Two days with the sisters have provided plenty to think about.

One great challenge with having faith, Eileen says, is suffering. The questions of why we suffer and who is responsible for suffering are some of the biggest we face. In a monotheistic tradition – a religious tradition that believes in one God -- who do believers blame when a child dies? Or when innocent human beings are killed and tortured? When disease or drugs or crippling poverty lay waste to humanity?

Eileen believes we do “God’s work” while we’re here, but “not as puppets. We’re not manipulated.”

God refuses to withdraw the element of freedom to choose, whatever the consequences of those choices might be, she says. “There’s a part of the mystery in freedom that is the essence of living.”