Month: February 2018

Over two weeks ago, my beautiful daughter died, leaving a husband and three young sons. She also left this – which I send on to you: Why the Woods Family Are Still Catholic By Laura Woods It was the first funeral since my father died, a cousin removed from me by generation and distance, and…
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Living alone, I read during breakfast. During Lent and Advent, I read the PaxChristiUSA reflections. For Thursday this week, the scripture verse is “Tend to the Flock of God in our midst.” 1 Peter 5:2. Brayton Shanley of the Agape community writes about college student interns searching for deeper meaning as parents and schools stress occupational…
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Sometimes you cannot avoid the image of the Pieta, Mary with the body of her dead son in her arms. That deep, deep sorrow holds onto you as she held onto him. These days we are held in the grip of the tragedy in Parkland, and all those similar tragedies here and around the world.…
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“Winning the battle, losing the war” became the frame for this post at a performance to celebrate the Chinese New Year on Valentine’s Day/Ash Wednesday. Watching this talented family of immigrants perform their traditional music, I realized that the lunar New Year is called “Tet” in Vietnam. The Tet Offensive in 1968 was the turning…
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This past summer I took a writing course called “The Power of the Pen” focusing on using poems or plays to address a social issue about which we were passionate. You can guess which one I chose! Our first assignment was to write a short monologue that someone in history who had inspired us might…
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I am indebted to Simone Campbell for this week’s theme, courtesy of Marian Ronan. In The Georgetown Voice, the ever-revolutionary Campbell “then took audience questions, leading to a profession of her personal ‘heresy,’ her belief that women can and should be ordained. “’Ordination is an extension of baptism, and there are different kinds of baptism……
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I know everywhere we look there is something wearying. I’m not even going to mention any examples. You know what they are and where they are. In spring, summer, and fall, we can bury the discontent and weariness we feel in all the bursts of life and color and activity around us. In winter, we’re…
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What am I reading this week? Of course, the great novel by Leo Tolstoy. How do I relate it to the data collected about Catholic women that I wrote about two weeks ago? Marriage, Love, and Children, three topics I did not cover then. The 96-page study published by the Center for Applied Research in…
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