Three Month Anniversary

So, officially today, I've been in the Society of the Sacred Heart for three months!

It has been beautiful, challenging, amazing...a great time of growth.  I'm adjusting still to the new environment--both the new city and the life in community.

Many things have been great graces:
  • Living with other people!  Sharing meals, lives, hopes, sorrows...
  • Communal prayer.
  • God is good to me--and I am spending more time in personal prayer, too. 
  • My students are (mostly) fun and generally well-behaved. They at least feign interest in theology.
  • And I love teaching--it's good to be in the classroom.
More than anything else, my sisters are amazing, so welcoming, loving and compassionate.  I am grateful for their support, and for their companionship on this strange journey.  I have been welcomed into their lives in ways that I never expected.

There are challenges, too.  Moving is always a challenge, and this move was big--a move to a "new" city (I have lived here before, but things have changed in my absence), a new job,  and a completely new way of living.  I'm glad to report that I rarely get lost, I can find the grocery store and the gas station without difficulty, the mysteries of the kitchen and where it keeps things are being revealed, and I'm getting used to the commute.

Perhaps this is the beginning of what Jesus tells us in today's gospel, that "everyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple." Many of my material possessions are gone, but I have gained a whole beautiful world.

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