Welcome to my blog. Welcome to my life: Experiences on the public speaking circuit;
visiting prisoners and victims’ families; cooking up Cajun red beans or chicken
stew: playing my saxophone (got it at a pawn shop/ardent beginner); my writing
projects in process (articles, op eds, books – I’m presently writing a book for
Orbis Press about my experiences with poor women in Nicaragua); and my writing
process: what happens as I face the blank page, the adventure of discovery as a
book unfolds, poetry that rises up from my soul… "I awoke, my heart
growing flowers…"; sharing very interesting letters I get from people
from all over the world, who have seen the film of Dead Man Walking or read the
book and those who have read The Death of Innocents; my experiences with the
opera of Dead Man Walking, which premiered in San Francisco in 2000 and
recently opened in Europe in Dresden, Germany, and I was there to do talks and
media interviews to introduce people to the story; what’s going on with the
stage play of Dead Man Walking in universities and some high schools now in its
third year (hop over to the Play Project web site to learn more).

I’ll take you with me on my learning curve: The web of life
and how we humans (urgently) need to learn to live in a mutually enhancing way
with Earth. In the last two weeks of August I’ll be at Genesis Farm, an
ecological learning center in Blairstown, N.J., taking Earth Literacy. Everything’s
connected, life is whole, and my spirituality is broadening, deepening to see
the holy Spirit in all of life. This leads me to partner with Sister Marya
Grathwohl, OSF, in doing conferences and retreats which bring together human
rights (my bailiwick) and the crisis of Earth (Marya’s bailiwick).

And, well, throw into the mix life, liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness: books I read, people I admire, my fledgling art projects with
sketches and watercolor.

I’m intrigued by people who unleash energy in the world (finally
it’s all about energy: isn’t love the greatest energy of all?), and not just
social justice activists but people like the Beatles, people like Elvis Presley
and, of course, people like Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King. And Father
Roy Bourgeois, who almost single-handedly raised awareness of the torture
training center at the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia. Ten
thousand people gather there every year to call for an end to torture and
military solutions to world conflicts, always on the weekend before
Thanksgiving. I’ll be there this year, too, as I have been for the past
three years.

My faith, which I try to live, not just talk about, is at
the heart of what I do, how I move, what I see. I am urgently, terribly,
white-hot concerned about what the right-wing folks are doing to Jesus,
twisting his message to uphold wealthy people getting wealthier while poor
people suffer and die, promoting the death penalty, war, and torture-as
"Christian". Yuck! Augh! I gotta speak out about that…poor Jesus,
taken hostage by the right-wing Christians. I have puuullllenty to say about
that…

I invite you to share your ideas, comments, humor, and
please, humor in any form – we can’t make it without humor. Whatever your heart
feels and thinks. Every week I’ll be back and respond. I like this online discourse,
riding the waves of cyberspace, you and me connecting, touching each other’s
souls like this.

Be free. Don’t get hung up on the nun thing and think you
have to talk to me in a nunny way.  And I’ll bet you a dime to a dollar
you can’t tell me a nun joke I haven’t already heard.  Just click the
Comments link below, drop me a line, and I’ll be looking for you.

Sister Helen