Conversations at the Well - by Jung Eun Sophia Park & Teresa Maya (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Are religious women in the United States disappearing and finally dying out? Or is there any new way of religious life emerging? Conversations at the Well tries to respond to this question. In the twenty-first century of the global world, newly emerging religious life would be rooted with the Jesus Movement and develop in the spirit of collaboration, networking, and intercultural living. As the liminal space, religious life is located at the margins, subverting the existing social order and creating a new vision for the world. This book explores an alternative meaning of religious life within the context of the apostolic mission. In this new religious life, the concept of community is not limited to living as a community in the convent, but extended into collaborating friendship. Primarily, the apostolic religious life is deeply related to social justice, delinking the global capitalism in which many people suffer from human trafficking, immigration, and exile. The new leader of religious women would require skill in handling uncertainty, amplifying resources, and opening to the new reality. In this new religious life, spirituality would be articulated as freedom and liberation to let go of the old frame, as well as letting the new life become reality. In this way, as radical disciples, religious women in the twenty-first century embody the Jesus Movement, building bridges between different cultures and people.

Review Quotes

"Jung Eun Sophia Park and Tere Maya have produced a remarkably lucid and original reflection on the reality of religious life today and where it is going. . . . Breaking new ground in the conversation, this well-written and insightful reflection makes a much needed contribution to our efforts to understand and imagine the future of all forms of ministry in these times of epochal change."
--Allan Figueroa Deck, SJ, Loyola Marymount University

"Sophia Park, SNJM, invites women religious to see the present moment as a graced, if difficult, period that can be--indeed already is--taking religious life to a new moment."
--Elizabeth Liebert, SNJM, San Francisco Theological Seminary

About the Author

Jung Eun Sophia Park, SNJM, is associate professor in Religious Studies and Philosophy Department at Holy Names University, CA. She is the author of A Hermeneutic on Dislocation as Experience (2011), Border-Crossing Spirituality (2019), and the editor of Interreligious Pedagogy (2018). She is also the author of several books on women's spirituality in Korean, including Beauty of the Broken (2015), How Women Experience Transformation? (2017), and Time for Sorrow (2019).



Tere Maya, CCVI, has served as a teacher, history professor, and administrator. She has passion for the formation of ministers for Hispanics/Latinos in the United States. Sister Tere got her BA at Yale University, her MA at the Graduate Theological Union at Berkeley, and a PhD in El Colegio de Mexico in Mexico City. She is currently serving as congregational leader for her congregation and in the presidency for the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR).