Most years, I read 50 books a year. Each year, someone will inevitably ask me for book recommendations. I thought I’d share some of my favorite reads for this year. Maybe you need Christmas gift recommendations or are just stocking up for the next lockdown. Here are my favorite reads from this year.
Read MoreWhat if St. Monica had written Confessions instead of her son? In Motherhood: A Confession author Natalie Carnes responds to St. Augustine’s work. Each of the thirteen chapters of the book center on a theme found in Augustine’s Confessions which is written as a prayer to God.
Read MoreWhy not notice the sweet, simple things all around us each day? In giving ourselves permission to notice, to hold onto these small moments, we build a life of gratitude.
Read MoreCheck out my book review on Carey Wallace’s Stories of the Saints for U.S. Catholic
Read MoreThe spiritual practice of memento mori confronts death, until we no longer find it frightening.
Read MoreThere 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 MoreMy 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 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 MoreThere is a distinctly American fear; the fear of being average.
Read MoreMy 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 MoreWhen our memories are inseparable from the formation and understanding of our self, what does it mean to pray, "Lord, receive my memory."
Read MoreMy 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 MoreI wrote about finding encouragement during the pandemic from St. Paul and some ways to keep connected to Christ during a pandemic.
Read MoreI 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 MoreCaravaggio’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 MoreMy 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 MoreAbsolutely 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.
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 More“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 MoreThrives on moments where storytelling, art and faith collide.
I must pinch myself that I am part of this collection from Ignatius Press ! It comes out next month but is available for preorder now.
How easily we forget that we are, at every moment, shaped with care by a Creator. Artists, however—who know intimately the blood, sweat, and tears of the creative process—can help us sense how marvelous it is to be created: the patience, the detail, the joy. In this essential collection, thirty-one Christian artists from various disciplines, from music to poetry to film to sculpture, offer personal essays on the strange experience of following God’s lead by making beautiful things.
Goldberg is much more practical than many of the texts that I have read. She gives you much to hold onto.
If you know me, you know I love encounters with strangers. Here is one that left me encouraged.
First time writing for Catholic World Report. I have wanted to tell this story for a long time. Read my essay on the theology of the body as it pertains to our last moments here on earth.
If we keep our eyes on Jesus, small acts of service and love, like those lived out by St. Francis Xavier, will reap more rewards than we could ever imagine.