New Year

  • Word of the Year 2023 -Raised Catholic episode 105

    Word of the Year 2023 -Raised Catholic episode 105

    The following is a transcript of a Raised Catholic podcast episode. To listen to the episode, click here. Today is episode 105: Word of the Year 2023 Well, happy new year, friend! Today we’re talking about choosing a word for the year. If you feel like that might be a helpful practice for you, and…

  • Christmas Blessings – Raised Catholic episode 54

    Christmas Blessings – Raised Catholic episode 54

    The following is a transcript of a Raised Catholic Podcast episode. To listen to the episode, click here. Today is episode 54: Christmas Blessings Hi friends, I hope you had a healthy and peace-filled Christmas. As I record this, it’s about 10pm the night after Christmas and the house is still but the lights are…

  • Bulb

    Bulb

    A friend dropped off a large amaryllis bulb in a pretty turquoise pot just before Christmas. As we stood masked in my driveway that day and he handed me the heavy gift bag, there’s no way he could have known the true weight and value of the gift he was giving me.  More likely, his wife,…

  • Raised Catholic – episodes one and two

    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…

  • Mantle – 2021

    Mantle – 2021

    Each year between Christmas and New Year’s, I lean in close to discover my word for the year ahead. Last year a scripture caught hold of me hard and I thought for sure that my word was embedded within it.  It was Isaiah 43:19, and I scribbled it on an index card and affixed it to…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Bean

    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…

  • Walk – 2020

    Walk – 2020

    For the past several years on New Year’s Eve, our sweet hosts have pulled out a sheet of cardboard on which everyone writes their goals for the year ahead in permanent sharpie.  One year I wrote that I would find our dog, Bailey, and I did. Another year I wrote that I would run a…

  • Re

    Re

    There is a lightness in my heart today and it’s fragile and warm and cool at the same time. It is a physical feeling in my chest that I feel when the Holy Spirit is present and communicating, a gift of a feeling that I’ve had maybe a dozen times in my life, maybe less…