"The only way to see a new horizon, though, is to change where you are standing. Like falling asleep on a road trip, we awake to find that the cityscape we once saw has given way to fields of green and a flat horizon."

In September 2013, the Sisters of St. Louis opened a new mission in Dawhan, Ethiopia. The three sisters who moved to the mountaintop area struggled with the language and the culture, but three years in, the women have found a home.

GSR Today - In the 1750s when Nano Nagle founded the first of her seven schools in Ireland, the shape of a school was a thatched cottage. It was a school that opened its doors in secret as running a school was a risky business for Catholics. The law forbade it and to be detected was to put oneself in danger of arrest or deportation.

"Where will we find peace and rest from all the pain that seems impossibly broken?"

GSR Today - I used to hate sharing my food. However, I loved when people would share their food with me. It seemed like such a gift for someone to share something delicious, and it was a gift I rarely declined. Why aren't they keeping it for themselves? I wondered.

You know, of course, what solidarity means, don't you? Or do you? In our time when humanity is pushed and pulled through a vast wilderness, when refugees are massively scorned, when parents cannot protect children against violence and hunger, and when riches are hoarded as if life and salvation depend on extraordinary accumulation, it seems an apt season to re-examine solidarity.

"Whatever defamation of character my enemies are spreading about me, I do not feel the need to justify myself toward them. While discretion obliges me to remain silent, my duty compels me to prevent them from doing any more harm."

As a vowed religious with nearly 40 years of profession, I cannot speak for the newest generation of religious in apostolic congregations. But I feel impelled as one called (and privileged) to accompany novices to share some reflections on the next coming age of religious life.

GSR Today - Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates issued a memo stating that The U.S. Department of Justice would phase out using private contractors to run federal prisons.

Sr. Margaret Farrell, a Religious Sister of Charity from Ireland who was sent to California as a novice in the late 1980s to serve in Los Angeles' juvenile halls and who has been the spiritual director of Covenant House California since 2001, finds that even today, there are Los Angeles natives who are oblivious to Skid Row's existence.