Notes from the Field - I felt I was starting as a Good Shepherd Volunteer with my gas tank already on empty. But much to my surprise, my year of service provided me with the rejuvenation I was yearning for.

One of our novices asked me to share my experience of living the vowed life. I looked forward to an honest conversation — I wanted her to know the gift religious life is for me. After 59 years, it is still the best decision I ever made! Her first question, however, took me off guard. "What is a metaphor for your relationship with the hierarchical church?"

The Sister of Mercy's 39-acre Mercy Farm in Benson recently had a "BioBlitz" — a 24-hour period of intense biological surveying in May to attempt to record all the living species on the farm.

"The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see Nature all ridicule and deformity . . . and some scarce see Nature at all. But, to the eyes of the man of imagination, Nature is imagination itself."

The chaos of China's Cultural Revolution dispersed the St. Therese of the Child Jesus congregation in the 1960s. In 1988, the congregation was reborn, and Sr. Ma Suling, who joined in 1992, today is superior general of 100 St. Therese sisters, who thrive by being "creative and active."

"To be truly radical is to make hope possible, rather than despair convincing."

GSR Today - One thing I love about my work at Global Sisters Report is meeting sisters who live and minister on the margins. Their invisibility, vulnerability and marginality struck me forcefully on a recent visit to Fiji to visit friends.

My Dad, a World War II veteran, passed along to me by way of example the spirit of the virtue of patriotism. Though in many ways our nation has not lived up to its full potential as "an agent of peace with justice for all people," there are some patriotic ways to celebrate July Fourth.

When Sr. Mary Rose Mukukibogo first approached women in Gisagara, southern Rwanda, about starting an agricultural association, they were furious. It was 1997, three years after the 100-day genocide in 1994 that killed more than a million people during the fighting and the chaos afterwards. Mukukibogo, a member of Les Soeurs Auxiliatrices (Helpers of the Holy Souls), remembers walking from house to house in the district near the southern city of Butare, asking them if they'd like to join a farming cooperative.

"Ask the animals — and they shall instruct you; ask the birds of the air — and they shall tell you; ask the plants of the Earth — and they will teach you and the fish of the sea will declare to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of our God has done this? In God's hand is the life of every living being and the breath of humankind."