Sister José Hobday was an international speaker and author of myriad essays and several books, contributor of articles to the magazine Praying. She wrote such famous works as Simple Living: The Path to Joy and Freedom; Stories of Awe and Abundance.
Background
Ethnicity:
Jose Hobday is a daughter of Seneca-Iroquois mother and Seminole father.
Hobday was born in 1929 in Texas, United States. She was baptized Joan - and raised in Colorado. Her mother, Esther, was a full-blood Seneca-Iroquois who converted to Catholicism. Her father, John, was a strict Southern Baptist and half-blood Seminole.
Education
Jose studied education, world religions, theology, literature, architecture, and engineering at several universities, and earned a Master's degree from the University of Notre Dame.
Career
Hobday taught high school and college classes. As a sought-after lecturer, Hobday traveled the world speaking about spirituality. It wasn't unusual for her to log 75,000 miles a year. In her teachings, lectures and books, Hobday combined her American Indian heritage with her Christian beliefs. Hobday served in Tucson for several years in the late 1970s and returned in 2004 as a member of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha Native American Parish on the Pascua Yaqui reservation in South Tucson.
As a writer, she published a collection of her forty-nine short essays only in 1996. Throughout the book, titled Stories of Awe and Abundance, Hobday describes how God was present to her as she grew up in the American Southwest.
Two years after the appearance of her debut book, Hobday published Simple Living.
Sr. Jose lived the final years of her life in Tucson. She died in 2009, she was 80.
Views
Quotations:
"Simplicity is bracing and requires a certain spirit of adventure. Real spirituality involves some risk."
Personality
Jose Hobday called herself a "student of life" and a "missionary-at-large."
Quotes from others about the person
"She was an extraordinary woman, very gifted. She was an eloquent speaker and could really impart the message of the Lord to the people. She could hold an audience in the palm of her hand." - Sister Maxine Hart.