I remembered an ancient saying not long ago that smacked far too much of the present than it did of the past. "There are only two mistakes on the way to truth," Buddha taught. "One is not going far enough and the other is not starting." I knew right away that we're either on the verge of another mistake – or not. It all depends.

Have you ever said, “That word doesn’t work anymore,” when you were trying to explain something? You had to fish around for a word, a phrase that might capture what you wanted to say because you realized that the old way of talking about things didn’t quite match your experience. Such a moment brings home to me the power of words, of language.

Sr. Imelda Poole, IBVM, is president of Religious in Europe Networking Against Trafficking and Exploitation (RENATE), a group of religious congregations working against human trafficking in Europe. A native of Great Britain, Poole has worked in Albania for nine years, where she leads Mary Ward Loreto, a non-profit development organization serving vulnerable communities.

Franciscan Sr. Mary Lou Lafferty spent many years in education before realizing that her talents could also help inmates and their families. She assumed the rold of prison ministry coordinator for Catholic Charities in the Camden, N.J., diocese last September.

Can a devastating hurricane be a good thing? It is when it opens opportunity for improvement: Sr. Cathy Buster has administered, managed and developed housing projects for 57 years. Her Casa San Juan Bosco community in Arcadia, Fla., developed through Catholic Charities, is a model of state-of-the-art, energy-efficient housing for agricultural workers whose families used to live in trailer parks.

It is a time of great uncertainty and of great promise. We share a powerful moment! Even the phrase “Global Sisters” makes my heart skip a beat. “Global” evokes a sense of the expansive, the far-reaching, the diverse. And to be a “Sister” is something intimate, something characterized by love, care – and an organic bond. What a beautiful mystery that this time allows both to be true, in innovative ways, for religious life.

GSR Today - A week that saw one journalist revisiting his old Catholic grade school in San Francisco and sisters planning protests at the World Cup soccer event in Brazil was overshadowed by the death of one of two women religious attacked outside of a church in Malaysia.

A message of solidarity, peace and hope to the people of South Sudan, from the Religious Superiors Association of South Sudan - The 75 representatives of 29 Catholic Religious Congregations belonging to the RSASS issue a statement against violence in the country and call for a new solidarity of peace, in the wake of thousands dead and a million people displaced.

Commentary - At the inaugural National Catholic Sisters Week in March 2014, sisters and college students participated in a discussion about stereotypes and the need for sisters to tell their own stories – the mainstream media is not going to do it. One participant observed: "Once it was the religious who were intolerant; now it’s the secular mainstream's turn. The roles have simply reversed."