Memento Mori: Confronting Death to Live Well
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The spiritual practice of memento mori confronts death, until we no longer find it frightening.
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Everything is Precious
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There are moments when I am driving in my car or taking a walk and everything my eyes land on is beautiful and precious to me. These moments do not happen often, so when they do, I really notice.
Read MoreAll Souls’ Day: Reflections, traditions and prayers
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If you were to walk past my parish on your dark and damp walk on the evening of Nov. 2 in years past, you would have heard the strains of Mozart’s Requiem drifting outward from the bronze doors of St. James Cathedral, Seattle.
Read MoreSecond Degree Joy
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My mother loved the sound of the sea. Listening to its rhythm subdued memories that shifted in her heart and soothed pain she carried in the present. There weren’t many books on our shelves at home but there were bits of the sea: sand dollars, bleached white in the sun, starfish and coral with their neon colors and iridescent abalone, mementos from childhood vacations.
Read MoreJoan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking
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Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking examines the year after her husband John dies of a heart attack. During this year, not only is she grieving the lost of her husband, but their only daughter is gravely ill. In this year of intense grief, Didion thinks to herself, John might return.
Read MoreJohn Cheever's "The Enormous Radio"
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There is a distinctly American fear; the fear of being average.
Read MoreHow Can I Keep From Singing?
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My young sons cannot, will not, be silent.
It’s not that they talk a lot, though they can and do. It is that they sing — all the time.
Read MoreLord Receive My Memory
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When our memories are inseparable from the formation and understanding of our self, what does it mean to pray, "Lord, receive my memory."
Read MorePrayers Before Zoom School
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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 MoreFinding and Keeping Faith During a Pandemic
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I wrote about finding encouragement during the pandemic from St. Paul and some ways to keep connected to Christ during a pandemic.
Read MoreFinding Meaning in Laundry and Dishes
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I have spent more time in my house this year than any other. I know you have too.
Because I have been in my house so many hours, days, weeks, months, my life seems to be all about laundry, dishes, vacuuming and cleaning that little area right around the base of the toilet.
Read MoreThe Moment of Inhale
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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 MoreTrumpet Joy
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My ten-year-old plays the trumpet. I’m not just saying this because I’m his mother or because we have the same soul-searching eyes and fiery tempers, but this kid can play. I mean, he swings. He blows, bounces, and blips like he was born in the wrong decade.
Read MoreFind God everywhere with writer Brian Doyle
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Absolutely honored to write about my hero and favorite writer, Brian Doyle for U.S. Catholic Magazine! In Doyle I found a kindred spirit. Like me, he found God in the ordinary...well everywhere really. His words breathed life into my faith.
Summer Prayer
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Will we look back at this time with nostalgia? Will we be reminded of the time we learned to be our true selves, the ones you created us to be? Will we remember this was the beginning of something beautiful or sacred?
Read MoreThe Hope of Sidewalk Victory Gardens
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“I love the sheer audacity of these gardens. In the midst of a global pandemic and civil unrest, there are people who endeavor to thrive.”
Read MoreIn Times of Suffering, God's Love Strengthens Us
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My latest column for Northwest Catholic . St Paul wrote that nothing can separate us from the love of God. These words for a Roman community facing oppression connected with me as 15 year old goth wannabe and speak to me now in our new found isolation and turmoil.
Read MorePicture This: Using Art As a Path to the Holy Spirit
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Today I sit with artist Andrew Wyeth’s “Wind From the Sea”…I close my eyes and take a few deep breaths to quiet my heart and mind. I invite God to speak to me through the picture.”
Read MoreShow and Tell
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Your childhood sounds magical.
It was not. My childhood was filled with fear and want. Love dissipated like morning fog in the afternoon sun.
Looking at shadow boxes with my son, I know his childhood is magical. I created the world he was placed in.
Read MorePatience: Catholics are people who wait — and people who love
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We are waiting. Waiting for what? We don’t really know.
We used to wait in line, on hold, in traffic. We waited with anticipation for dinner with friends, our cousin’s wedding or that big vacation. Now, waiting for a routine cleaning at the dentist office sounds like a luxury.
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