America
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Witness
If you dropped onto this planet somewhere in America in the past few years and learned about what it means to be Christian or Catholic-Christian strictly from what you saw from vocal national church leaders and from church-aligned media, you might draw some conclusions about the nature and purpose of Christianity and the Church. You…
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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…
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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…
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Statues
As a lifelong Catholic, statues have been a part of my faith experience from the beginning. I have worshipped in spaces with statues, watched them paraded on feast days, and seen them adorned with flowers. I have stood in front of dozens of Mary statues and prayed to Our Mother, holding hands of stone and…
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Discern
In the past several weeks, it has become clear that American Catholics have both a new opportunity and responsibility to do something with which they may not have a lot of practice: spiritual discernment. In the time since the obligation and practice of mass attendance was suspended in March, individual Catholics have relied on their…
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2.23
I hadn’t run consistently in a while, but today I ran 2.23 miles in honor of Ahmaud Arbery , the 25-year old man who was shot and killed while running outside Brunswick, Georgia on February 23. As I ran, I thought about what it would be like if this were my last run, my last…
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Guadalupe
Our Lady of Guadalupe is on the move and I’m so glad. She crossed my path around mid-December as I waited in a college chapel for my freshman daughter to be done with finals and come on home for winter break. There was a small alcove there dedicated to her, and as I read her…
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Over
Structures are falling down all around us. In our country, church, and world, we’re finding our shared values are shared no longer. Institutions are collapsing under the weight of abuse and scandal. The world feels as though it’s spinning off its axis. During troubled times, we tend to look to those things that are immovable,…
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America
Our church community has a long-standing tradition of singing patriotic songs on or around Memorial Day, Veteran’s Day, and the Fourth of July, so we weren’t surprised when a parishioner asked me and my music-minister husband just which such song we would be singing this past Sunday, but we were conflicted. For a while now,…
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Christians
In the wake of news that America is seeing a sharp decline in those who call themselves Christian, discussion seems to be centered in two areas: why the faith is not relevant today, and the value of organized religion to our society. Lots of the commenters I’ve read claim this represents a new age of…