all things new
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Surprise Lenten Episode: New Wine – Raised Catholic 114
The following is a transcript of a Raised Catholic podcast episode. To listen to the episode, click here. Today is episode 114: New Wine Hi friends. I know I said there’d be no new podcasts during Lent but only short reflections here or there, but today’s topic has been brewing in me for several days…
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Pivot
We are almost to the one-year anniversary of the time when everything changed. And there’s not a date we can look to, specifically, but there is a feeling we can name when we increasingly understood that something big was happening at this time last year. Maybe it was when you or your dear ones had to…
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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…
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Puddles
I was praying for a particular person recently and felt an image of a bucket of light being poured out at their feet like paint from a can. The light spread like paint, slowly, into a puddle and it was just enough to step in, just enough to give direction but not nearly enough for a…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Bean
Oh friends, watch this bean. It was dead, basically, the by-product of an earlier productive and blossoming life. Found itself dried out and useless, buried in the quiet and the dark. It stayed like that for a long time. Then something within itself started breaking and shifting. Preprogrammed for growth, it sent out roots and…