Prayer of St. Francis

One of my favorite musical artists is Sarah McLachlan. I was YouTubeing tonight just looking to see what kinds of YouTubes are on about Franciscans and nuns, etc (it's Vocation research) and I came across this version of Prayer of St. Francis sung by my FAVORITE...

It's really a great version of this song...the images are ok, but the music is phenomenal! I hope I can find the mp3 to download on my Zune. I'm a super Sarah fan; I can't believe I didn't know she did this song! Does anyone know which album it's hidden on...I thought I had all of them!

Hope all are well...10 more days of school! Yipeeeeee! Enjoy the music!

My Faith

Hi Blogg-ets...

My second go at journalism (ha ha ha); well writing for our Catholic newspaper The Catholic Herald was published this week.

(Click the Blog Title...to take you there)...

My favorite part is the first paragraph...ha ha....

Enjoy!

Jubilee! (And other said Frivolities)

Still in Boston...and having a marvelous time!

Jubilee! Jubilee! One of my Sisters has a brother who says that us Religious have "code words" for things...like Retreat = Vacation and Jubilee = Party! I would like to advocate that we don't have code words which replace vacation and party...just more opportunities!

Jubilee is a celebration of milestone anniversaries in Religious Life. And the Jubilarians get a whole year to celebrate! In our community the different regions have a jubee celebration (like Chicago and Alverno are two of my favorites) and then in June we have the big community Hoohah where we celebrate all of the jubilarians. And then sometimes the Jubee's will have their own hoohah at their ministry and/or home parishes.

Giving Voice is of course the group of young women Religious and our foundress (ha ha) is Kristin who is a Notre Dame de Namur. Kristin is a woman of incredible passion and vision for religious life. She inspires me! I was so happy to be able to be here in Boston with some of our other GV peeps to celebrate her 25 years (YES YOU READ THAT RIGHT FOLKS) of commitment to religious life.

Here she is right before her liturgy...can we say HAPPY?!!! YAY! KRISTIN WE LOVE YOU!!!

Saturday Lisa and I picked up some more Giving Voice folk from various airports and headed toward Lawrence, Massachusetts where Kristin is a teacher and campus minister at Notre Dame High School.

Lisa and I were responsible for coordinating the music for the event! Yay! Lisa is an extremely talented singer, guitarist, and drummer...I love singing with her. So Lisa and I practiced a bit and the others chatted until the Liturgy began!

Moose forgot to get in the car, so we had to leave her at home. Monkey was fortunately able to join us (and good thing too...we needed some extra guitar and percussion assistance!)

The liturgy was beautiful...simple and very Kristin. I have some video and pictures of the event (No too many because I was a signing most of the time). Here's the GV people...Maria (OSU), Katherine (SND), and Jeannie (you can't really see her) (OSU) next to her. YAY OUR GV PEOPLE!

Kristin gave the homily and it was really wonderful. It was about love and relationships (if you follow my blog, do you see a theme? Welcome to religious life people...love and relationships are at the core.) Here's an excerpt of her homily (Sorry it's sideways...don't know how to flip it.)



Here's Kristin renewing her vows (just tilt your head...it'll be just like you were there!):



Maria wrote beautiful intercessions and really touched on the spirit and needs of the world. They were powerful and inclusive. She invited everyone to share blessings and prayers for Kristin which were also lovely because you got a sense of the impact and spirit of Kristin and how she has entered into other's lives.

After the liturgy we shared a nice meal and some good conversation. And yes...Kristin is still smiling! Happy Jubilee Kristin!

After the clean-up we went to Kristin's house to hang out for a while. I ended up teaching them some Comedy Sportz games which became a theme for our conversation and meeting the next day. After a deeply profound conversation of hidden talents, Katherine (Last name is withheld to protect the innocent) decided to share with us one of her talents:

To say that we were impressed, just wouldn't do her justice. Fun and good camaraderie was had by all.

Moose and Monkey's Great Boston Adventure Part 1

That's me, Moose at the computer! Ok...Let's begin the adventure:

Like sands through the hour glass....nah, that doesn't fit us. Um...

In a galaxy...far, far, away...nope doesn't work either.

(Think Law and Order) In religious life there are younger religious who gather in a special unit for those under 40. They put puppets on their fingers and go about cities in the United States...these are their stories...bum bum.

(Gotta have the "bum bum"...that totally works)

After a great night's sleep, I woke up in Boston! I'm staying at my friend Moose's convent in Newton Centre (Boston area). I'm here for a little R&R, time with my Nun Friends, Elephant's Jubilee, and a meeting. What's great is I got to sleep late and take my "perfect morning."

Now, like Katy, I'm not a morning person. (C'mon...I'm her finger puppet) So the perfect morning is this...wake up, look at the clock and say "no way lady" and roll back asleep for a while. Then decide it's time to get up. Grab some coffee and take some quiet pray time...like a retreat schedule. Ease into the morning...take your time...oooooh....I love these kinds of mornings. (or early afternoons depending upon when I begin them.)

So that's exactly what I did! There's me listening to my God music and writing in my journal. It was nice because I really could take the time to think and just be; which was GOOD. Yay!

Then it was time for our adventure! We decided that we wanted to go walk the Freedom Trail it is such a wonderful walk! The weather was good too...unfortunately it wasn't sunny, but the temperature was perfect walking weather. So we hopped on the T (or the Chaaahley) and headed downtown to the Boston Common (which eas ahh behg Pahhhk--that's my Bostonian accent spelling) where we met Paul Revere (look in the far right of the picture)! Wow...we came on a special day!

From the Common Pahhk we walked to the State House and then on to the Granary Burial Ground. Lots of famous people are buried here including Paul Revere, Sam Adams, and Mother Goose (which is actually how Maria (OSU) got her "Mother Duck" puppet). Monkey and I couldn't believe how old the graves and everything was. It was really eerie and beautiful.

There's a picture of the Burial Ground, a close up with the State House in the background and here's us at the entrance to the Burial Ground (Can you find us in the picture? Look up!)

Following the Freedom Trail we went on...until we stopped at a big statue of Ben Franklin! WOW...We tried very hard to take a picture with him. There was also an interesting sculpture of a donkey and then opposite of the donkey were two feet with elephants facing the donkey; the plaque said, "Standing in opposition" Well...we weren't too sure about those feet; I think we "accidentally" covered up the elephants when we got our picture taken..oops Moose, Monkeys and Donkeys standing together!

Off to the North End because our little tummies were hungry! The North End has the Italian Village. There is this cool sign with all arrows pointing to the different regions of Italy; of course I HAD to have my picture taken with Umbria (that's where Assisi is!), being a Franciscan Moose and all. The Italian Village looks like Italy with the narrow streets and cafes and flower boxes. We said absolutely we want pizza. So we found Ernesto's which was this little bitty cute place and MY GOSH they had wonderful PIZZA! Mmmmm....After pizza, well we had to have a Gelato; I mean c'mon...we were in Italy weren't we?

After our tummy's were full, we headed on our "Red Line" (The Freedom Trail is literally a red brick and in some spots painted red line, all through the city. You know you are on the right track when you are following the red line!

Anyway...next stop was Paul Revere's house and then on to the Old North Church...you know the historic "One if by land, two if by sea" shin-dig.

The Old North Church was really beautiful, and the congregation sits in these boxes. In the time of Paul Revere, families "owned" boxes. It was crazy to see name plates with the year 1796 on them!

Across from the church there was the ST FRANCIS GARDEN! WOO HOO! I was so excited. Monkey was excited too...she's got some Francis in her. We had a thoughtful conversation with Francis about how nice the garden was. Of course we were welcome guests...a Moose and a Monkey? Francis loved animals!

We also thought it was neat that in the Francis garden were bleeding heart flowers. Monkey is a RSCJ or Religious of the Sacred Heart of Jesus; hearts are to them as um...Taus are to us? (We'll go with that analogy!) So we had our Franciscan picture and our RSCJ picture...and really what is boils down to is being on the journey together! Yay...pals for life!

Back on the red line trail for us...Phew we're getting tired! We just have to see Boston Hahbah and you can see the bridge in the background.

One more old old old burial ground stop (they are really beautiful in a strange way), and we were on the bridge over looking the Harbor (hahbah). Then we decided to turn back...look for a T station and head on home to be with her Sisters for supper. When we got back to Newton Center, we just had to have one more photo of our T station. Wow what a great adventure we had!

We got home and enjoyed a lovely meal and conversation with Monkey's Sisters and then a nice prayer. Monkey and I were beat, so we decided to watch a movie. What a great day!

Tomorrow we're off to Salem to do the Crucible/Witch History stuff. Cool...more adventures coming soon!

....Bum Bum...

REUNITED...and it feels so good!

I am proud that I used that wonderful song from the 80's as my blog title! However, I am not hosting and providing a link. :-)

Greetings from BOSTON! WOOO HOOO! It's Thursday night and I just got here. Lisa (RSCJ) and me (SSSF..duh) are just chillin' tonight. I am here in Boston for a little R and R, celebrating my good GV friend Kristin's (she's SNDdeN) jubilee, and a Giving Voice meeting.

For those of you who have been faithful One Fun Nun blog-ettes, you will remember last June I was here in Boston for the National GV conference. Thanks to Katherine Feeley (an SND), we were provided with alter-egos in the form of finger puppets. For those of you who have short-term memory loss and/or need a refresher or would like to be introduced to our alter-ego puppets please see the Giving Voice Day 1/2 post.

Here's the picture from July 2007! Moose and Monkey (Katy and Lisa) (Sheesh...I had bangs...lol)

Tomorrow Moose and Monkey are going on a Boston adventure and I'm sure Moose will want to blog all about it!

Until tomorrow...pleasant dreams! Reunited...and it feels so gooood!

PS...HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!!! :-)

MKE Article

MKE, a free weekly newspaper in Mil-town, did an article about me and it was published this week!

Amid all of the coolness there were three notably cool things about this:

1. The reporter reads my blog and that's how she heard about me.

The blog mission is WORKING! Oh yes...I have a mission for this blog (Of course I do...I'm me and I'm one of these goal-y, mission-y people.) and apparently it's successful. WOO HOO!

2. Her questions were really good and appropriate for a 20-30 something audience

Like she REALLY wanted to know about what it's like to be a Sister and how in the heck that works for someone like me. My favorite part was when she said, "My friends and I read your blog and it makes me want to join." C'mon...let's go! You know I invited her to consider the possibility! I don't know that many 20-30 somethings have come into much contact with Religious women in the grand scheme of things.

3. It's not a ME thing, it's a WE thing; I get to talk about the School Sisters and spread the news of how wonderful WE ARE.

That's what I'm most passionate about...religious life and my community. Anyone wants to sit and talk to me about that...great...I could talk all day. Why would I do this with my life? WHY WOULDN'T I? I couldn't imagine living any other way. My community? Well...yes the title of this blog is Religious Life Rocks, but underneath that is the School Sisters who really really ROCK. Giving access to people that wouldn't necessarily have come into contact with our mission and our life together is pretty neat.

Enjoy! (Click the title of this blog entry for the linkage :-) )