Prayers Before Zoom School

Prayers Before Zoom School

My children, like so many in COVID times, are in Zoom school. Each morning we take our laptops to separate parts of the house to work, but before that we have what I like to call “Casa G Academy Morning Assembly.”

We meet in the living room 10 minutes before their school check-in. I make a few announcements like, We have online violin lessons later in the day, or, We need to eat the bananas before they go bad, or, Please, if you love your mother, spend a few minutes on the puzzle today, because I’m really getting tired of looking at it on the dining room table.

Read More

The Moment of Inhale

The Moment of Inhale

Caravaggio’s art is incomplete without our gaze, the painted narrative waits for our eyes to unravel it. He needs us, the viewers, for the mystery in his paintings to be revealed. As his hues and figures set the stage for a narrative already in motion, Caravaggio allows the viewer to interrupt a story in progress, beholding the precise moment that the narrative curves from ordinary to astonishing."

Read More

Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church

Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church

The first time Mary became part of my faith, I was a sleep-deprived new mother. I hadn’t grown up Catholic and converted just a year before my son joined our family. As I nursed him in a darkened room, in the middle of the night, I realized that Mary had fed Jesus just like this. I found this comforting as I looked down at my son, his long eyelashes wet with tears from calling to me in the dark, and prayed that he too would know her Son.

Read More