Peace Camp 2008

This is an opportunity for young adults that I should have posted quite a while ago.

Peace Camp is a program developed by my nuns, the Baden, PA Sisters of St. Joseph. It provides an opportunity for young adults to work as counselors in this day camp for kids from grades K-6. A number of our students from U. of Detroit Mercy have participated over the years, and seem to have gotten a lot out of the experience.

Here’s a link to the website…if you are interested, please contact Sr. Anna Marie soon, as the deadline for applications is approaching – I think May 20 is the date..

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Checking in…

Just returned from the mothership in Pennsylvania…a committee meeting Thursday night, then an all-day pre-Chapter meeting on Saturday. All day Friday grading, and I’m still not done…shoot – was hoping to have all day tomorrow off, since it’s my 50th birthday. But I should have it done by noon, so I can take a half day!

Just started a new novel, called “Bethlehem Road Murder”, by Batya Gur. I was intrigued by the first sentence…

There comes a moment in a person’s life when he fully realizes that if he does not throw himself into action, if he does not stop being afraid to gamble, and if he does not follow the urgings of his heart that have been silent for many a year – he will never do it.

I am so grateful to God for the gift of an adventurous spirit, of a consciousness to live out of hope rather than fear. It’s so freeing to be able to just be who I am, without apologies or shame, and not overly dependent on the approval of others.

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From the sublime to the ridiculous…

Nat over at Om. Peace sent me a link to the video clip below – I laughed out loud, and God knows, we can always use a little more laughter. I had a difficult meeting today, so this was a good way to let go of the tension and lighten up a little.

Tomorrow, a trip to the mothership in PA for a couple of meetings.

from yostsa.vodpod.com posted with vodpod

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What do you want, God?!

I just spent the better part of last night asking this question repeatedly as I tossed and turned, unable to sleep – for no apparent reason as best I can tell. I finished my grading by 10:30, found out I needed to post a homework solution for my students, got a Skype call from my friend M., and then tried to go to sleep – to no avail.

Tried reading, praying, crossword puzzles, listened to music, ended up watching “Sisters of Selma”, a PBS documentary, ate some peanut M&Ms (I know that probably wasn’t helpful….) In the end I probably got 2-3 hours of sleep before I dragged my sorry behind out of bed at 8:00.

So what was going through my mind – well, besides the repetition of the above question?

I suppose I was having one of those episodes (infrequent, thank God) of feeling nostalgic for the road “not taken.” I was having some moments of wishing to feel someone’s arms around me, or my arms around someone as I went to sleep. I asked God to allow me to have an experience of being in God’s arms, but the thought of how nice it would be to have another human being to wake up to stayed with me.

Does this mean that God wants me to leave the convent and start my search for the man or woman of my dreams? Of course not! It just means I was having a human moment, just like anyone else, one in which I feel keenly the implications of the commitments I’ve made, commitments that preclude some choices I might otherwise make. Does this mean I’m unhappy in religious life and my call to celibacy? Again, of course not!

You may wonder… “Why is she getting so personal in this post? Is this too much information?”  To which I respond that if I were a gambler, which I’m not, I’d put good money on all of you having had nostalgia for the choice you could have but did not make. And I’m hoping that this builds connections among us on another level. A lot of the ideas about nuns in the popular culture are just so unreal. Guess what, WE ARE REAL – just get to know us as fellow human beings, as fellow seekers on this journey to the heart of God. You might find that we have much more in common than in difference.

Peace. Shalom. OM.

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Ride your bike to school day…

Apparently, some students saw a flyer on campus advertising this…so the picture shows them arriving to take their final exam. Their professor almost gave them a speeding ticket, and I offered to race them on my regular bike.

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“Twittering” away…

So as you may have noticed the feed near the top of my sidebar (to the right), I’ve been bitten by the Twitter bug. So what IS Twitter, other than that thing that birds are doing a lot of these beautiful spring days? Well, it’s a way to keep in touch with folks similar to text messaging on cell phones; in fact, you can Twitter from a cell phone…I don’t text, because I’m a cheapskate…but you can do it from a web browser as well.

I thought I might give it a try, as it will give you some sense of what I’m up to during the day. Even on those days I cannot find the time to compose a blog entry, you’ll know I’m still alive and kicking. One of the things I like about it is that it integrates with this blog and with my Facebook page.

So if you are a “Twitterer”, follow me, and I shall follow you.

Final exam week is beginning…YAY!

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A tiny celebration, then more work

Well, today was the last day of class – the end is in view. A few review sessions, making up and grading exams, grading a final project report are what await me now, but I’m still having a small inward celebration…

Perhaps the most stressful thing for both me and the students was the joint project they had for my Fundamentals of Electrical and Computer Engineering course, and my colleague’s Digital Logic Design course. The students were to design and build circuitry to control a robot in playing a human versus robot game of Tic-Tac-Toe. The frenzy to complete everything ended late last night, with mixed results, but a lot learned along the way, a lot of hard work, and yes, even some tears of frustration near the end. Just to give you an idea of the complexity of the project, here are photos of three of the subsystems designed and built by the students.

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A belated reflection on race speech

Several weeks ago, you are probably aware that Sen. Barack Obama gave a speech following the uproar about comments made by Rev. Jeremiah Wright. I didn’t catch it the day he gave it, but had a look later, and found myself thinking what an important speech it was. The issue of race and racism in this country is still a gaping wound in our society, and it’s one that many try to avoid confronting because of the deep feelings on many sides of the issue. I have to give the man credit for bringing this issue forward as one we NEED to be having frank and respectful dialogue about.

As for the reaction to Wright’s comments after 9/11, I too found the remarks troubling. If Obama is to be held accountable for what this man said, then who was calling Pres. Bush to task for the remarks of supporters Falwell and Robertson?! They characterized 9/11 as a punishment from God that was supposedly brought on by “the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians.” You can’t have it both ways!

Here’s a link to the video. It’s about a half hour, but worth the time to listen.

from yostsa.vodpod.com posted with vodpod

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And now for a bit of levity…

You might be wondering if I have dropped off the face of the earth, but I’m just really busy with work. Fortunately, I haven’t found it necessary to resort to the furniture shown below…

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Coverage of the Pope’s Visit to the U.S.

For those of you are are interested in keeping up with all things “popely”, I’d like to share an excerpt from an e-mail I received from a visitor to my site. (I know, this is a lazy post, but things at work are crazy with the lead up to final exams next week…I’ll be back to a normal frequency of posts by the end of next week. – in the meantime, please hang in there – thanks for your patience!)

I’m part of a small team of journalists in Chicago who have put together something new that I thought might interest you. We are going to cover the Pope’s visit to America in a new way.

We are working on a website called www.LiveNewsCameras.com The concept is simple, let people watch news as it happens anywhere in the world…raw, unedited on your computer at work or home.

We have been working on providing live video of the Pope’s visit to America from many different television stations. On Monday April 14th from 6-7pm CST we will have an experimental internet broadcast about the Catholic religion. We will have on experts and commentators that the webcast viewers can chat with live. We will look at the issues facing the Church and discuss the importance of this visit. It is a national effort that you can see on http://www.livenewscameras.com. We of course hope to have raw feeds of the Pope’s travels at every possible opportunity. We are the only website that we know that is devoting this sort of effort to gather all of these live feeds into one location.

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