It hurts to go to Mass alone on Mothers’ Day. I’ve healed so much the past several years, but sometimes the old hurts still sting. I am happy hundreds of days out of three hundred sixty-five, every year for the past two or three years, but sometimes the old grief chokes me. Sometimes I catch myself being happy, and it feels unfamiliar, which reminds me of the feelings underneath. The other night I had that dream I thought... Read more
Things go on as they always have, with variations. The guinea pig is elderly but active as ever, and she likes to graze on weeds while I prepare the garden for summer. I’ve got plants nearly bursting out of their pots in the dining room, just waiting for the night time temperature to stop dipping below forty, just like every May. The cat likes to go in and out of her basement hideaway so often that when I... Read more
The discourse is on the death penalty again. My veteran readers know that I am against the death penalty because I’m a Catholic who tries to hold a consistent life ethic. That’s what Catholics are supposed to do, and I’m doing my best. So I wasn’t at all surprised when Pope Leo XIV reiterated what we already knew last Tuesday: “The Catholic Church has consistently taught that each human life, from the moment of conception until natural death, is sacred... Read more
The sunflowers will not stop. In 2023, I planted a few different varieties of sunflower in my garden to see what would happen. I ended up with great towering blooms that I left to dry out until frost as a treat for the birds. The birds dropped seeds. The next year, and every year thereafter, I have had scores of free cross-pollenated sunflowers, growing out of the garden beds and the compost. Every year I transplant as many as... Read more
I don’t want to talk about modesty. In fact, I refuse to talk about modesty. It’s the least interesting subject in all of internet Catholic discourse and it just doesn’t matter to me anymore. I don’t want to talk about modesty any more than I want to talk about felt banners (which I don’t mind) or tambourines (which I loathe) or the song “Mary, Did You Know?” The modesty discourse is a meme from 2019 and we all need... Read more
I can’t tell you what it’s like to be a good Christian. But I can tell you a few things about nature, in northern Appalachia, in the springtime. I hadn’t seen nearly enough of nature this Spring. I had been so tired. I was finishing up my school year of classes at the church outreach, nearly done for the year but not quite. I was trying to get things in order to plant the backyard garden since it’s nearly May.... Read more
I saw that photo, of an IDF soldier smashing a crucifix in Lebanon. I saw it several times. Everywhere I scrolled on social media, I saw it: a rather pink plaster corpus, upside down with his feet in the air, and a man slamming into it with a great big hammer. It hurt just to look at, and as I looked, a thousand images ran through my mind– not words or sentences or morals of the story, just images and... Read more
I’m calling the sunflowers “The LaBelle Special.” Sunflowers are a flower that cross pollenates with ridiculous ease. If you want to keep only one breed of sunflower and store the seeds for next year, you have to grow it a very long way off from any other breed, and I don’t have a large backyard. In 2023 I planted three different breeds of heirloom sunflower: lemon queens with a myriad of small yellow blossoms, Red Velvet with dark burgundy... Read more
I want to address a few misconceptions about Catholicism that I’ve seen all around social media lately, in response to President Trump and Vice President J. D. Vance and their current feud with Pope Leo XIV. I’ve been writing about this feud as it’s progressed and gotten sillier and sillier. I’ve heard both pro-MAGA and anti-MAGA talking points on this issue that are driving me mad, because the facts they presume about Catholicism are objectively mistaken. Some people trying... Read more
There’d been a bit of an emergency downtown, because the derelict building behind a row of storefronts collapsed. On Easter Monday, the owner of the bookstore came to check on his shop, and realized that the whole edifice behind it was leaning and about to go. The internal structure of the abandoned building had crumpled, leaving the clapboard walls sagging like a half-baked cake. The bookshop was unharmed, but would be flattened if that building sagged in the wrong... Read more
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