He was Simon’s younger brother. He had introduced his tough, zealous brother to Jesus, and Jesus had renamed Simon Peter, Rock. But Andrew, Peter’s younger brother, wasn’t a big name among the disciples. He didn't go up the mountain with Peter, James and John. He was Christ’s humble friend. His heart was pure enough listen … Continue reading A Younger Brother, a Boy’s Lunch and Bread for the Life of the World
He was so old “his body was as good as dead.” Ages ago, or so it seemed to him and his menopausal wife, he’d left the land of the Chaldeans and led servants and livestock on a journey to a land God had promised to show him. “I will bless you,” God revealed to his … Continue reading The Old Man Whose Belief Became a Blessing for us All
Each dark December we center the old Advent wreath on the dining room table, pressing fresh candles into their holders and sprucing the base with evergreen. It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness, we’re reminded. Our hearts are heavy but their burden is light. The wreath’s first candle, all violet … Continue reading The Advent Wreath: A Crescendo of Hope
I once saw a kitschy Christmas card featuring a photograph of a straw-filled manger. The caption read “King-sized Bed.” Despite its triteness, that caption stayed with me. The thought of God’s choice, binding himself to humanity by becoming one of us and in lowly circumstances whose fanfare was known only to shepherds and star-studying Magi … Continue reading The Call of the Small: An Advent Invitation
T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock speaks heavily into our contemporary souls of "time to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet." Who are we, really, aside from our curated Instagram personas, our virtue signals and our self-justifications? What is the truth we hide even from ourselves? In Till … Continue reading C.S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces and the Slow Liberation of Our True Selves
With lights dimmed and screen illuminated in my optometrist's examination room, he and I review my latest retinal scan, one eye at at time. My eye appears as an orange globe networked with a map of red blood vessels. The scan allows him to detect signs of early eye disease, tears in the retina and … Continue reading How to Remove the Speck in Your Neighbor’s Eye
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
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
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
