So I hopped on Facebook today and found a fierce discussion going on about Heaven, Hell, Purgatory and Freewill. The best way I can explain the reality of Hell is God’s final act of love to the soul blocking/unfriending Him. Anyone who does not want a relationship, shall not have it imposed upon them (hell is the rejection of God’s offer of friendship). God loves them beyond their rejection, and so they continue to be. (STILL HAVING TROUBLE WITH PICTURES SO... Read more
IMAGINE A PICTURE OF A CALENDAR HERE WITH A DATE CIRCLED IN RED. IMAGINE THE DATE IS CROSSED OUT IN BLACK. IMAGINE ANOTHER DATE CIRCLED IN RED. IMAGINE THAT ONE IS CROSSED OUT TOO. NOW IMAGINE THE NEXT DATE JUST GOT PROPOSED. In comedy and in life it seems, the rule of three applies. We’re set for Thursday, July 29th. I wrote a whole piece on how when I’m stressed, I do crazy things like binge watch 30 Rock, eat... Read more
Photo by Daria Shevtsova from Pexels There’s a commercial for a famous brand of macaroni and cheese, where the mother chases the child with vegetables and she only finds peace when she surrenders the attempt to make her daughter eat the green stuff, and gives her what she wants –the pasta with the powdered cheese mix. Serene music plays and everyone wins. Except the child did not eat what the child did not want to eat, and the mother got peace at... Read more
Today, I have a piece over at the National Catholic Register on Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton. It took two visits to help me really flesh out and get the experience. Here’s the piece, and I hope you get the chance to visit the Shrine at Emittsburg, and see what she has to say to you too. https://www.ncregister.com/features/st-elizabeth-ann-seton-the-humanity-of-sainthood-is-on-display-in-new-exhibit Read more
As a Catholic, we’re always supposed to mindful of the liturgical season; Advent, Christmas, Ordinary Time, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, Ordinary Time. Advent, the weeks leading up to Christmas, is a time of blessed waiting. I have been waiting to find the right people to perform surgery on me since May 17th. The time of blessed waiting, needs to be over. “I need a little Christmas, right this very minute. A surgeon at the ready, a hospital bed that’s waiting, yes... Read more
We took the kids swimming this Sunday at the pool with the high diving board. I hadn’t planned to revisit the foolishness of two weeks ago, as my knees still remembered my inadvertent flip. However, we weren’t the only ones to hit the pool this weekend. We watched as a woman with Down Syndrome in her mid thirties plunged fearlessly over and over again into the pool from the high dive. An elderly man also took to jumping. Courage begat... Read more
Sometimes, you need to dare in prayer. God doesn’t mind. In fact, He delights when we ask big real things of Him, because it offers Him the permission He requires of our free will to act in a way bigger than we can even rationally or reasonably expect or dare to request. My mantra for a very long time has been, “I can be unreasonable with God because God is the only one who is happy to be unreasonable with... Read more
Back in high school, I took part in every spring musical. Senior year, we performed “Little Mary Sunshine,” a play so obscure, there are only trace samplings on the internet. One of the songs I can’t find, includes the refrain; “Nothing that concerns you has happened. *Echoing chorus sings, “Has happened…” and again, “Nothing that concerns you has taken place!” Right now, waiting for a surgeon and a team to take ownership of me as a patient, feels like singing... Read more
Dear Nation, It’s July 4th, 2021. We’re a tired people who have so much more to our history than we learned in high school. Our nation needs all of us to rediscover that being a people takes work. We must celebrate both the ideals that made our country what it is to the world, and work to make it more like the ideal everyone hopes it is. Being a patriot of this country does not mean ignoring flaws, faults, sins... Read more
Today, the words that fell on my heart, were we are more than the sum of our faults. The devil would have us believe we are only as good as our accomplishments, and likewise, only the sum of those, all of which are invalidated by our sins, by our flaws, by our failures. Working with my own students, I’ve found that all of them have become dimmer versions of themselves. We’ve all lost some of our salt or... Read more
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In