Winter 2014: The Cosmic Story: What Does it Have to Do with Religious Life?

New understandings of the cosmic story have clearly captured our attention. But what do these insights have to do with our everyday lives?

The Winter 2014 issue of Occasional Papers explores how the cosmic story impacts:

• how we perceive religious life today and into the future
• how we understand leadership
• our concern for persons on the margins of society
• our call to take prophetic action
• the ways in which we pray
• the primacy of the God-quest in religious life

The authors in this issue include women religious who are making the connections between the cosmic story and religious life, and particularly religious life leadership, as well as women religious from other cultures who are integrating the new insights into their lives and work in settings of great poverty and violence.

Contents

• Everything!
  Madeline Duckett, RSM offers suggestions for living more intentionally out of the new evolutionary consciousness
• Charism:  The 'Strange Attractor' in Religious Life
  Gloria L. Schaab, SSJ explores the phenomenon of the "strange attractor" in relation to uncertainty, creativity, and transformation in religious life
• Sophia:  Source of Creative Union
  Kathy Duffy, SSJ suggests ways to cooperate with Divine Energy through the image of Sophia, the wisdom of God
• The Primacy of the God-Quest in Religious Life
  Carol Quigley, IHM reflects on the summons to religious to make God the priority in love, possessions, and power
• Preparing for a Spiritually Intense Future
  In an interview author and poet Bishop Robert Morneau shares insights on prayer, study, the arts, and leadership
• Living Evolutionary Consciousness in a Lima Shantytown
  Margaret Kehoe, PBVM and Eileen Kearney, PBVM write of how evolutionary consciousness impacts their lives and ministries among people in poverty
• Working for Greater Consciousness of the Whole
  Fatima Rodrigo, PBVM shows how new understandings of the cosmos impact the work of religious serving at the United Nations
• Integrating Understandings of the Universe into LeadershipEight leaders reflect on how an understanding of the new cosmology influences how they exercise leadership today:  Bea Eichten, OSF; Anne Amati, OSF, Theresa Sandok, OSM; Linda Mershon, FSPA; Marcia Allen, CSJ; Joan Marie Steadman, CSC; Donna Geernaert, SC; and Jane Herb, IHM