Student loan debt in the United States is starting to have a noticeable effect on postgraduate vocations. In 2011, the situation had become so conspicuous that the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate and the National Religious Vocations Conference teamed up to measure that impact. The student debt situation is a crisis for the country and the church, but for people called to religious life, it's also easily fixable.

See for Yourself - Recently I was doing some banking at a convenient bank branch, standing dutifully in the queue of rope stanchions. The line moved fairly quickly and soon I found myself in the first position awaiting the next available teller.

From A Nun's Life podcasts - A prayer request from a website visitor calls to mind the idea of miracles, what they inspire in us and how some people can come to it with such confidence.

"Women of the world must unite to help save our planet. We invite women to come visit us and to touch and feel what it is like to live the indigenous way — in harmony with all beings."

Notes from the Field - Isolated mountain life is making my husband and me get uncomfortably close to a lot of other people's garbage.

"Circling round the beauty brings us deeper into the center. What is important in our lives?"

Sometimes when we read the Gospels we find ourselves in the story, relating to one or other of the people there. Reading the story of Martha and Mary for example, we may relate to Mary, the quiet one, or Martha, the one busy about many things. Other times the Gospels lift right off the page and repeat themselves on our streets and neighborhoods, in our homes, even in the doctor's office.

COP21 Paris - "Expectations are very high," Sr. Odile Coirier, Franciscan Missionary of Mary, said, describing the mood at the start of the second day at the Paris climate summit. "But there is also great concern that those expectations may not be met."

"The very act of giving thanks acknowledges that the good things in our lives are not simply the result of our own striving."

Early Dec. 1, Franciscan Sr. Joan Brown, executive director of New Mexico Interfaith Power and Light and a regular Global Sisters Report contributor, boarded a plane to Paris for the United Nations' climate change summit. Brown, who was at the U.N.'s widely lamented climate conference in Copenhagen in 2009, will speak in Paris on behalf of both Interfaith Power and Light and Franciscans International.