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  • Feed

    Once I was a baby who lived inside my mother’s womb. There, she housed and fed me and provided everything I needed, but I didn’t know that. I just took what was offered without regard to the source. Later, I was born and sought nourishment, protection and safety from her in other ways, again completely…

  • Sentence

    My daughter’s AP English teacher gave his students five minutes to describe themselves in one sentence. The idea was to help his students to comprehend the power of language to communicate ideas but also to help them understand themselves while making themselves understood. Her teacher said that most people are strangers to themselves, which as…

  • Cart

    I watched my groceries as they traveled down the conveyor belt and thought of what an impressive bunch of stuff it was. Greek yogurt, almond milk, feta, hummus, pita, avocados, spring mix lettuce, English cucumber, apples, butternut squash, cremini mushrooms, yasso bars, pasta, sliced ham, cheddar cheese, frozen blackberries, frozen spanakopita, dark chocolate with almonds,…

  • Son

    A few nights back, my daughter, Maura, and a friend saw what appeared to them to be a supernova, a star that grew bigger and brighter and then was gone from the sky. Both she and my son were fascinated by the idea that if it actually was a dying sun that they saw that…

  • room

    there is a room in my mind that is mine and locked and blue I go there to think and muse and never pray I leave notes behind which no one ever reads and yet each time I enter I expect to find in return one small envelope and very few precious words like water…

  • Unsung

    Attending the funeral of someone who lived life well is like completing a masters-level course in an hour and a half. Lesson after lesson flies at you and you can’t quite catch each one, but you want to hold on to all of it if you can. I attended a funeral like this today for…

  • Six

    I haven’t been able to bring myself to really read about it, let alone write about it, but it’s everywhere anyway. My friends and neighbors, and even Rob Lowe and Maria Shriver are experiencing it and writing in excruciating detail. I keep seeing references to that song by Nichole Nordeman everyone is talking about, but…

  • Joseph

    Today I met three Josephs, and each of them, as Josephs will do, pointed me to God. I met the first Joseph at his funeral. Well, I guess you could say we didn’t meet exactly, but I sang for the Mass, and got to know him a bit from the words and presence of his…

  • Christmas, Death, Birth revisited

    Earlier, I wrote about a pattern in my life that keeps coming up, and it’s modeled after three days in November of 2012 in which we celebrated my Mom’s last Christmas, mourned her death, and focused on her new life in Heaven. Now I find I go through these seasons over and over; times of…

  • Bird, continued

    God uses images and music to get my attention. When something sticks in my brain, I know I’m supposed to pay attention, like when I was in shivasana in yoga and clearly saw in my mind’s eye two big football players blocking a doorway, and me with no way to get past them. Those guys…