F.L.O.W.cast

Today our guests are Tony Rothering, who teaches biology at Lincoln Land Community College in Springfield and Angelea Cook, a biology student, who works with Tony managing the bird banding site at Jubilee Farm.  

Next week marks the tenth anniversary of Laudato Si’, Pope Francis ground-breaking encyclical about the urgent need to care for Earth, our common home. In addition, this year, we celebrate a quarter-century of care for cre...

The hospice nurse carries a pocketful of medical tools; the chaplain, a pocketful of the Word of God. This is how hospice nurse Cyndi Lawson describes nurse-chaplain collaboration in hospice care. We will learn more from Cyndi and Sister Kelly as they share insights into their ministry during this edition of FLOWcast, a podcast “For the Life of the World” from the Dominican Sisters of Springfield. After their conversation, I talk w...

Is coffee the key to Christian unity? During the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, Dr. Jon Nilson, professor emeritus of Theology, Loyola University Chicago joins Sister Beth Murphy for a conversation about ecumenism in light of the most recent synod’s “conversations in the Spirit” about the ways Christian unity can enrich Catholicism, lead to a more synodal church, and bring about deep healing in the Body of Christ. Coffee and o...

Challenges related to language-learning for immigrant women often mean they are among the last in their families to learn English. The Springfield Dominican Sisters have opened a new literacy center to meet the language-learning needs of women and we need volunteer tutors to join us.

Sister Katherine O'Connor and tutor-volunteer Tammy McCormick talk about the new center and the rewards of being in relationship with women passionat...

Our focus is the Sunday liturgy. The Catholic Church, and other Christian traditions, too, use a lectionary, a kind of schedule of readings from the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, so worshipers can know what biblical texts will be used on any given Sunday. Here our guests share their experience preparing for Sunday liturgy using lectio divina—“holy reading.” Sister Phyllis has led a lectio divina group for several years, and Sist...

Two million square miles of rainforest in the Amazon River basin is the focus of the global Dominican family’s Month for Peace observance in 2023. Springfield Dominican Sister Mila Díaz Solano and Father Brendan Curran, a member of the Dominican central province and the North American co-promoter of justice for the Order of Preachers discuss the challenges facing the region and the dream of Dominicans in the Amazon for the people t...

The historic assembly of the “synod on synodality” concluded in Rome in October and ushered in a new era in the Roman Catholic Church—one from which we “can’t go back” according to some participants. Springfield Dominican Sisters Mila Diaz Solano and Barbara Blesse, theologians and experienced pastoral ministers, share the insights they’ve gleaned as observers from afar, and articulate sources of hope for the evolution of the churc...

The average worker changes careers 7-12 times in a lifetime and may change jobs every 12 months. If you sense an imminent career or job change, you will want to hear this F.L.O.W.cast episode. Our guest, Deanna Blackwell, a training specialist in intercultural engagement and diversity for the Peace Corps, has some thoughts on how to make that next, best move to a new career. She shares the insights she has gleaned from her experien...

Months before the ongoing, tragic conflict between Israel and Gaza, F.L.O.W.cast producer Sister Beth Murphy made plans for this conversation between her friends, Rabbi Eve Posen and Natalie Long. She knew that Rabbi Posen—an associate Rabbi at Congregation Neveh Shalom, Portland, Oregon, and Natalie—a self-identified “Catholic-leaning Protestant”—would be the perfect pairing for a conversation about Jewish Torah study and how it m...