My name is Linda Leib. I am presently serving as Executive Director/Promotion Minister for the Bridges Foundation. After working as a nurse practitioner for 35 years, at the turn of the millennium, I gained an MA in Theology from St. Louis University and during that time found the Bridges Retreat in Daily Life. For several years after graduation and receiving the Spiritual Exercises, I participated in the Christian Life Community and then, about 10 years ago, decided to work to become a Bridges Prayer Companion.
I am married to Mel and we have two sons. Jeff and Emily are in Portland, Oregon, and Dan and Kate live 15 minutes south of our Bridgeton home. Neither Mel nor I are native St. Louisans. We met while serving as captains in the U.S. Air Force. Mel was a pilot and I was a pediatric nurse practitioner. We came to St. Louis 40 years ago for Mel’s work at McDonnell- Douglas, now Boeing. I worked at Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital and then in a private pediatric office.
I grew up in Western New York State, in a small Protestant village in the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains. While being looked upon as “different,” at a very early age, I needed to discern the value of the Catholic faith. I was graced with an early “knowing” of the beauty and the mystery of the Blessed Sacrament and the reality that we live in a sacramental world! The gift of the Protestant culture was bringing me to the wonder and a thirst for Scripture. This thirst was finally filled in my parish scripture small groups, at SLU, and now in Ignatian imaginative prayer.
I continue in my Christian Life Community Sacred Circle Small Group. I am grateful for the opportunity to share Ignatian Spirituality as a Prayer Companion, in Magis and as an officer working to implement the goals of the Bridges Foundation. My participation in the St. Louis Ignatian community has filled my life, both from the qualities and depth of the spirituality and the comradery of all the good people I find around me.