family

  • Essential

    Essential

    In this time of crisis, we’re being stripped of quite a lot.  Roles, practices, relational habits and interaction, labels, even jobs or our health.  In addition, the way we practice our faith has completely changed.  Within my own church tradition, Catholics are being told we can confess our sins directly to God without a priest…

  • Crown

    Crown

    I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.  Not even in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when the sky was empty of planes and no one knew just what horror might come next.  Back then, it took a few days for me to feel safe and appropriate about bringing my babies out for a…

  • Walk – 2020

    Walk – 2020

    For the past several years on New Year’s Eve, our sweet hosts have pulled out a sheet of cardboard on which everyone writes their goals for the year ahead in permanent sharpie.  One year I wrote that I would find our dog, Bailey, and I did. Another year I wrote that I would run a…

  • Wheel

    Wheel

    I used to think that God worked in details, orchestrating events and people in time like a tapestry. Then I didn’t believe it.  Then for a long time, I hoped it was true. Yesterday, God showed off in a hatful of ways about the veracity of that belief: even if we can’t always see it, God is…

  • Now

    Now

    Early in an authentic Christian walk, it’s all about relationship. A new knowledge and hope in the person of Jesus and the knowledge of how intimately and wholly we are known and loved fills our spirits with a light we never knew before. And so we want to tell everyone, and we do, spreading the…

  • Opposite (All Hands In, Part Three)

    Opposite (All Hands In, Part Three)

    To know the definition of a thing, it can be helpful to know its opposite. For example, I know that cold is the opposite of heat, up is the opposite of down, right is the opposite of left. But what, dear friends, is the opposite of Catholic? I asked a group of faith writers this…

  • Christian Sisters (All Hands In, Part Two)

    Christian Sisters (All Hands In, Part Two)

    Christian sisters, O the time has come. The world’s a messy place these days and somehow you find more conflict and consternation in a corner you wouldn’t expect: between Christians of different denominations. In the wake of the sudden loss of progressive Christian author Rachel Held Evans, you see the divide in the contrast between…

  • Small

    Small

    I met and held the teeniest, tiniest, most perfect baby today. She was so impossibly light, both in luminescence and weight that it was hard to believe I was holding a real live person; she is so small. As a Mom of college kids, it’s easy to forget. My two babies were small once, just…

  • Move

    Move

    On our street, we bring treats to new neighbors. I remember thirteen years ago, walking with my then six-year old daughter a few doors down to leave a wrapped banana bread on a covered porch in the rain. We couldn’t have known then that our new neighbors would become our dear friends, couldn’t have guessed…

  • Re-fine

    Re-fine

    A teacher I work with stopped me on my way out of class this morning and offered me a hug. “You didn’t seem yourself when you sang at church on Sunday, and I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.” The truth is, I’m not. Friends, I’ll preface this by saying it’s not the most…