I took the Neighborhood Trolley to the doctor today– thanks to all my readers who gave me some help to get the repairs done. It was surreal dropping my car off at the body shop for several repairs, and then walking down to the bus stop. I haven’t taken a bus in four months. And then I waited in the library for hours, like I used to do after I missed the bus. And I took the bus around... Read more
The following is a sample chapter from my book, Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy. I’ve chosen to show you one of the chapters on the spiritual works of mercy since I talk about the corporal works of mercy so often on the blog. If you’d like to hear me talk for an hour about the corporal works of mercy, with some more excerpts from the book, I recently gave a talk on... Read more
Richard Branson went to space. He’s very excited about that and I think he thinks the rest of us are too. “To all you kids out there,” he said when he got back, “I was once a child with a dream, looking up to the stars. Now I’m an adult in a spaceship… If we can do this, just imagine what you can do.” I don’t know of any kids who were listening, nor should they be. What he did... Read more
We got through another first week and a half of July. It’s never easy, if you’re Catholic and if you’ve been a victim of any abuse, particularly rape. I joked online that the Feast of Saint Maria Goretti is more of an octave, a whole long festival of insensitive people saying horrible things to blame and re-traumatize those who have been the victims of sexual violence for several days. You see it everywhere. I wish I could unplug the computer... Read more
A couple of weeks ago, a young woman I know on Twitter posted a photo of the outfit she’d worn to her friend’s wedding. I thought she looked fantastic. I am always jealous of women who can wear pink, and this woman had picked out a dress in her perfect shade of pink and a handbag and lipstick to match. She snapped a proud selfie in the bathroom mirror before going to the church. Most of us complimented her,... Read more
Hey guys, I’m sorry about this. Believe it or not I hate to busk for tips, I do it as rarely as I possibly can– which is still too much, as you know if you read me every day. My family lives on tips from my blog, plus a very small royalty check from my books, so I do have to rattle the tin cup now and again. And this evening, it’s become more urgent than usual. As... Read more
A note to my readers who are victims of abuse: I’m going to talk honestly about child abuse in this post. You might find it triggering. Reader discretion is advised beyond this point. I took Rosie to the pool today. She wore her black and pink sneakers, jeans, and a Darth Vader t-shirt. This is her regular uniform. She just barely fits into a women’s size extra small, so I’ve bought her some plain shirts for special occasions.... Read more
We went to Pittsburgh this weekend. I’m not quite an accomplished enough driver to find my way through Pittsburgh, but a friend had tickets to the children’s museum, so she drove Rosie and her children and me together. I watched very carefully to get the hang of doing it myself next time. I’d had a hard time with the menacing neighbor the night before: she’d been banging on her metal step ladder and screaming at the window, calling the police,... Read more
It’s that time of year again. It’s time for the feast day of that saint, my least favorite saint, a saint I’ve begun to refer to as “she who must not be named” because I’m tired of looking up her name for the hundredth time to see whether it has one R or two. Every year, I write something about how that saint is a beautiful and heroic soul whose story has been exploited to blame victims. I’ve written about... Read more
I would like to draw your attention to a lesson and an illustration from that venerable series, the Saint Joseph Baltimore Catechism. I don’t think I have the right to post the image in a Patheos blog, but you can look at where it was posted publicly here. For those who can’t see, the illustration is of a cute little girl with gray hair and oddly salmon-colored skin in a red dress, who looks sort of like Mary from... Read more
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In