prayer/poem

  • I Don’t Know How to Love Him

    I Don’t Know How to Love Him

    Today is Good Friday. I listened to the soundtrack from Jesus Christ Superstar as I took a long walk and asked God to help me enter into His story.  I experienced a shock of realizing just how clueless everyone around Jesus was as He lived, taught, and died.  I’m forty-nine years old, and I’ve experienced a lot…

  • Raised Catholic – episodes one and two

    Raised Catholic – episodes one and two

    Hi friends, I’m starting a new adventure, a podcast offering which I hope will serve a population that’s not getting a lot of care these days. This is for the ones who were raised Catholic but who are now struggling with church while seeking connection with God in these hard times. I hope you’ll have…

  • Mantle – 2021

    Mantle – 2021

    Each year between Christmas and New Year’s, I lean in close to discover my word for the year ahead. Last year a scripture caught hold of me hard and I thought for sure that my word was embedded within it.  It was Isaiah 43:19, and I scribbled it on an index card and affixed it to…

  • A 2020 Thanksgiving Blessing

    A Blessing for a 2020 Thanksgiving Loving God, we thank you for the good this year has brought, for our health and jobs and homes, for our friends and our families, for the things we’ve learned and the clarity we’ve received in a time of trial.  We thank you for your provision and for giving us…

  • 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…

  • Pentecost

    Pentecost

    I was walking in one of my favorite places just now when I saw this wooden chapel birdhouse. It’s not the first time I’ve noticed it. In fact, I’ve taken hundreds of pictures of it over the years, in every time and season. Sometimes the leaves are green and full as they are today. Sometimes…

  • Honey

    Honey

    I’m having a hard time today.  I found I didn’t want to get out of bed and face another day filled with the same stresses, fears, and challenges we’ve been facing for weeks.  I’ve been working hard to find the positive, and as a person of faith, to find the resurrection part of all this…

  • Fire

    There was a fire in my church.  Thankfully there wasn’t a lot of destruction, but the smoke damage remediation will take several weeks and so we’ve been unable to have mass.  It brings me back to the catastrophic fire which took place at Notre Dame in Paris almost one year ago and how the devastation…

  • 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…