Author: Ellie Harty

I heard the term “anger farming” only recently. It may have been around for a while, perhaps a long while, but it certainly seems particularly relevant right now. We all know the “anger farmers.” We see them on the news whether we want to or not; we see them constantly in the political and cultural…
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I just read Krista Tippett’s recent interview with author Katherine May, on NPR’s “On Being.” May’s book is Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times. I have to admit, as relevant as the topic seemed, I had to force myself to continue past the subtitle. I’m inordinately wary of the “rest, relax,…
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Okay, I admit I’m just showing off by using the above title. I liked the sound but I did have to look up the meaning (so much for my two years of formally studying Latin and endless years of hearing it in church). It means, by the way, “incidental remark”. Remember the line to be…
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The week before Christmas I visited the Yucatan town of Merida, Mexico, and its surroundings. Inspired, I include here now, mostly in pictures, my dream for a new Church for a new year. This is the cathedral in the main plaza in Merida regaled in Christmas light. Flowers, leaves, tendrils of growth, both dazzling and…
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This painting is by Flemish painter, Pieter Bruegel the Elder. If you know his paintings, you also know they are most always teeming with abundant life. Everyone is busy, tending to chores, to animals, to each other. Men and women in this painting are toiling or transacting or talking or taking time for skating, sledding,…
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Isn’t this painting magnificent? Artist Bryn Gillette sweeps us into the swirl of life surrounding women who are with child. Out of whirlpools of love and suffering and chaos, they are bringing forth new life in all its variety, in all its sweetness, in all its hues and tints and tones, in all its depth…
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Annunciation Even if I don’t see it again—nor ever feel it I know it is—and that if once it hailed me it ever does— And so it is myself I want to turn in that direction not as towards a place, but it was a tilting within myself, as one turns a mirror to flash…
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Casey Cep wrote that line in a book review for the New Yorker, and it jumped right out of context and into my consciousness. In fact, I read that line soon after returning from the Catholics Organized for Renewal witness and march at the Baltimore U.S. Bishops’ conference. We walked the chilly streets chanting “Bread…
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I’m sure he meant it as a wonderfully comforting image when Matthew Gambino in CatholicPhilly.com, the site offering “news from the Archdiocese of Philadelphia” described our synodal path together: “This synod is a seat at the kitchen table, set with fresh bread and hot coffee. It’s a shady path down which we walk with a…
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We will be doing some dramatic gathering together, especially this month. The obvious, what I call “dramatic” gathering, will be for the Thanksgiving feast. The other major coming together will be to fulfill the request of the Pope to gather as a community to begin to dialogue about what we envision as a “synodal” new…
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