teaching

  • What Are We Building? – Raised Catholic episode 13

    What Are We Building? – Raised Catholic episode 13

    The following is a transcript from the Raised Catholic podcast. To listen to the podcast, click here. Today is episode 13: What Are We Building?  This week I’m popping outside of our faith rebuilding process to step back and take a wider view. So far, we’ve looked at a number of foundational topics – all…

  • Yolk

    Yolk

    I’ve had a few doors closed on me lately.  If I’m honest, it’s more than a few, and it’s caused me to look out for new ones: new doors, new windows, new possibilities.  I’m training my eyes up and out to see if I can recover the plan, if there is such a thing, and I’ve had…

  • Illumination

    Illumination

    Remember that scene at the end of Castaway where Tom Hanks pulls over at a four-way intersection, gets out and flips open his map? And then, a woman in a red pick-up truck pulls up and says, “You look lost,” and then proceeds to educate him about precisely where each road will lead.  The roads,…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Name

    Name

    “Bye, Kristen!” I called to the beautiful, curly-haired Mom I had met a few weeks before at church. We had been in similar circles over the years, but had not officially been introduced until that Sunday. When I extended my hand and told her my name, Kristen laughed and replied, “Everyone knows who you are.”…

  • Melt

    “We’re not going to do the snowman song today, are we?” a four-year old boy asked me as I was setting up for music class at the local children’s museum. I wasn’t clear on what he said or meant in the moment, but then his Mom apologetically reminded me about a class about four weeks…

  • Window

    Window

    There is a large interior window in a dance studio where I teach early childhood music. On one side of the window is the seating area for waiting families and on the other, my teaching space. As I was prepping for class this morning on my side of the glass, my students came in with…

  • Provision

    Provision

    I pray, like, a lot. Maybe it’s my Catholic upbringing or my anxious nature, but basically I am literally living out that impossible sounding admonition from scripture to “pray continually.” (1Thessalonians 5:17) When I wake up, I get on my knees just for a second or two to give the day to God. I do…

  • Alma Mater

    There was a college student observing in one of my preschool music classrooms today, and as I watched her, dark-haired and nervous, I saw myself so many years before. I was once a freshman education major, sent into classrooms to see if it was an environment in which I wanted to work for the rest-of-my-life,…