In a recent webinar on contemplative prayer, I heard Islamic scholar Omid Safi talk about the spirituality of Sufism. In describing spirituality, he used the image of a bird, which needs two wings to fly. (I had an interesting moment in which I imagined how one would fly with one wing!) One wing could be…

By Sister Michele Morek Visiting New Mexico about five years ago, Sister Angela Fitzpatrick and I were attending Mass in the Saint Joseph chapel of the Santa Fe cathedral, where we were approached by an elderly little man who said he was a retired janitor. His retirement project was making crosses out of barbed wire,…

By Sister Michele Morek Sister Angela Fitzpatrick, the Sister with whom I live, and I both received Ancestry DNA kits as gifts for Christmas. (That’s the kit that lets you spit in a collection tube and send it off to learn more about your family history by analyzing your DNA.) We are anxious to get…

By Sister Michele Morek December 2023 I was mulling over what the theme of this reflection should be: gratitude, for Thanksgiving season? Awe for the upcoming Advent and our celebration of the Incarnation? But when I read through some of Saint Angela’s writings I found a quote I had never noticed before: Receive my every…

By Sister Michele Morek “Let them have Jesus Christ for their only treasure, for there also will be love.”  Saint Angela Merici, 5th Counsel I was reflecting on what it would be like to have a treasure chest full of gems. This was not hard for me to imagine because I used to be a…

By Sister Michele Morek The day I am writing this, August 14, is the anniversary of the date in 1962 that my Ursuline class made our “investment” into the community: that is, received the habit and began our formal canonical novitiate. How appropriate that the quote for the day on my little Saint Angela desk…

By Sister Michele Morek Ah, summer! Time to work on our summer reading lists. For years, when anyone asked me the name of my favorite book, I have always said it was John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath.”  But wait, I read that about 50 years ago – was it really as wonderful as I…

By Sister Michele Morek Saint Angela is famous for founding her “Third Way” – not traditional religious, not exactly lay. I have always liked exploring “in between” places, the cracks, the Twilight Zone. I taught some fun courses at Brescia University – Marine Biology, Genetics, Embryology. But one of my favorite courses surprised me –…

By Sister Michele Morek In March, the Vatican formally repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery, which the Western world used for centuries to justify colonization, and – though it was not a part of formal church doctrine – claimed to give European nations a right to take over new world lands. Combined with systemic beliefs of…