Lecturer to bring global spirituality to university

SALT LAKE CITY — Medical Mission Sister Miriam Therese Winter will present this year’s annual Aquinas lectures at St. Catherine of Siena Newman Center, 170 S. University Street, Salt Lake City, Feb. 10 at 7:00 p.m. and Feb. 11 at 1:30 p.m. A professor of liturgy, worship, and spirituality, she is also director of the Women’s Leadership Institute at the interdenominational Hartford Seminary in Hartford, Conn.

Sr. Miriam enjoys exploring "global themes," evidenced by her recent lectures in Singapore, a predominantly Muslim country. Her lecture in Salt Lake City is entitled "Spirituality in a world of change."

"I’m interested in the connection between science and spirituality; I could have titled this talk spirituality in a quantum universe," said Sr. Miriam in a telephone interview with the Intermountain Catholic.

"I want to help people make sense of the chaos in our lives as something not necessarily negative but rather as a part of the reality in which we live," she said. "I want to help people broaden their perspective, not simply by having a global perspective, but by letting that perspective get into our lives and our spirituality.

Sr. Miriam posits many questions for discussion: "What is spiritualiy? Is spirituality the same as religion, is it different? What is our relationship to people on the other side of the planet, what is our relationship to the planet?"

To Sr. Miriam, the universal awareness and perspective can only become part of the person through discussion. "We have to cultivate an openness to something that is different beyond ourselves, one that might pull us beyond our comfort zone, and not be so quick to demonize or exclude that which we do not understand," she said.

"I would hope for more conversation circles where we could talk about the things we usually don’t talk about. Our lives are full of trivia and things that seem urgent; instead, we ignore that which is deepest in value, leaving us unprepared for the larger things in our lives.

"We’re up to date with the latest technology – either we have it or ignore it – but we’re not up to date with conversations about God and the sacred. There have been vast changes throughout this discussion in the last 40 years but so much of our perspective within our religious lives and the way we think about religion and spirituality has remained the same."

Winter has published a dozen books, many of them about women in the Bible and women’s spirituality. Her latest titles include "The Singer and the Song: an Autobiography of the Spirit" and "eucharist with a small e." She has also produced several CDs of her original songs, including the gold record album "Joy is Like the Rain" and "Mass of a Pilgrim People," recorded live in front of a sell-out audience at Carnegie Hall in New York in 1967.

Sr. Miriam travels throughout the world addressing issues of justice and gender, peace and reconciliation, global inequity and concern for the planet, and our responsibility to reach out to those in need. She has also ministered to refugees in camps on the Thai-Cambodian border, to starving Ethiopian children, and, for the past 14 years, to women at York Correctional Institution in Niantic, Conn.