Who We Are

The Maryknoll Sisters Institute for One Earth Community is a platform for welcoming individuals and communities to immerse themselves in evolving religious paradigms, scientific discoveries and transformational initiatives resulting in a deeper commitment to contribute to the flourishing of the whole Earth Community. Collaboratively designed programs such as virtual conferences, online webinars, and video programs enable greater accessibility. Resources created by other institutes and movements that contribute to creating the coherence needed to work together and amplify our transformative efforts will be shared through various mediums.

Our Mission

Our evolving consciousness of the cry of the earth and cry of the poor compels Maryknoll Sisters to partner with all seeking to work for justice and the thriving of all life in this one Earth Community. Trusting in the power of God to do new things, our institute seeks to explore and engage evolving paradigms and convergent efforts which sustain healing and liberating change in our world.

Focus of the Spring Mini-Course

Discipleship as Recreating a Torn World

These two works—Creation or Empire by Wes Howard-Brook and Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21^st-Century Economist by Kate Raworth, invite us to a conversion of imagination: from scarcity to sufficiency, from hierarchy to mutuality, from control to care. Discipleship becomes the shared work of reweaving/recreating a torn world – to build an economy that serves life rather than devours it, a theology that listens rather than silences, a community that recognizes wisdom at its edges rather than only at its center. Discipleship means joining in what the Spirit is already nurturing everywhere: the slow, determined emergence of a world where dignity, balance, and belonging are no longer the exception, but the ground on which all life stands. Discipleship becomes deeply practical: how communities organize resources, distribute power, and honor the interdependence of human and nonhuman life.

Creation or Empire: A Choice of Religions in the Bible and Beyond

Wes Howard-Brook

In Creation or Empire: A Choice of Religions in the Bible and Beyond, Wes Howard-Brook presents the Bible not as a single, unified religious voice, but as a dramatic and ongoing struggle between two fundamentally opposed ways of seeing God and the world: the “Religion of Creation” and the “Religion of Empire.” The Religion of Creation, embodied by the prophets and fully revealed in Jesus, affirms a God of life, justice, nonviolence, and right relationship with all creation. The religion of Creation emphasizes covenantal relationships among God, humanity, and the earth, calling for justice, mutuality, care for the vulnerable, and ecological balance.   In contrast, the Religion of Empire is rooted in domination, hierarchy, accumulation, and violence, often cloaked in religious language to justify systems of power. Howard-Brook traces this tension across the biblical narrative, showing how these two paths compete for the loyalty of God’s people, not only in ancient Israel but throughout Christian history.

The book then extends this framework into the New Testament and beyond, portraying Jesus as standing firmly within the tradition of Creation against the Roman imperial order and its local collaborators. Howard-Brook interprets Jesus’ teachings, healings, and crucifixion as a direct confrontation with empire’s religious, political, and economic systems. The early Christian movement, he argues, faced a choice between remaining faithful to the God of Creation or accommodating itself to imperial power—a tension that continues throughout church history and into the present.  The reader is invited to recognize that faith is not neutral: to follow Jesus is to choose the path of creation—marked by solidarity, peace, and care for the earth—over the seductions of empire. In this sense, the book becomes less a summary of ideas and more a summons: a quiet but urgent invitation to align one’s life, community, and faith with a vision of the world rooted in justice, compassion, and the flourishing of all beings.

Wes Howard-Brook is a prominent biblical scholar, educator, and social justice activist whose work integrates Scripture study with movements for peace, economic justice, and ecological action. He is a longtime instructor at Seattle University, teaching Scripture, social ethics, and liberation theology. Wes is also a long-term facilitator of adult faith formation programs, retreats, and community-based learning initiatives.

Howard-Brook’s scholarship and teaching have helped a generation of readers to approach Scripture as a living force for justice, inspiring communities to resist systems of domination and to cultivate a spirituality rooted in solidarity, compassion, and care for the Earth. Trained in both theology and sociology of religion, he is the author of influential books such as Unbinding the Gospel, Come Out, My People! and American Empire and the Bible (co-authored with Anthony Gwyther), he challenges readers to recognize the Bible’s recurring call to stand with marginalized communities and to resist structures of injustice.

“Wes Howard-Brook has long challenged us to read the Bible on its own terms—to hear its strange, ancient heartbeat beyond the distortions of what often passes for ‘Christianity’ in imperial culture. Now, with this concise and powerful volume, he distills decades of scholarship and discipleship into an urgently needed invitation to see the Bible not as a static text but as a living call to resist domination and nurture life-giving community.”

– Michael Morrell, award-winning author and co-author of The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation with Richard Rohr

May 5, 2026     7:00 pm – 8:30 pm (EST)

May 12, 2026   7:00 pm – 8:30 pm (EST)

Learn More and Register Here

New: A Curated Presentation Experience

Due to the high volume of requests for a live interview with Kate Raworth, the author of Doughnut Economics, we are offering an alternative format designed to provide meaningful engagement with her work. This session will feature a carefully curated selection of pre-recorded videos that explore key aspects of Doughnut Economics, enabling participants to encounter the author’s ideas across a range of contexts and perspectives. Sr. Helene will open the session with a brief introduction, followed by the video presentation. Afterward, participants will be invited to share comments, reflections, and experiences related to the material. A recording of the session will be distributed to all registered participants within one to two days.

Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21^st Century Economist

Kate Raworth

Sunday Times Bestseller – Financial Times Book of the Year

Doughnut Economics, a framework proposed by British economist Kate Raworth, reimagines the goal of the economy as meeting the needs of all people within the means of the living planet. Its visual model consists of two concentric rings: the inner ring represents the social foundation, derived from the UN Sustainable Development Goals, ensuring no one falls short on life’s essentials like food, housing, and healthcare. The outer ring represents the ecological ceiling, marking the planetary boundaries—such as climate change and biodiversity loss—that we must not overshoot. The “sweet spot” in the middle is the Doughnut itself, a space that is both socially just and ecologically safe. What makes this model truly revolutionary is that it shifts the definition of economic success away from endless GDP growth and toward a regenerative, distributive balance that prioritizes long-term human and environmental thriving.

Doughnut Economics influence lies less in technical models and more in reframing economic goals. It is more about imagination and a sense that a new way of thinking is possible, and it challenges the often repeated “musts” of economics. – endless growth. That’s why it is time, says renegade economist Kate Raworth, to revise our economic thinking for the 21st century. In Doughnut Economics, she sets out 7 important ways to fundamentally reframe our understanding of what economics is and does. Along the way, she points out how we can break our addiction to growth; redesign money, finance, and business to be in service to people; and create economies that are regenerative and distributive by design.

Named after the now-iconic “doughnut” image that Raworth first drew to depict a sweet spot of human prosperity (based on the United Nations Development Goals and eco-activists goals), Doughnut Economics offers a radically new compass for guiding global development, government policy, and corporate strategy, and sets new standards for what economic success looks like.

Kate Raworth did not begin with abstract models or tidy graphs, but with the pulse of lived realities that unsettled neat economic assumptions. Early in her career, in the coastal rhythms of Zanzibar, she encountered economies not as equations but as daily negotiations for dignity—where livelihoods, ecosystems, and community were tightly woven. That formative experience pressed into her imagination a question that would never quite let go: what is an economy for, if not the flourishing of people within the limits of a living planet? This question followed her into the global corridors of the United Nations, where for four years she contributed to the Human Development Report. There, amid data and diplomacy, she saw both the power and the limits of measuring progress—how numbers could illuminate injustice yet also conceal the deeper structures shaping it.

Her decade with Oxfam deepened this tension into a vocation: to reimagine economics so it could serve life rather than outrun it. Working at the intersection of policy, poverty, and planetary boundaries, she helped articulate frameworks that challenged growth at any cost, laying the groundwork for what would become Doughnut Economics. Alongside this professional journey, motherhood quietly but profoundly reshaped her lens. The future ceased to be an abstraction; it became intimate, embodied in the lives of the next generation. In that convergence—field experience, global analysis, advocacy, and care—her thought took on its distinctive clarity: an economics that listens to the edges, honors limits, and insists that human thriving must fit within Earth’s fragile, generous circle.

May 19, 2025

7:00 PM – 8:30  EST

Learn More and Register Here

Significant Websites/ Videos for Further Study

These YouTube websites and videos have been selected as additional resources that explain how neoliberalism and laws impact ordinary people all around the globe. The issues are clearly explained and the values of the presenters’ center on the common good.

All video interviews were done in 2025 focusing on books the authors had just published.

1. David Korten: Why Monetary Reform is Essential to a Viable Human Future

A. Why Monetary Reform is Essential to a Viable Human Future

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0G_7X8277Q Start 3:25 to 34:20

Korten holds an MBA and a Ph.D. from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. He spent over 30 years in international development, including serving as a visiting professor at the Harvard Business School and working for the Ford Foundation and USAID in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. He also worked on the Earth Charter. He is best known for his international bestseller When Corporations Rule the World.  His other books include The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community and Agenda for a New Economy. Korten is the founder and president of the Living Economies Forum and a co-founder and board chair emeritus of YES! Magazine, a nonprofit publication focused on sustainability and alternative economics.

In this video, David Korten clearly explains the banking system and argues a viable future requires monetary transformation—democratize the Fed, issue debt-free sovereign money, protect pensions, and end Wall Street’s debt trap—so we can fund guaranteed living-wage jobs and an ecological civilization. He outlines a four-part agenda, cites New Deal precedents and greenbacks, critiques speculative finance and UBI, and urges localization, co-ops, and clear public education to reclaim money for people and planet.

B.  David Korten Explores the Vision of Ecological Civilizations

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0G_7X8277Q 1 Minute 30 Sec.

An Ecological Civilization is the future that thoughtful humans envision when asked to describe the future to which they aspire. It is the future described by the Earth Charter; a document produced by the most inclusive, participatory drafting process in human experience. That future has four defining features:

1. Respect and care for the community of life
2. Ecological Integrity
3. Social and Economic Justice
4. Democracy, nonviolence, and peace.

It is within our means—if we together so chose—to create the world of material sufficiency and spiritual abundance for all that the Earth Charter describes, but time is fast running out.  So, what is an Ecological Civilization? It is the future defined by the world’s people as expressed by the Earth Charter. It is the name for the future to which caring, responsible humans aspire.

American Monetary Institute      https://www.youtube.com/@AmericanMonetaryInst

The American Monetary Institute (AMI) is part of a growing ecosystem of individuals, groups, and organizations dedicated to monetary reform and economic justice. The American Monetary Institute (AMI) is a publicly supported charity, founded in 1996 to present the results of our research in a manner understandable by the average citizen; leading to monetary reforms which bring forth a greater level of economic justice and a more equitable and efficient functioning of government.

This field deserves serious study because while attention is usually focused on the elections of presidents, prime ministers, and representatives, the real outcomes in society – whether there will be general economic justice or special financial privileges for the few – are often quietly determined behind the scenes by the structure of a society’s monetary system.

Monetary realities usually affect the citizen’s daily life far more than the Congress, President, or Supreme Court. AMI’s research shows that a main arena of human struggle has been over the monetary control of societies. This control is exercised through monetary theory – in obscure doctrines about the nature of money. If it had to be summarized in one sentence it is that by mis-defining the nature of money, special interests have often been able to control a society’s monetary system, and in turn, the society itself.

2. Boston College Law Professor Ray Madoff: “The Second Estate: How the Tax Code Made an American Aristocracy”

https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/videos/americas-new-aristocracy                  25 minutes

 America’s New Aristocracy

The richest Americans control $46 trillion in wealth—but many pay little or no federal tax. Boston ‪College Law professor Ray Madoff, author of “The Second Estate: How the Tax Code Made an American Aristocracy,” explains how a century of tax policy created two Americas: one that pays taxes and one that doesn’t.

Drawing on her new book, Madoff reveals how the wealthy use legal tools—inheritance loopholes, trusts, and philanthropy—to avoid taxation altogether. She shows how “charitable giving” often benefits billionaires more than the public, and how our tax code has quietly built an American aristocracy. Amid conflicting narratives about the drivers of wealth and inequality in the United States, one constant hovers in the background: the US tax code. No political force has been more consequential—or more utterly opaque—than the 7,000-page document that details who pays what in American society and government. Most of us have a sense that it’s an unfair system. But does anyone know exactly how it’s unfair?

Legal scholar Ray D. Madoff knows. In The Second Estate, she offers an unprecedented look behind the scenes of America’s byzantine system of taxation, laying bare not only its capacity to consolidate wealth but also the mechanisms by which it has created two fundamentally separate American societies: the working Americans who pay and the ultra-rich who benefit.

This is not a story of offshore accounts or secret tax havens. In The Second Estate, Madoff shows that the US system itself has, over time, been stripped and reconstituted such that it now offers a series of secret paths, hidden in plain sight, for wealthy people in the know to avoid taxation altogether. Through the strategic avoidance of traditional income, leveraging of investments and debt, and exploitation of rules designed to promote charitable giving, America’s wealthy do more than just pay less than their share; they remove themselves from the tax system entirely. Wealth becomes its own sovereign state, and the living is surprisingly – and maddeningly – cheap.Madoff calls for a new vision of stewardship—where wealth is once again tied to responsibility, and the public good comes before private dynasties.

Institute for New Economic Thinking: A Global Network of Innovative Scholars

https://www.ineteconomics.org/

Videos | Institute for New Economic Thinking       All the Institutes videos in one place

Founded in the wake of the financial crisis in 2009, the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization devoted to developing and sharing the ideas that can repair our broken economy and create a more equal, prosperous, and just society. To meet current and future challenges, we conduct and commission research, convene forums for exchanging ideas, develop curricula, and nurture a global community of young scholars.

We have seen all too clearly how free market fundamentalism, fiscal austerity, financialization and corporate influence in politics have endangered economies, communities, and the planet as a whole. What is the alternative?

We need a new vision of the economy that aims to serve society. That’s why INET carefully incubates new economic thinking within the academy and beyond. We work to guide the field away from economic orthodoxy so that it can free itself of inertia and past failures. We then promote the new economic thinking we develop and support among influencers, policymakers, and the engaged public so that it can have real-world impact.

3. Busting the Bankers’ Club: Finance for the Rest of Us

https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/videos/busting-the-bankers-club      18 minutes 44 sec.

Professor Gerald Epstein, Founding Codirector of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

An eye-opening account of the failures of our financial system, the sources of its staying power, and the path to meaningful economic reform. Bankers brought the global economic system to its knees in 2007 and nearly did the same in 2020. Both times, the US government bailed out the banks and left them in control. How can we end this cycle of trillion-dollar bailouts and make finance work for the rest of us? Busting the Bankers’ Club confronts the powerful people and institutions that benefit from our broken financial system–and the struggle to create an alternative.

Drawing from decades of research on the history, economics, and politics of banking, economist Gerald Epstein shows that any meaningful reform will require breaking up this club of politicians, economists, lawyers, and CEOs who sustain the status quo. Thankfully, there are thousands of activists, experts, and public officials who are working to do just that. Clear-eyed and hopeful, Busting the Bankers’ Club centers the individuals and groups fighting for a financial system that will better serve the needs of the marginalized and support important transitions to a greener, fairer economy.

4. The Laws of Capitalism:

     All things can be Coded as Capital, with the Right Legal Coding  https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/videos/the-laws-of-capitalism  (Trailer for Series)

Series Featuring:

Katherina Pistor: Edwin B. Parker Professor of Comparative Law, Columbia University

Director, Center on Global Legal Transformation; Member, Committee on Global Thought

Member of the European Academy of Sciences.

• Fellow of the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI).
• Research Associate with the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) and the

Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET). 

The Laws of Capitalism – Lectures

Lecture 1 – Coding Land and Ideas

Lecture 2 – Coding Debt

Lecture 3 – Firms

Lecture 4 – The Tool Kit

Lecture 5 – Masters of the Code

Lecture 6 – A Code for the Globe

Lecture 7 – Transforming the Code of Capital

5. Francesco Movement

Inspired by Pope Francis’ Economy of St. Francis the Francesco Collaborative gathers Catholic investors and close associates to explore practices of “faith-first investing” that nurture economic futures rooted in solidarity and embody the prophetic edge of Catholic investing. Emerging from the Economy of Francesco movement, we’ve begun to curate conversations around investing, leadership, and the solidarity economy.

    Home – Francesco Collaborative    

    https://www.youtube.com/@francescocollaborative2

1. Rethinking Economics: How Proximate Ownership Can Restore the Soul of Capitalism |

   Rethinking Economics: How Proximate Ownership Can Restore the Soul of Capitalism | David Harlley

2. Rethinking Philanthropy: How the Better Way Foundation Funds Indigenous Futures

       Rethinking Philanthropy: How the Better Way Foundation Funds Indigenous Futures

6. Private equity’s latest victim? Your grandma’s nursing home.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Bc6sMzf4TN0                       2 minutes 45 sec.

Excellent explanation of how Private Equity destroys good firms for profit. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is introducing a bill into Congress to stop this devastating corporate greed. She needs our support.

Important Information
Cost of the Program

There will be no registration fee required to participate in our programs.

However, voluntary donations will be gratefully accepted to support participation in our programs.

All programs are virtual only.

Calendar For “Prophets and Mystics”

Due to popular demand, registration for the Prophets & Mystics Program has been reopened. If you would like to register today, please contact the Admissions Coordinator, Angela Abad, directly at [email protected]

Programs for 2026

The Courage to See:

Mystical Vision & Prophetic Action in Troubled Eras

In every age of upheaval, God whispers through those who dare to listen deeply.
This year-long program invites participants to stand where the mystics and prophets once stood— at the trembling edge of history—and to hear the Spirit’s quiet summons to compassion, justice, and holy imagination.  Through story, shared reflection and prayer, we will awaken to the sacred call to become instruments of healing in our own wounded world.

Celtic Imagination

The Enchantment of the World

With John Philip Newell

“Wholeness consists of coming back into relationship with what is deepest in all things; that is,

the of-Godness at the heart of the earth and all life forms and all people.”

– John Philip Newell, internationally acclaimed scholar of Celtic spirituality

As we grieve the violence done to our planet, it is easy to feel overwhelmed. But what if there were tangible actions you could take to restore this rift? Beyond recycling, diet changes, and advocacy, what kind of interior changes can we make that can help us make the shift to healing? The Celts knew every chickadee and chestnut was bustling with divine presence. And they knew that humans were not lords over these lands, but a part of them.

In this masterclass, we invite you to imagine a new way of being – you’ll be immersed in a world brimming with relationships. Oneness. Communion.

Come knit your soul back into the soil in this exclusive class with award-winning Celtic teacher John Philip Newell.  Together we’ll learn:

• The one radical shiftthat must occur if we are to heal the planet–and ourselves
• The Celtic method of listening to the trees, waters, and animals
• Why the way we treat the marginalizedguides the way we treat the land and waters
• 2 practices you can do todayto contribute to the healing of Earth’s sacred community.
• How an intimate relationship with the earth acts as a portal into spiritual depth

Celtic Streams

Saint Francis, Teilhard de Chardin, and Celtic spirituality have a lot in common.

With Ilia Delio, OSF

But did you know that there is a direct link to their influence upon each other?

Join the highly sought-after Sister Ilia Delio for a masterclass uncovering the Celtic threads through time! From Francis’s choir of birds to Teilhard’s cosmic mass offered upon the steppes of China, you’ll discover:

How a thrust toward union is knit into the fabric of the cosmos

• How animals experience God
• How to discover “at-homeness”in your body
• The one “stance” nature teachesus that is essential for contemplation
• The Celtic practice for opening to the beauty all around us
• Settle the controversy once and for all between theology vs. personal experience
• Where Francis was steeped in the Celtic tradition, forming the basis of his celebration of nature
• Why is the spiritual life of Earth, the ants, atoms and galaxies critical to our own spiritual lives

Barbara Holmes

The Mystical Tradition of the African Diaspora

With Felicia Murrell

Barbara Holmes was an African American scholar, mystic, and contemplative known for her work on the intersection of spirituality, race, and social justice. She integrated the wisdom of mysticism with deep insights into systemic oppression.

“Contemplation can be a source of resistance.”  A grounded, inspiring activist.

Thomas Berry

The Eco Spiritual Priest: The Communion of All

With Kathleen Deignan

Welcome to a rich encounter with one of the visionaries of this Earth moment. Sage, monk, shaman, poet, geology, path-finder and guide to a new Earth future – the world-class seer Thomas Berry embodies and teaches a way to realize our cosmic vocation by way of a New Story and an urgent summons to take up The Great Work of healing our desolating relationship with Earth by embodying a cosmology of peace.

Meet the wisdom keeper of the age to come as we practice our way into new modes of intimacy and communion with all our kin in this still unfolding, mysterious universe.

Hildegard of Bingen

Greening Your Spirituality

With Christine Valters Paintner

You’ll never believe the things she had to endure. Hildegard of Bingen, who would go on to become one of four female doctors of the church, had an incredibly rough beginning.

She was “tithed” to the church at age 7. Her family gave her away to become an anchoress – the kind of nun who lived in a walled cell her entire life.  At age 7. It began with her full funeral, complete with this child being laid in the dirt while death dirges were sung around her. She would spend the next 30 years inside that cell alongside a strict, penitential anchoress.

But that was only the beginning.

Hildegard would go on to become:

• A celebrated mystic
• One of the world’s first feminists
• A female preacher(unheard of in her times!) who relentlessly called out clergy corruption.
• Counselor of popes and emperors. Hildegard broke conventions for women of her time and fearlessly critiqued church corruption.
• She saw the sacred interconnectedness of all creation, what she called “viriditas” – the greening life force of the divine feminine.
• The mother of holistic medicine(from her convent!)
• One of the most important medieval composers (music students everywhere study her works!)

She was also the person who changed author Christine Valters Paintner’s life, and set her on the trajectory she’s on today. Join us for this class on the brilliant, insatiable Hildegard!  Led by the bestselling author of The Artist’s Rule and Earth, Our Original Monastery, Christine Valters Paintner will reveal how this mystic catalyzed her own life – and how this edgy medieval woman can teach you to live out your own audacious desires!

Etty Hillesum

Everything is Beautiful

With Patrick Woodhouse

On 9th March 1941 in enemy occupied Holland, a young Dutch Jewish student began a diary that was to become one of the most remarkable documents to emerge from the Nazi Holocaust. The diary – and the letters she subsequently wrote from the transit camp of Westerbork where all the Dutch Jews were sent on their way to the death camps – tells the story of a life being transformed from insecurity and chaos to beauty and self-giving.

The class will explore Etty Hillesum’s journey of transformation, how it began through her relationship with a Jungian psychotherapist, and how a contemplative spirituality emerged in her of such depth and power that in the transit camp she became a luminous figure, alive and hopeful and, amidst so much despair and death, able to see clearly.

Teilhard De Chardin

Lured By Love

With Kathleen Duffy

Teilhard de Chardin was a Jesuit mystic and scientist who reconciled science and spirituality, envisioning the cosmos as a spiritual journey. “The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides, and gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love.” A bold, innovative, and cosmic thinker.  

Thich Nhat Hanh

The Father of Engaged Buddhism

With Kaira Jewel Lingo

Thich Nhat Hanh is widely considered the “Father of Engaged Buddhism” for his efforts in blending mindfulness practice with social action. He coined the term and established the movement during the Vietnam War, advocating for peace and nonviolence by showing that monks and nuns could actively help those suffering from conflict, rather than just meditating in monasteries.

• Mindfulness and social action:Thich Nhat Hanh believed that inner peace is directly linked to social and political change. He taught that mindfulness could be a tool for addressing suffering and injustice in the world, not just within oneself.
• Activism:During the Vietnam War, he founded the School of Youth for Social Service to help rebuild villages and support orphans, and he co-founded the Van Hanh Buddhist University in Saigon. His activism led to his exile from Vietnam in 1966.
• Peace advocacy:He famously befriended Martin Luther King Jr., who nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967 and called him an “apostle of peace and nonviolence”.
• Founding Engaged Buddhism:He formally established the movement after being exiled, and his work continued to spread his message globally. His teachings on mindfulness and peace have been applied to a wide range of issues, including environmentalism, social justice, and racial karma.
• Lasting legacy:Thich Nhat Hanh founded the Plum Village monastic and lay community to carry on his work, which has grown into a global network of practice centers and local mindfulness groups.

Thea Bowman

The Franciscan Who Reawakened the Spirit of Black Catholicism

With ValLimar Jansen

Thea Bowman was a Franciscan sister who celebrated her African American culture and called out the US Catholic bishops to do the same. She urged them to embrace diversity, advocate for justice, and promote inclusion, urging the Church to be more welcoming to people of all backgrounds. “We must be willing to be changed by God.”  A charismatic, joyful, inspiring person

Edith Stein

The Saint of Empathy

With Matthew Blake, OCD

Edith Stein was a leading Jewish philosopher turned Carmelite nun. As an atheist, she read Teresa of Avila’s autobiography through the night and in the morning declared, “This is the truth.” She wrote about empathy, suffering, and feminism. She was later killed in Auschwitz. A reflective, wise, and selfless person.

Mother Maria Skpbstova

How a Rebel Nun Outsmarted the Nazis

With Rowan Williams

Mother Maria Skobstova was a  revolutionary turned Russian Orthodox nun. Became the mahor of a Russian town; narrowly escaped execution; escaped to France where she practiced radical hospitality for refugees. Later she would save Jewish children from Nazis y hiding them in trash cans. She died in a concentration camp for her courageous work. “At the last judgment, I shall not be asked whether I was successful, but whether I loved.” A bod, compassionate, unwavering human.

Teresa of Avila

Holy Daring

With Tessa Bielecki

This doctor of the church had no problem giving God a piece of her mind.

Once caught in a rainstorm to her convent, Teresa fell in the mud. Looking up at the dark heavens she yelled, “If this is the way you treat your friends, it’s no wonder you have so few!”

It’s comforting to know that holiness can have a little sass!

The first woman ever declared a doctor of the church (one of only four!), Teresa of Avila was renowned not only for reforming the Carmelite order and for writing extensively about the mystical life–but also for her wit. We will learn about the human side of Teresa – from someone not unlike her in character and vocation.

Our presenter, Tessa Bielecki, helped start a new kind of Carmelite community – one comprised of both male and female hermits. Over the decades as Mother Abbess, Tessa’s wisdom (and humor!) has impacted thousands of people. Through her life of simplicity, solitude, and stillness, Tessa has navigated the same interior depths as her namesake, Teresa.

Both women are poetic and practical, charming and disarming. What would it be like to learn about Teresa from a woman who embodies her spirit with her very life?

Join us to learn:

• What gave Teresa the chutzpahto reform a male order as a woman
• Why funis an important part of the spiritual life
• Little-known details about Teresa’s close male friendships
• How she united her poeticheart and pragmatic head
• Teresa’s remedywhen you can’t pray