"Play the real way." I can't identify the moment I noticed that when the children I counsel in my rural school told me about a game they liked to play they no longer meant tag or UNO or imaginary pirates, but a favorite video game. I do remember suggesting a board game as a fun … Continue reading Picture Book Biographies: Childhoods of Self-Discovery Lead to Meaningful Lives
I discovered the power of wind and fire the hard way. I was a thirty-something mom of two toddlers and my husband and I had rented a little home in the country surrounded by open fields. One breezy spring afternoon, having returned from grocery shopping, I put the kids down for a nap, gathered up … Continue reading Pentecost: The Wind that Spreads the Fire
Back in 2017, Bill Gates included Hillbilly Elegy among his summer reading recommendations. Having come from an advantaged home in Seattle, Gates said he reads memoirs like this to understand another side of America. "Through deeply personal stories like these, 'Hillbilly Elegy' sheds light on our nation's vast cultural divide — a topic that has … Continue reading Hillbilly Elegy’s Window into Addiction and Disfunction Rings True
In a dusty corner of my little adobe house, a neglected old guitar stands and waits. That wait may be a long one; I'm a busy woman, and nobody wants her but me. But she isn't worried; she knows I'll be back. I will come to her corner, dust her gently and tuck her under … Continue reading Make Me an Instrument of Peace. Like my Stella Guitar.
Every Holy Week, when the Palm Sunday readings take us from the adulation of the crowd at Christ's Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem to their cries to crucify him only days later, the lyrics of a Bruce Cockburn song from The Charity of Night rise in my mind. They turned their backsI made it too hardEvery … Continue reading Bruce Cockburn’s The Whole Night Sky: A Holy Week Interpretation
I lost a brother last month. I'm the oldest sibling in my family and the only sister. Andy, the middle of my three younger brothers, lost his life to COVID-19 on February 10. A grieving heart wants to review the details of what happened. It wants to relive the memories. It wants to make sense … Continue reading “It Does Not Appear What We Shall Be” – Reflections on the Loss of a Brother
My kid brother Mark was a huge Billy Joel fan and there was one afternoon in our parents' home when he defended his hero in words I'll never forget. I had nothing against Billy Joel; he was spellbinding then as now. But I do tune in to the messages conveyed in lyrics. On the day … Continue reading Government, Grace & the God of the Gaps
One afternoon during the COVID-19 lockdown of 2020, I listened to a lecture on the joys of reading. I love reading and I needed joy. Steven Jonathan Rummelsburg, a veteran teacher, offered the following reasons for becoming a more intentional reader, particularly of the classics: to grow in wonder, to join more fully in the … Continue reading Begin Your Reading Year with this Book (and Live Your Own Story Well)
"It is difficult to sum up the year now ending in a few words. So much has happened during this year and yet I cannot see what its real message is for me, or its real achievement....Hardship and hunger and violence have intensified and are now more shattering than anyone could have imagined." With left … Continue reading Nazi Prison New Year: The Integrity of Alfred Delp
Two days before Christmas in 1949, Thomas Merton returned to his room in Kentucky's Abbey of Gethsemani and opened his mail. He had received a postcard bearing Fra Angelico's golden rendering of the Annunciation, the moment when the Angel Gabriel appeared to Mary with the invitation to bring God into the world through her own … Continue reading Contemplating Christmas Cards with Thomas Merton
