. Sister Julie

My colleague Jim just announced from across the hallway that my little blog had made the UK newspaper The Sunday Times. HA! And not just me … a few other blogging sisters were mentioned. I’ve added links to their blogs below. Here’s the article:

The Sunday Times (November 26, 2006 )

Confessional blogs of the internet nuns

SOME days she goes to classes on chastity and obedience. Other days are reserved for prayer and contemplation. Yet life is not all about spiritual devotion for one of the younger members of an intriguing new religious order — nuns who have taken to the internet to describe their convent lives, writes Tony Allen-Mills.

“Yesterday three of us went and played mini-golf. We had a blast,” writes Sarah, a 26-year-old Benedictine novice whose weblog, The Ear of Your Heart, discusses everything from the teachings of Jesus to cooking tofu stir-fry.

They have become known as the “sister bloggers”, a network of nuns around the world whose online diaries are providing insights into previously closeted lives.

With disarming enthusiasm and intriguing frankness, dozens of nuns of all ages are contributing to a revival of American interest in life behind convent walls.

“I’m wildly enthusiastic about our mission of putting communications technology at the service of the gospel,” declared Sister Anne, a Catholic nun in Chicago.

Sister Julie Vieira, from Monroe, Michigan, wrote in her blog, A Nun’s Life: “More and more religious communities are getting ‘wired’ . . .. to spread the Good News and to tell people about who they are and what they stand for.”

While some of the blogs are devoted to theology, many are spiced with debate about convent life, from wearing habits to watching Hollywood films.

Many of the bloggers turned to convent life after marriage or other careers. Sister Claire Joy, a 60-year-old grandmother from New York, became a nun once her children had grown up. “My first year I asked things like, what was I thinking? When am I going to get bored with all this praying? How can I ever live with these neurotic women?” she wrote. Four years later she is still a nun.

Few appear to be troubled by their vows of celibacy, although one Filipino nun, calling herself Shireyu-san, confesses in her blog that she is constantly “tempted by the wants of the world . . . I know I must overcome the weakness of the flesh”.

The renewed interest in convents follows four decades of sharp decline in the number of American nuns from almost 180,000 in 1965 to about 68,000 today.

The arrival of a youthful new breed of believers is reflected in many of the blogs. Sister Steph, who describes herself as a “nun-in-training”, says her favourite film is the romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally, best known for a scene in which the actress Meg Ryan fakes an orgasm.