hope

  • Enough – Raised Catholic Podcast episode 69

    Enough – Raised Catholic Podcast episode 69

    The following is a transcript of a Raised Catholic Podcast episode. To listen to the episode, click here. Today is episode 69: Enough Hi friends. Well, since I teach music with preschoolers, it was bound to happen sooner or later, but this week I experienced my first cold in literally years.  As the days wore on,…

  • February

    February

    February is my favorite month, but it hasn’t always been that way.  In the last few years, I’ve noticed that I like December far less than I had before and that by September, I feel a decided shift toward negativity.  Today I looked at the recently picked tulips scattered around my home curated in their vases, noticed…

  • Puddles

    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…

  • More

    More

    Hey there, Catholic friend, I see you. You were brought up with CCD and necco wafer communion and mass.  You gave up candy for Lent, ate fish sticks on Fridays, and know the meaning of a Holy Day of Obligation (get thyself to church).  Your grandmother or some other sweet church lady used to pray the rosary…

  • Hope

    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…

  • Now

    Now

    Early in an authentic Christian walk, it’s all about relationship. A new knowledge and hope in the person of Jesus and the knowledge of how intimately and wholly we are known and loved fills our spirits with a light we never knew before. And so we want to tell everyone, and we do, spreading the…

  • Opposite (All Hands In, Part Three)

    Opposite (All Hands In, Part Three)

    To know the definition of a thing, it can be helpful to know its opposite. For example, I know that cold is the opposite of heat, up is the opposite of down, right is the opposite of left. But what, dear friends, is the opposite of Catholic? I asked a group of faith writers this…

  • Saturday

    On this Holy Saturday, I ran from a couple of heavy disappointments and pain to the refuge of a pasture. As I sit here watching the wind in the pines and the gray clouds move across the sky, I wonder when it will all be set right. When will the sun appear? When will it…

  • Holy

    Holy

    I walked into church, and found an earwig in the holy water. It was a picture of how I felt today; a skittering, slimy creature swimming in the midst of all that’s holy and spoiling it for everyone else. It’s been a rough couple of days (and months and years), and it’s sometimes hard for…

  • Call

    Call

    The readings today are so darned hopeful. In Jeremiah, we hear about how the LORD will deliver his people, bringing them back, the blind and the lame, the mothers and those with child. They departed in tears, but He will bring them back, consoling and guiding them, leading them to brooks of water on a…