You are invited to view or read the talks given at the Spirituality Forum in June 2008. Click below for more information.

A photo tapestry by Lolín Menéndez:

In Congo, green is all around -
a land truly green, and abundant
in life, lots of new life...

Carli Carolei loves to milk cows. She spends two afternoons a week, after school, in the barn prepping a herd of 26 cows, moving the milking machine around, collecting and piping the milk to a stainless steel holding tank. She’s a wisp of a girl, barely a teenager, flitting among the restless animals as they lap up their evening meal. Carli helps to turn grass into cheese at Sprout Creek Farm.

In October Living Wages volunteers Tom Dodd, Ed Prendergast, and Jerry Hoskins along with Bob Crittenden, Betsy Hartson, RSCJ, Alumna of St. Charles Susie Bleyaert from Petoskey Michigan, and Kit Collins, RSCJ traveled to New Orleans to help the city in a small way.

During the week of July 23-28, 2006 14 Network students and 17 “Green Teens” from the cities of Poughkeepsie and Beacon, NY joined together for a week long experience of learning the skills of carpentry and masonry.  

I have a friend who collects heart-shaped stones. So one day while traveling in Rwanda, I gathered several for her. We had stopped to admire a magnificent view, one of the many that each bend in the road unfolds in this country of “the thousand hills.” This time, though, my mind was on another stone, a huge one, in the heart of the government of Rwanda — the “refoulement.” or forced repatriation, of the Congolese refugees in the country.

Where does everything begin? Think of something you walk on or at least something that supports what you walk on everyday. It's underneath every roadway, sidewalk, racetrack and parking lot, every chem-lawn, swimming pool, subway, and stadium. BIG HINT: it's underneath grass. Getting it? DIRT! Here at Sprout Creek Farm we call it soil.

When Sister Mary Pat White and Sacred Heart Associate Kristi Laughlin left California in mid-June for a post-9/11 journey to Afghanistan, they wanted to bring to the people of that country a message of reconciliation, peace and hope. "What I found was a people who had incorporated reconciliation into the very fiber of their hope for a healed, safe and prosperous Afghanistan,” Sister White said in an interview after her return. “I met a people working peacefully with a courage that outstrips anything I could ever have conceived of."

Sister Anne Montgomery’s quest for nonviolent solutions to the world’s problems has led to her "ministry of presence" in the West Bank. It was April 23, 2002. Sr. Anne Montgomery RSCJ was hunkered down with other Christian Peacemakers in an apartment in Bethlehem during the standoff at the Church of the Nativity, where some 200 armed Palestinians had taken refuge against advancing Israeli troops.

In the early 1970’s, the Society of the Sacred Heart sold its large Motherhouse in Rome, in favor of moving to smaller and simpler quarters. Excess funds from the sale of the property were designated for the most poor and marginalized people in countries where we serve. The commitment to share in this way became known as “The Solidarity Fund”, and continues as such to this day.

As archivist for the Society’s U.S. Province, Sister Margaret Phelan is used to dealing with little-known information. She’s also developed a high degree of patience. Working with more than 1300 boxes of material in the Society’s archives in St. Louis – all of it stored and catalogued with care – has given her an intimate knowledge of the Society’s history, its members and their work.

Frannie Glasser recently completed a 3-year term as Executive Director of St. Madeleine Sophie's Center in El Cajon, CA., a center for developmentally disabled adults. The first lay director of SMSC, Frannie brought to her work a strong expertise in rehabilitation and clear understanding of the Society's mission and values (she attended Sacred Heart Schools from the age of eight until she graduated from Manhattanville).