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But this debate was incredible! I couldn’t stop listening. The four debaters included the great great grandson of Charles Darwin, a prominent rabbi in California, a philosophy professor and author, and a college president and former policy analyst in the Reagan administration.

One of the first statements I heard was that this wasn’t a debate about the existence of God or the rationality or irrationality of faith, but about the human-made phenomenon of religion. Context is soooo important!

Here’s the link to the debate, which is on a program called Intelligence Squared.

After listening to the debate, I came away with more questions than answers regarding whether or not the world is better off without religion. But I deeply appreciate the new insights I gained on both sides of the question. Take a listen and see what you think. Would the world better off without religion?

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Join the A Nun’s Life community for prayer tonight and every weekday at 6 p.m. Central Time at aNunsLife.org/live.

The other day, Sister Julie and I were going to a meeting when we passed these two billboards. Please excuse the poor quality of the photo — it’s hard to take a good picture on a busy highway….

The first has the figure of a man standing at the edge of an ocean, his arms upraised, the sun sparkling all around. The words say: “All of the joy. None of the shame.” At the bottom is the name of a Christian ministry called Cornerstone. By itself, the billboard didn’t make much sense to us. But then we saw another billboard, just a few yards away.

It has the picture of a woman with a sexy look on her face. The words say: “All of the liquor. None of the clothes.” The big arrow on the sign points the way to the bar.

Both billboards are targeted to men, but the messages are very different! Why not choose joy and what’s life-giving! Why not respect women and the sacredness of the human body! To me, the heart of Cornerstone’s message is that respect is a two-way street: when we respect ourselves, we can respect others, and vice versa. Respect can free us and lead us to joy. Drinking too much and treating people as objects for our gratification cannot.

I was so impressed with Cornerstone’s billboard that I called the ministry center and talked with one of the pastors there. Pastor Esperanza said that the billboard was a decision of the entire congregation. She explained that it was a way for the church to have a voice in the world: “If we don’t say anything, nothing will be done.”

She also told me about another billboard intervention. In several places around Chicago, a radio station had billboards promoting its morning show. The billboards depicted two men in bed with a woman. The words said something like: “Who do you wake up to in the morning?” A member of the congregation went to executives at the station and explained that her child could not avoid seeing the signs, and she asked them to remove the billboards. The billboards came down.

Although I’m not familiar with Cornerstone’s stance on other areas of faith and life, on the topic of respect and how to take creative action, Cornerstone rocks!!

I’d love to hear stories about the creative things you’ve seen in regard to countering negative messages with positive ones. Please write your comments in the box below.

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Join Sister Maxine and Sister Julie and A Nun’s Life Community for prayer today at 6 p.m. CST (your time zone).

This past weekend, Sister Maxine and I stayed with the Benedictine Women of Madison at Holy Wisdom Monastery in Madison, Wisconsin. It was a delight to be with the sisters and with the wonderful community of oblates, retreatants, coworkers, and members of the Sunday assembly. The monastery grounds held so much beauty too — trees, trails, hills, and critters!

Benedictine Women of Madison is an ecumenical religious community in the monastic tradition of Saint Benedict. The sisters community is for single women of any Christian tradition. There are also other community at Holy Wisdom Monastery including the Sunday Worship community and the Oblate community, that is, “an intentional community of women and men who find a practical spirituality in the Rule of Benedict.”

Sisters Lynne, Mary David, and Joanne

Because this is an ecumenical community, women from any Christian tradition are welcome to become a Benedictine sister. So if you are a Christian woman who is drawn to monastic life within an ecumenical context, I invite you to get to know the Benedictine Women of Madison. You can remain as a Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, Catholic, or part of another Christian tradition and become a sister! To learn more, check out the Benedictine Women of Madison website.

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Join A Nun’s Life community for prayer today at 6 p.m. CST (your time zone).

Surely, I thought, this must be a joke as I read a news headline saying that the word “nun” has been dropped from the Oxford Junior Dictionary. But it’s no joke. Lisa Saunders, a mom in Ireland, discovered that the new edition of the dictionary had dropped a bunch of words. Upon closer examination, she discovered that a number of Christian-related words were dropped including, “abbey, altar, bishop, chapel, christen, disciple, minister, monastery, monk, nun, nunnery, parish, pew, psalm, pulpit, saint, sin, devil, and vicar” (source: Catholic News Agency).

Interestingly, some of the new words in the latest edition of the dictionary reflect cultural shifts today such as the growth of new media. The dictionary now has words such as “blog” and “MP3 player”. A clever headline in the UK, notes the shift in the dictionary: “Clergyman blasts Oxford Junior Dictionary for replacing words ‘saint’ and ‘devil’ with ‘celebrity’ and ‘vandalism’” (source: The Mail).

So how are we to communicate our faith, our very selves, to children when the words we use no longer are definable? Will kids think that if it’s not in the dictionary, it’s not a real word or that it is somehow antiquated, no longer relevant?

Sister Patty Fawkner, SGS, a “Good Sams” Sister, has written a compelling piece about the disappearance of the word “nun” from the dictionary. Although I would like to quote every word of Where has the nun gone? because it’s a good piece, I’ll just highlight one significant quote and encourage you to read the rest of the piece.

Sister Patty wonders aloud in the piece if the removal of the word “nun” and related words is trying to say “something about the diminishment, in terms of numbers and influence, of various religious congregations.” A sobering thought, indeed, but Sister Patty doesn’t leave us there. She goes on and sheds new light on the meaning of declining numbers, showing that our response as nuns need not reflect the doom and gloom that the media associates with declining numbers. She writes:

It occurred to me, then, that the very decline of religious life carries an invitation for religious to live their lives with even greater integrity. Religious life, after all, is meant to be lived on the prophetic margin of both church and society, where status – even junior dictionary status – counts for very little but where seeking God and inclusive and compassionate love are intrinsic.

And religious life makes an invaluable contribution as it witnesses to the possibility of community in a world so desperate for relationships.

Further, religious life can offer to a sex-saturated world the example of celibacy that also promotes human flourishing. I am not speaking of life-denying celibacy, but that celibacy which believes that some people love best – deeply, generously and joyously – by making Jesus Christ the very centre of their life rather than any other person or project. (Source: Sisters of the Good Samaritan website)