vocation

  • Sing

    I am pretty sure I sang flat for almost all of Mass today. There was a monitor issue, and one of my ears is a bit blocked, and (insert excuse here), but I wasn’t happy with what I was doing and not entirely sure that any ministry I may have been attempting was hitting its…

  • Saint Matthew

    I asked God to help me to see my life the way He sees it, so He brought me to Mass and Fr. George, who talked about a painting and so I looked it up and there I am. The painting is ‘The Calling of Saint Matthew’ by Caravaggio and it depicts the moment that…

  • Yarn

    It seems to me that a life spent with young children is made of varying textures and materials. There are the structures that give shape to your daily life, like the school day and activities and sports. These provide the skeleton of a schedule and also tend to dictate your community. These structures are brick;…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Court

    I was making my way round and round the eighth-mile indoor track when a couple of people walked into the empty gym. It was a Dad and his probably not quite two-year-old son, and they grabbed a couple of basketballs and started to play. They were adorable to watch. Dad would dribble, and his son…

  • Bird

    People I know are seeking and finding new opportunities, and I am mostly so happy for them. They are leaving, moving forward, and growing, and I am not. I’m a bird in a nest when everyone else is flying and I am left picking at straw. Sometimes watching them makes me cranky and jealous, and…

  • Eulogy

    “You have no control who lives, who dies, who tells your story… “ Hamilton Yesterday, I embarrassed my daughter in the checkout line of the grocery store in which she works, and I left there thinking surely, here is yet another story to tell at my funeral. This is not a rare occurrence. Through the…

  • Picture

    My Dad has been cleaning out his attic and today brought me a trash bag full of treasures from my early life that my mother had saved over the years. Going through old cards I had given to her was a little window into the person I was when I lived under their roof, most…