trust

  • Advent

    Advent

    It was the day after Thanksgiving, and the traditional start to the Christmas season, but I didn’t feel like Christmas.

  • Retreat

    I was on retreat this weekend with a group of women and I had somewhat of a leadership role. I gave a talk, and helped facilitate conversations, but mostly I was in the retreat experience along with everyone else. It might have been easy for the women to believe that the ‘leaders’ among the group…

  • Trust

    Once there was a girl and she walked through the halls of a large, sprawling house which she did not build. She carried a blueprint in her pocket and sometimes she consulted it for direction, but not always. The girl walked, in and out of halls and rooms, through every year of her life. In…

  • Red

    If you ask any of my former preschool-aged music students what they remember about my classes, they may sing one of two phrases back at you. The first is ‘sticks on your shoulders’, which is sung to an annoying, but memorable tune. It’s a reminder to the kids to keep their wooden rhythm sticks on…

  • Communion

    I went to four daily masses this vacation week. I didn’t plan on it, not at first, but it just kind of happened. Pre-breakfast mass with Dad, one with a friend, one for a church event, one a funeral, none in my own parish. The wisdom that poured out of good priests during their homilies…

  • Waiting

    I don’t like waiting. Waiting for something important feels, for me, like a racing heart and a pit in my stomach and like my small voice echoing in a canyon: I AM ALONE. In the season in which I waited to get pregnant with Brian, I agonized and strived and pleaded with God. Two years…

  • Saint Matthew

    I asked God to help me to see my life the way He sees it, so He brought me to Mass and Fr. George, who talked about a painting and so I looked it up and there I am. The painting is ‘The Calling of Saint Matthew’ by Caravaggio and it depicts the moment that…

  • Independence

    I’ve heard people speak of it on podcasts, in backyards, in my yoga studio, and in church. Some think it’s economic, others spiritual, others political or even technological, but it’s amazing to me the numbers of people who seem lately to be feeling a rumbling under their feet, like something is about to fundamentally change,…

  • Number Line

    When I was seven or so, we worked with number lines in school, and I remember loving the fluidity of those lines rising above the order and rigidity of the numbers and tick marks at the bottom. I wouldn’t have used those words then, of course. At the time, I would have just said those…

  • Alternate Reality

    Last night at dinner, my son asked if we had ever considered the possibility that each of us was the only person who had ever existed and that everyone and everything else in history was a figment of our imagination. My daughter replied that she hadn’t had that particular thought, but had pondered whether we…