{"id":3931,"date":"2005-08-13T22:48:34","date_gmt":"2005-08-13T22:48:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/dear-god-1.html"},"modified":"2005-08-13T22:48:34","modified_gmt":"2005-08-13T22:48:34","slug":"dear-god-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/dear-god-1.html","title":{"rendered":"Dear God&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Another article on the Sisters of Mary of the Eucharist in Ann Arbor, this one from the Detroit Free-Press. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.freep.com\/features\/living\/websister14e_20050814.htm\">Rather unusual for a newspaper article, considering it is structured as a prayer&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p><em><span class=\"i\">Dear God: How do you capture the soul of a community?<\/span> <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><span class=\"i\">How do you get people to care about a convent? After so many Catholic schools closed in Detroit? When there is such a shortage of priests and nuns?<\/span> <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><span class=\"i\">How do you get your arms around something that sounds so old-fashioned?<\/span> <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><\/em><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"i\"><em>I struggled with how to tell this story, to capture this unique place with the right tone, until Sister John Paul told me to pray about it, to ask for guidance &#8212; and it&#8217;s only fitting, because prayer is at the center of her life; it&#8217;s at the center of this place. <\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><em><\/em><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"i\"><em>And in this world, where the sisters take their relationship with God to a level that is almost beyond comprehension, each becoming the bride of Christ, prayer explains everything.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span class=\"i\">Rather remarkable.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Another article on the Sisters of Mary of the Eucharist in Ann Arbor, this one from the Detroit Free-Press. Rather unusual for a newspaper article, considering it is structured as a prayer&#8230; Dear God: How do you capture the soul of a community? How do you get people to care about a convent? After so&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Dear God... - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/dear-god-1.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dear God... - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Another article on the Sisters of Mary of the Eucharist in Ann Arbor, this one from the Detroit Free-Press. 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After so&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/dear-god-1.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2005-08-13T22:48:34+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Dear God... - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/dear-god-1.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Dear God... - Via Media","og_description":"Another article on the Sisters of Mary of the Eucharist in Ann Arbor, this one from the Detroit Free-Press. Rather unusual for a newspaper article, considering it is structured as a prayer&#8230; Dear God: How do you capture the soul of a community? How do you get people to care about a convent? After so&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/dear-god-1.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2005-08-13T22:48:34+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/dear-god-1.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/dear-god-1.html","name":"Dear God... - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2005-08-13T22:48:34+00:00","dateModified":"2005-08-13T22:48:34+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/dear-god-1.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/dear-god-1.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/dear-god-1.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Dear God&#8230;"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3931\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}