“Your ordinary acts of love and hope point to the extraordinary promise that every human life is of inestimable value.” – Desmond Tutu I was solo parenting on Sunday. My husband and son were out of town. I was flanked by daughters Nim, six, lolling around in the pew to my left and asking “when’s…
We missed the first Sunday of Advent. While we’ve missed nearly every Sunday mass for the last two years, this one felt particularly discouraging. Maybe because the day before I was heard on more than one occasion saying, “I’m going to go to mass tomorrow if anyone wants to join me,” verbally attempting to hold…
Moments like this kindle sparks of life in me: pausing meal prep to watch birds gathering on the feeder I hung outside the kitchen window; keeping a field book handy so I can learn their names; discovering that the new birds showing up, those who look both like and unlike cardinals, are not a different…
I was a little mystified when, in mid-November, I got an email ad announcing 25% off the price of Christmas decorations. The great day of feasting was not yet upon us, the calendar promised one more month of fall and yet, when I went to check out the sale, I couldn’t find autumnal decor items…
Since I began homeschooling my children last year, I’ve felt compelled to raise them as amateur naturalists. We take walks together as a family. I casually acknowledge the lifeforms we pass if I happen to know their names, trying not to intrude too much on our experience by making it sound like a lesson. “Hello…
I know well enough that the time to address racial inequity was centuries ago. It is also now. And while it is a national sin, it is my work as much as anybody else.
It’s Sunday and four-year-old P’s turn to pick the movie. The eight-week ban on “Frozen 2” has expired and so, to her older brother’s chagrin, that is what we are watching, again. I admit that, aside from the film’s flaws and how tiresome it is to watch it for the hundredth time, it is a…
It’s 3 a.m. and the moon is glowing softly through the wide bedroom window. Why am I awake? I look to the side and see that our six-month-old is sleeping soundly. A repetition of the sound that woke me, “Mama!!”, comes from the room across the hall. It’s our three-year-old who, despite a strong, independent…
My five-month-old just fell asleep. Now I have anywhere from 20 minutes to two hours to “get something done.” This phenomenon of sporadic, indefinite hands-free time is something that’s hard for folks who are not immersed in parenting young children to understand. Even those of us who’ve been through it often develop a gauzy memory…
As of the writing of this reflection, Witness Against Torture, The New York Catholic Worker, and Voices for Creative Nonviolence, among others, are in the midst of a week-long fast for the victims of the recent airstrikes and ongoing besiegement of Yemen. There we see, once again, one of the poorest countries of the world…
Hypocrisy. According to Google, it’s “The practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one’s own behavior does not conform; pretense.” It’s a dirty word; the worst of insults in religious circles. Why, then, do those who consider themselves clean of heart, hand and tongue seem to so relish the taste of…
Leading up to the Women’s March on Washington last week, I noticed a lot of #WhyIMarch and also #WhyImNotMarching social media posts. Because the spirit, style and mission of the event—seemingly driven by language of “reproductive rights” (a new expression I’ve not yet come to terms with)—didn’t resonate with me, I found my own feelings…
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