Finding God in an Art Gallery
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If you know me, you know I love encounters with strangers. Here is one that left me encouraged.
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A Letter to Say ‘Thanks’ to the Workers Building Skyscrapers
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I see you bouncing up and down the hill in packs of three or four or six, with your yellow hard hats and your weighty shoes and your igloo coolers with lunches large enough to sustain a teenage athlete or a member of Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery or … a construction worker.
Read MoreStrangers and the Funny Papers
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I think we want to see goodness in each other again. This past year we began to view each other as the enemy. But now, with our faces open, we see the Imago Dei, the image of God, shine out of our being.
Read MoreThe Weight of Attending Mass For Those Who Cannot
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I wrote this as a love letter to the Church I am so mystically connected to.
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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 MoreJohn Cheever's "The Enormous Radio"
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There is a distinctly American fear; the fear of being average.
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 MoreJagged Prayers
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“You once said that if you didn’t write, you’d wash your hands all day. This is true for me too, though it manifests itself in other ways: list-making, organizing, cleaning until I see disorder in every inch of my house. Writing becomes a compulsive behavior too, a way of finding clarity, of moving through the pain into something beautiful.”
Read MoreEbenezer: Marking God’s Protection with a ‘Stone of Help’
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I was driving home on a major street in downtown Seattle when a middle-aged man riding his bike to work slipped on a light-rail track. He, along with his bike, tumbled across the double yellow line and into oncoming traffic — specifically, my car.
Read MoreTo Give and Not Count the Cost
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My heart always sinks at the line in the Prayer for Generosity, “to give and not to count the cost,” because if I am truly honest with myself, I know I am always calculating the cost.
Read MoreSharing a Moment with a Stranger on Vacation
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Entering Westminster Abbey on vacation with my 10-year-old son, I overheard a man with an American accent ask, “Can we take photos?”
“No, sorry, sir,” the docent apologized.
I remembered being disappointed my last visit when I realized no photos were allowed.
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Waving to a Stranger
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Do you wave to strangers? I do!
Well, not all the time.
Read about an experience I had while in Sabbatical in Italy over at Ignatian Spirituality.
Read MoreThe Light of Grace is Always Shining
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Poet Chris Anderson speaks of the Examen in this way: “The light of grace is always shining, it’s always pouring down, through it’s refracted and scattered and easy to miss, and so one way to pray is to look back on the moments of our day and recall when we saw the light breaking through.”
Read MoreA Secret Gift
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It is rare that I’ll remember a sweet memory associated with my father. Most of my memories of him are intertwined with fear and anxiety. And yet...
Read MoreWhy I taught my kids to call our homeless neighbors 'Peace Men'
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Why I taught my kids to call our homeless neighbors 'Peace Men'
In these women and men I see my sister, myself, my God.
Why is Loneliness Difficult to Confess?
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Olivia Laing describes loneliness as “difficult to confess; difficult too to categorize. Like depression, a state with which it often intersects, it can run deep in the fabric of a person, as much a part of one’s being as laughing easily or having red hair.” Laing’s words left me gasping, like a sucker punch to the gut.
Read MoreAdventures in Mexico City
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I just got back from an epic vacation with my family to Mexico City.
Read MoreDepeche Mode: Becoming Part of the Mass
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My whole body is goosebumps as I hear the songs I listened to secretly on my Walkman, late at night as my parents would fight outside my room. These songs made me feel like I wasn’t the only person who thought things weren’t right in this world.
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