Vivian Fernandez:  

Vivian is from Santiago de Cuba, Cuba. She is widowed. Her schools include Miami High School. She later attended Florida International University (Psychology). She works(ed) at St. Michael the Archangel Roman Catholic Church, Cherokee County Board of Education. Vivian's interests include Gospel of Mark, World Youth Day, Gospel of John. Music she likes includes El Santo Rosario Como lo rezaba Padre Pío, Kool & the Gang, Barry Manilow. Movies she likes include The Daniel Project, For Greater Glory. TV shows she likes include HISTORY, Eternal Word Television Network, Discovery Channel. One of Vivian's favorite quotes is:""But let us leave the surface, and without leaving the world, plunge into God. There, and from there, in him and through him, we shall hold all things and have command of all things. There we shall one day rediscover the essence and brilliance of all the flowers and lights which we were forced to abandon so as to be faithful to life" Teilhardt de Chardin. In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness. The whole illusion of a separate holy existence is a dream. Not that I question the reality of my vocation, or of my monastic life: but the conception of "separation from the world" that we have in the monastery too easily presents itself as a complete illusion .... [W]e are in the same world as everybody else, the world of the bomb, the world of race hatred, the world of technology, the world of mass media, big business, revolution, and all the rest .... This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud .... To think that for sixteen or seventeen years I have been taking seriously this pure illusion that is implicit in so much of our monastic thinking .... I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun. Thomas Merton “Our id...Expand for more