I remember sitting in our station wagon with my dad, brothers and sisters, while we waited for mom to finish cleaning the cottage we had rented for the week – cleaning the refrigerator, sweeping the floors, dusting, wiping down the counters. When asked why she bothered, after all we didn’t own the place, my mom […]
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While watching the Olympics this past week, it occurred to me that if worry were an Olympic event, I would definitely be a contender. In fact, I would expect to win a medal. After all, I learned from a gold-medal worrier, my mother. I was also recently struck by an article saying that biting your fingernails […]
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What’s better than reading a good book over the summer? How about reading twelve good books? If lounging on the beach or by the pool or curling up at night by a fire with a good book sound awesome to you, then join my Summer Reading Challenge. Summer Reading Challenge! If you follow me on […]
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How do we promote civil discourse in our contentious society? One way is by recognizing that it’s complicated – civil discourse that is. One of the Presentations I attended at the Festival of Faith and Writing was a presentation by Marilyn McEntyre, Writing Through a Fog of Fear: Finding Life-Giving Words in an Alarming Time. […]
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Somehow over the years, I’ve lost some of my delight in words. Gratefully now, I’m working on rediscovering the beauty of words. History with Words In high school, I used to play with words, at times seeing how many pages of description I could write for something familiar. I mean, how many ways can you […]
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Recently, as part of the Festival of Faith and Writing, I attended a presentation by Madeleine L’Engle’s granddaughter entitled, Rejection, Revision, Repetition: Lessons Learned from an Unpublished Novel by Madeleine L’Engle. It was precisely what I needed to hear. There were so many ways that L’Engle’s story was helpful. Below are my lessons from Madeleine […]
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Chances are you are familiar with the stereotypical faces of Alzheimer’s – empty gaze, lack of recognition of friends and family, incontinence. But there are so many more faces of Alzheimer’s, each as unique as the person behind the face. Personal Experience with Alzheimer’s In my twelve years as chaplain at a retirement community, I […]
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This year, Valentines Day and Ash Wednesday fall on the same day, February 14. What do they have in common? Hearts and ashes! Hearts and ashes? Both celebrate love! What greater love is there than the love of God who chose to become a man so that we would have a God who knows what […]
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The recent civil war controversy over Nikki Haley’s response to the question about the cause of the Civil War has brought back memories of Stillwell Junior High School and my history teacher William Nicholas. When Mr. Nicholas asked us what caused the Civil War, our response was “Slavery, duh.” “Are you sure?” he questioned back, […]
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This past week I read the Facebook post by Fr. James Martin about the passing of his friend and mentor, Sr. Martha Buser. I have never met Sr. Martha (nor have I met Fr. James Martin though I follow him on X, aka Twitter) but I was inspired by her, in particular by what she […]
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