A Sister of St. Joseph's Summer musings

When a few of my friends reminded me that I haven’t posted on this blog for a while, I realized that I seem to have taken an unscheduled “blog-cation.” The past couple of weeks have been spent at my annual week-long directed retreat, going to funerals and weddings, and a variety of “this and that.” [this is a title that a sister who works with me often gives when she sends an email that contains a variety of topics. ]

Retreat, as usual, was wonderful. I was a bit nervous when anticipating retreat because it is the first time I’ve gone to the Genesis Spiritual Life Center in Westfield, MA. For over 20 years I’ve made retreat at Mercy Center in Madison, CT but they are renovating the main building and can only offer accommodations to a small number of overnight retreatants. I’ve included a few pictures of Westfield throughout this post.

About “this and that:”

Our Associate Director is designing a new booklet for the Associate mentoring process. Our Assistant Director of Communication is doing the design work on the booklet and I’m helping with the content and proofreading. The Associates with the Sisters of St. Joseph are women and men called to share their faith journeys with one another and with the Sisters of St. Joseph. We have over 100 Associates in Boston and New Mexico. You can learn more at on our website.

There are a number of other projects percolating in our office. Summer seems to be a good time to turn attention to these ventures. Both our Assistant Director of Communication and I have been out and about photographing various summer happenings and interviewing sisters and associates for upcoming publications.

I’m a member of our Initial Formation Team. One of our sisters is professing Final Vows in a few weeks. Today she stopped by the office with a few questions about her plans for the vow celebration. Our Boston CSJ vocation page gives some information about the process that leads up to professing Final Vows.

I’ve been helping a couple of people figure out how to work an online program called “doodle easy scheduler” that helps groups plan meetings. I'm not trying to advertise "Doodle" but, if you've ever spent days with emails going back and forth to schedule a meeting or a conference call, it's worth checking out.

I’m also trying to become more skilled with Facebook. This is something I said I'd NEVER do. But on two occasions this past summer, I became aware of it’s potential to make connections with friends and relatives. The first was a July 4th party with a group of people from a parish I was part of for over 20 years. The archdiocese closed the parish and I’ve lost touch with a lot of the people there. The second was a memorial service for my aunt and uncle where I realized that many of my 30-something cousins are sharing pictures of their kids on Facebook and I’m missing the action. These cousins live all over the country and some in Europe so it’s a good way to keep in touch.

For many years Fr. Austin Fleming was part of the parish I mentioned above. He found me through Facebook, linked my blog to his and asked me to link his blog to mine...which I've just done. My hope is that this one good use of technology as a means of spreading the word about the Church and religious life today.