church

  • Salt

    Salt

    Last week I was on my way to an outdoor mass when the skies began to look threatening.  Sure enough, as I pulled up, people were headed inside due to impending rain, and I found myself in overflow, socially distant seating downstairs in a church basement.  Happy that the parish took such care to keep…

  • 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…

  • Next

    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…

  • Re-form

    Re-form

    I was watching this video last night and was about half-way through when I burst into tears.   It’s a collaboration of over 65 churches and Christian movements in the UK, their music ministers calling down blessings over their country.  And if you watch their faces, you see their connection to the Holy Spirit, their…

  • Essential

    Essential

    In this time of crisis, we’re being stripped of quite a lot.  Roles, practices, relational habits and interaction, labels, even jobs or our health.  In addition, the way we practice our faith has completely changed.  Within my own church tradition, Catholics are being told we can confess our sins directly to God without a priest…

  • Real

    Real

    I remember one morning from a few years ago.  It was very early, before the sun was even up, and I was driving my high school daughter to a waiting bus for her Washington DC class trip. I hugged her and watched the bus pull away, and on the way home, saw the sun was…

  • 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…

  • Cradle

    Cradle

    I’m a Catholic music minister, and I’m wearing gray as I stand at the front of the church and sing the opening notes of the entrance song.  A gentleman from the funeral home leads pallbearers with the casket down the aisle, and following them are a group of tearful mourners, wearing black and clinging to…

  • Re-fine

    Re-fine

    A teacher I work with stopped me on my way out of class this morning and offered me a hug. “You didn’t seem yourself when you sang at church on Sunday, and I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.” The truth is, I’m not. Friends, I’ll preface this by saying it’s not the most…

  • Veil

    Veil

    My friend Deacon Jerry came to mass today and that doesn’t seem all that weird except for the fact that he died a couple of weeks ago. During the Eucharistic prayers, several of my friends who art in Heaven gather around the altar and I acknowledge them there and pray for their families and their…