There was an enormous explosion up the street. “That one’s got to be illegal,” I said to myself. People in LaBelle like their fireworks. This isn’t exactly a safe place for fireworks– the houses here are so close together that on some blocks, the eaves overlap. The yards are small; there’s plenty of overgrown grass and brush, and July is the time of year that’s closest to being dry in the Ohio Valley. But that never stops them. They save up... Read more
I’m pretty famous for telling horrendous stories about my childhood on the Planet Charismatic. How about this: a lighthearted story from my childhood, in which I almost burned alive? It’s seasonal too. This should be fun. My younger brother M liked fire. He liked to stare in fascination at the hearth when we burned cardboard boxes for warmth in the wintertime; he burned inscriptions into plywood with a magnifying glass in the summer. On the rare occasions when we went to... Read more
There are saints who seem like strangers to me, and Peter and Paul go into that category. Read more
I've been trying to fit in here for almost eleven years now-- trying to find a place, any place, in Steubenville, but it hasn't worked out. Read more
I woke up on Saturday morning and stuffed an overpriced Kind bar in my mouth. Then I high-tailed it out the door to attend the final day of the Trying To Say God conference. It took only two tries to find DeBartolo Hall, at which point I realized that I’d forgotten my name tag. I didn’t trust myself to run back and get it. Once DeBartolo Hall allows itself to be found, it may not be so generous a second time.... Read more
(Yes, I am aware that this image is of the wrong Notre Dame.) I woke up in the morning on the first full day of the Trying To Say God Conference at the beautiful University of Notre Dame in exotic South Bend, Indiana. I swallowed my various anti-chronic-fatigue tonics and a bottle of Starbucks Cold Brew; thus fortified, I attempted to find DiBartolo Hall before continental breakfast was over. For anyone else who ends up wandering the labyrinth that is Notre... Read more
I get along better with relics than with live people. Read more
Somehow, Patheos sent a hack like me to the Trying To Say God Conference at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. They may live to regret this. Regular followers of this blog know that I do not get out of town very much. I have chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia and a full blown allergy to getting overheated; my idea of a fast-paced adventure involves taking the bus to both the library and Aldi in the same afternoon. But... Read more
They are going to die. Just recently, about 200 Chaldean Christians— Catholics like me and like most of my readers here– were rounded up by ICE and are about to be deported back to Iraq. There is no safe place for them there; there is full-blown genocide in Iraq against Chaldean Christians. We know there’s a genocide happening there because the United States government formally declared that Iraqi Christians are victims of genocide. If these Christians go back to Iraq, they... Read more
I am not a wise person, but I've become wiser in this respect: I realize that the Heart of Christ is not a cramped little box. Read more
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