Living Well

  • Plant

    Plant

    Last Sunday, we gathered in the early morning with some friends who have not returned to our Catholic chapel community since March.  We brought chairs and spread them out physically distanced across our sweet friends’ big backyard on a beautiful Sunday morning.  We sat in masks, made the sign of the cross, sang, practiced Lectio Divina, prayed…

  • Raised

    Raised

    Have you ever heard someone say they were “raised Catholic?” or were you raised Catholic yourself?  Me too.  There’s a lot of us, “raised” from birth as “cradle Catholics”.  Strangely, you hear these descriptors far less among people of other faiths.  I don’t often hear about people who were “raised“ Jewish, or of “cradle” Protestant Christians or Muslims.  The idea…

  • Lost, Kept, Found

    I woke up this morning really missing my pre-COVID life, specifically teaching early childhood music in person in classrooms with real human kiddos.  I’m working hard at making remote classes work in some of my usual settings, but as of now there are three schools plus a children’s museum for which my connection has been totally…

  • More

    More

    Hey there, Catholic friend, I see you. You were brought up with CCD and necco wafer communion and mass.  You gave up candy for Lent, ate fish sticks on Fridays, and know the meaning of a Holy Day of Obligation (get thyself to church).  Your grandmother or some other sweet church lady used to pray the rosary…

  • Yolk

    Yolk

    I’ve had a few doors closed on me lately.  If I’m honest, it’s more than a few, and it’s caused me to look out for new ones: new doors, new windows, new possibilities.  I’m training my eyes up and out to see if I can recover the plan, if there is such a thing, and I’ve had…

  • Way

    Way

    Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. ~Isaiah 43:18-19 I’d be surprised if there’s a soul reading these words who doesn’t feel we’re…

  • Illumination

    Illumination

    Remember that scene at the end of Castaway where Tom Hanks pulls over at a four-way intersection, gets out and flips open his map? And then, a woman in a red pick-up truck pulls up and says, “You look lost,” and then proceeds to educate him about precisely where each road will lead.  The roads,…

  • Hope

    Hope

    On December 31, 2019, I had a lot of hopes.  At our sweet friends’ New Year’s Eve party, I shakily wrote my resolution on a thin piece of cardboard: ‘attend my first writer’s conference’ and then I paused and added something like, ‘pursue publishing’.  In the weeks that followed, I applied for and received a…

  • Breath

    Breath

    I sang a recorded mass for Pentecost, the first mass at which I’d ministered in months.  In choosing the music, I considered all of my favorite Holy Spirit songs, but kept one on the shelf: O Breathe on Me, O Breath of God.  In a time of pandemic, we’re keeping our breaths to ourselves, or…

  • Next

    Next

    I spent the afternoon away from home, walking and praying and asking God to speak into my next steps. There is so much up in the air.  I’m a preschool music teacher who doesn’t yet know if the schools will open in the fall, or whether there will be funding for my programs, or whether singing…