Catholic religious communities
For more than thirty years, my work has been with Catholic religious communities—sisters, brothers, and their congregations — in leadership councils and chapter halls, at international gatherings, wherever communities have gathered to ask honest questions about their future.
My work offers accompaniment for questions that do not resolve quickly: renewal and diminishment, charism and mission, and what is being asked of your community now.
While my work has been rooted primarily in Catholic religious life, I also work selectively with other faith-based organizations facing questions of identity, mission, leadership, and future direction.
The questions you're sitting with
Most communities I sit with are living with some version of the same questions:
How do we stay faithful to our charism as everything around us changes? What is ours to carry forward, and what is ours to release? How do we lead well through transition, grief, and uncertainty? How do we discern a future we cannot yet see?
These are not problems to be solved on a timeline. They are thresholds to be crossed with honesty and care. The work is to stay with them long enough — together — for something true to emerge.
How I work with you
I'm not here to hand you a strategic plan or manage you toward a predetermined outcome. The work joins contemplative listening with practical discernment. Together we make room for the harder, more honest questions — about identity, mission, grief, and hope — and we stay with them long enough for something new to emerge.
That work takes different shapes depending on where you are:
-
Consulting on processes of transformation — longer-term companioning of communities choosing to undertake deep, deliberate change, rrooted in the Graced Crossroads approach to deep change and transformation
-
Accompanying leadership — councils and leadership teams navigating transition, conflict, or the weight of decisions about the community's future
-
Speaking, retreats, and leadership gatherings — bringing themes of transformation, contemplation, and graced crossroads to congregations, federations, and international gatherings
-
Facilitating chapters and assemblies — on a selective basis, guiding the gatherings where a community is ready to do genuine discernment
Beginning a conversation
There is no single way this work begins. Sometimes a leadership team reaches out before a chapter. Sometimes a prioress or president writes simply to think out loud about what her community is facing. Sometimes a community has already decided to undertake deep change and wants a companion for the road.
Wherever you are, if these questions are alive in your community, I'd welcome a conversation.