Springbank Retreat Center for EcoSpirituality and the Arts in Kingstree, S.C., is part of religious communities’ mission in the U.S. and Ireland dedicated to teaching people about conservation, clean energy and respect for the natural world. In the Diocese of Charleston – the only diocese in the state, the center has had a presence by the Dominican Sisters of Adrian, Mich., since the 1980s, when Sr. Betty Condon became the center’s director. Its retreats and programs are run by a variety of women religious communities.

From A Nun's Life podcasts - Is it enough to try to please God, or does it not count unless I do it with joy? Listen to a discussion about our ability to discern God's will in this Random Nun Clip.

Climate change is all about air, about the atmosphere that sustains almost all life in our common home, Earth. We live within the world of air, “the sweet mothering air,” wrote Gerald Manley Hopkins. “Breathe in the living Jesus,” we recall the Easter message as we pray. Breathe within the received Spirit of hope.

GSR readers would never even consider dressing up as a "naughty nun," but every Halloween the marketplace and individuals come up with costumes that mock religious figures. Doing so traces back to medieval times, but the outcome is always hurtful, said Ken A. Grant, lecturer in history and religious studies at University of Texas-Pan American in Edinburg.

Recently I spent the night with the Sisters of Charity of St. Elizabeth at their convent in downtown Newark, N.J. They have offered me hospitality on several occasions when I have been coming or going to their retreat house, Maris Stella, on the Jersey shore some two hours away. Living just five minutes from the Newark airport, they are accustomed to visitors like me, in and out with barely time for conversation in the community room.

Nuns on the Bus Blog - As the “We the People, We the Voters” tour of Nuns on the Bus wraps up, one aspect of my experience riding on the bus still intrigues me.  From the very first day, what mystified me was the amount of energy we were feeling. “One huge swoosh of energy” was what I wrote at the end of that first day.

Missionaries of Charity Sisters in Vietnam prepare and sell traditional herbal remedies to support their community, but after their farmland was taken by the government for a new economic zone this year, they have to get their raw materials from other sources. The nuns plan to buy new land and build their houses near existing residential areas. “Our congregation’s mission is to live and do manual work among poor workers, to serve them.”

This past summer I had a profound experience that helped me to remember that heaven and earth are one. I was in Assisi, Italy, on pilgrimage. I was there with other Franciscans who were preparing for (or discerning) final vows, and participating in a study pilgrimage sponsored by Franciscan Pilgrimage Programs. As a Franciscan sister, it is understandable that my heaven-on-earth experience occurred in Assisi, as the village is holy ground for those of us in the Franciscan family.

See for Yourself - My polite refusal of beer at a party always spawns a question or two along the lines of, “Sister, aren’t you permitted to drink beer?” “Why yes,” I respond. “I can have alcoholic beverages. I just never developed the taste for beer or wine, so that leaves more for you!”