On July 3rd, we celebrated my fifty-eighth year of life. This past year, I’ve struggled with anemia, and it means no matter how much I rest, I’m tired. Tired is not fun. It means naps are a required part of my day, and I miss those hours I lose to necessary sleep. However, I do have a doctor and she’s keeping me working on treating it –it’s the result of a combo of my medication and prior diagonsises. ... Read more
In the course of writing since 2004, I’ve told some stories more than once, always discovering there was more to learn from those moments than what I’d said before. Today at mass, a favorite gospel story came up, and it reminded me of my own dad’s experience of the storm at sea. Yesterday was his birthday and he would have been eighty-two. The big thing I keep coming back to from that story of when my dad and his fishing... Read more
Recently, I took a quiz from my local paper about where I want to go –and the bottom line is, I want to be by a pool or body of water with little to stop me from doing, or from doing nothing. I grew up with the beach as an expectation and reality, not a possibility. Now, it feels like life is too busy and too full to stop for such a long time, much less to be... Read more
So I wrote this post three days ago and thought I’d scheduled it to be published, but it vaporized into the internet underworld and fortunately, I’d saved some of it. I didn’t realize it hadn’t published until I tried to read it. So here we are, on the feast of the Sacred Heart. I made it to mass because it was my daughter’s end of the school year. She won an award. As a result, I managed my first, first... Read more
June 7th is the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Now I have heard of the devotion to the Sacred Heart and I have seen images. However, I’ve never practiced this devotion. In truth, I struggle with devotions, not because I doubt their efficaciousness, but because I lack the discipline My novenas tend to be septenas or dovenas or trevenas –but not all in sequence. Devotions which require exactitude are not my specialty. The spirit is willing but the... Read more
We all know the parable of the rich man who comes to Jesus and asks, “What must I do to merit eternal life?” to which ultimately, Jesus tells him to go and sell what he has and give to the poor so as to build up treasure in heaven, and to come and follow him. We don’t know if the man who went away sad because he owned much, recognized the caling to which he was being offered. Maybe he... Read more
“The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here.” –President Abraham Lincoln from the Gettysburg Address. This is the attitude everyone should hold if asked to give a speech at the end of a commencement. When someone says something that is memorable, skads of internet ink gets spilt taking the offending person to the woodshed. I won’t be doing that here, it’s been overdone. What I will do, is counsel aspiring graduation speakers. Given that I have... Read more
I love summer. It’s my favorite season, all of it. Every year we make a list and yes, a lot of it is tradition and repetitive, berry picking, ice cream trucks, going to the pool, reading a book, going to a drive in, hiking, fireworks, but part of the joy is thinking in advance about all the fun we will have. So I present on this Memorial Day Weekend, my summer list. It’s not all the usual stuff, but there... Read more
Quick! This is a test. Without googling, consulting your 8th grader preparing for Confirmation or opening the Catechism, name the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. We’re celebrating the feast of Pentecost this Sunday, and aught to know the gifts the third person of the Trinity brings to each of us when we experience our own sacrament of Pentecost. Write down what you remember old school, with a pencil. Tactile memory helps. It’s probably how you learned it the first... Read more
For those who are not dialed into the Catholic world, today is the 107th anniversary of the first time the Blessed Mother appeared to the three children in Fatima. The three children were Lúcia dos Santos and her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto. Happy feast of the Luminous Mysteries and Our Lady of Fatima. I knew the prayer of Fatima and the Luminous mysteries and had some understanding but never ventured to do a deeper dive into the account of Mary’s visitations with... Read more
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