September and October have been a wirlwind of activity for me. Let’s see … I’ve traveled to Iowa, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. I’ve seen the Fall colors change in varying degrees in all of these states. I’ve prayed, played, presented, listened, worked, prayed some more, hiked, explored, laughed, and communed with God, with others, and with the great outdoors. It’s been a trip, literally and figuratively, and hopefully in a couple weeks things will settle down. So I’ve been a bit remiss in responding to emails (hang on — if you’ve written to me, I’ll be in touch soon!) and writing about various happenings.

One such happening was my delightful visit with Catholic Mom extraordinaire, Lisa Hendey. Lisa is the woman behind the popular website CatholicMom.com as well as the blog Catholic Mom Moments and Catholic Moments Podcast. Lisa is doing a tremendously good work for Motherhood and for spreading the Good News online. Lisa has an intelligent and compassionate Catholic presence online.

I first met Lisa online in one or another social network that we both were on. While plurking one day, I saw that Lisa was going to be visiting Chicago (she lives in Fresno … probably a lot warmer there right now than here in the Windy City). I invited her to visit and she accepted! Lisa came to Loyola Press where we chatted, toured the place, had lunch and did a podcast.  It was pretty awesome. Having had a few weeks to reflect back on our visit, what remains with me is a sense of spiritual companionship — being with someone where there is a meeting of spirits. Lisa’s active engagement in online ministry and use of new media is a blessing to me personally as well because it’s helpful to have ministerial colleagues in this vast World Wide Web. Online ministry is like a new mission land, a frontier to be explored and to be present on and to reflect the light of Christ. Plus, creating and sustaining an online ministry on a shoe-string (read: no) budget, finding time amidst other responsibilities, dealing with wonky networks and technical issues, etc. — all these can be a huge challenge for those of us in the digital missions. I’m glad to have Lisa as a friend in these adventures!

I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of Lisa online and hopefully for an occasional visit here at A Nun’s Life.

To catch a bit of Lisa’s and my time together, listen to Lisa’s Catholic Moments podcast for a conversation between the two of us.