New York, United States

I live in Brooklyn, a borough of New York City (U.S.A.). I teach early Jewish and early Christian history in the religion department of Barnard College/Columbia University. My neighborhood is home to large communities of Muslims and Jews, as well as Christians. In my parish I coordinate the work for interfaith relations. We work closely with a neighboring synagogue in a variety of projects. I am also active in vocations ministry. All of these activities bring me into collaboration and friendship with people of many cultures and ethnicities into my life and enrich my life.

 

 

As a girl, I was captivated by the beauty and mystery and love of God. Our home was on the edge of the prairie, in the U.S. Midwest, and in long walks I felt God’s presence in the open spaces, the silence and the sound of wind in the grain fields. I first met sisters in my parish school, and I was drawn to a life given to God in a way that was absolute. When I learned of Sion’s vocation to understanding and reconciliation between Christians and Jews, and its focus on the Word of God, it seemed like a natural step to ask to enter the Congregation. I have lived for many years in Brooklyn, a borough of New York. This is a city that includes a vast immigrant population, and large communities of Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus, as well as Jews and Christians. I am involved in interfaith relations in many contexts: the academic world, national organizations, the Sion international team. I am also involved in this work in the neighborhood in which I live, with its local parish, synagogue , mosque, and the encounters of every day in shops and on the streets. Wherever the conversation occurs, I am stretched by religious worlds that are different from my own. I am challenged to enter the struggle for political, economic and social justice. In sharing their worlds with me, friends, neighbors, students and colleagues invite me to meet ever more deeply the God I found as a girl walking on the prairie. Their faithfulness is an invitation to fidelity in my own response to the One who is love.