I wrote this last year, when Christmas shopping was still a thing, and teachers taught at schools. I couldn't have known then--none of us could--how much more true it would be this year. Distances and longing, indeed. I was browsing in a new store a couple of weeks ago. Strains of an old and favorite … Continue reading Longing for the light
Faith
The Day When Nothing Happened (2020 edition)
I first wrote and published this a few years ago, but it has never been more relevant than it is this year, this Holy Saturday, in the waiting. It's Holy Saturday today, a day when nothing happened. It gets lost amid all the flashier days of Holy Week but it is the part that, especially … Continue reading The Day When Nothing Happened (2020 edition)
Ordinary Time
It turned out to be at its coming in and not at its leaving when March was actually the lamb; it left us yesterday with the lion, and lions, it turns out, can kill you. Even the warning of the soothsayer to "Beware the ides of March" seems more foreboding when you think about what … Continue reading Ordinary Time
Siren song
The photo is from 1992. But I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since yesterday morning, since I heard the news of the tornado. I knew exactly what I was looking for when I started in on the faux-leather-library bindings of the photo albums to look for the photo, though not which yellow-paged … Continue reading Siren song
Longing for the light
I wrote this last year, when Christmas shopping was still a thing and teachers taught at schools. So much has changed. I couldn't have known then--none of us could--how much more true and real the distances and longings and general not-ok-ness would be this year. But the story itself has always been about exactly that. … Continue reading Longing for the light
The girl and her mom at graduation
It was both an honor and a pleasure to speak to the graduates and their moms at the Notre Dame Prep Mother-Daughter brunch this morning! Girls - and moms - it's true: "you're gonna be great!" Well, here we are, ladies. It is so good to be with all of you, graduates and moms, in … Continue reading The girl and her mom at graduation
Holy Saturdays
It's Holy Saturday today, a day when nothing happened. It gets lost amid all the flashier days of Holy Week but it is the part that I relate to the most. Palm Sunday looked like so much fun, didn't it? All pomp and circumstance, and weren't they lucky to have such perfect weather? The Facebook … Continue reading Holy Saturdays
Door Number One
Advent, the season of watchful waiting, begins today. Not in the official liturgical kind of way, which I think must start at church this Sunday, but in the childish kind of way. The one that begins with that first colorful and numbered cardboard door, opening the way to Christmas. The Christmas season kicked off, when … Continue reading Door Number One
Holding hands
My dad was not good at all things, but he had been born good at the things I most wanted to be good at, which were horses and music and art. It was uncanny, everyone said while I was growing up, how much I looked like my dad. And because I did not yet understand the … Continue reading Holding hands
Mary
It doesn't feel like spring to most of us this year, but the calendar, stubborn and rigid as it is, insists that it is upon us, that we are nearly to May. And if you were ever a little girl in Catholic school, May was also a month in which you might have hoped to … Continue reading Mary
Holy Saturdays
It's Holy Saturday today, a day when nothing happened. It gets lost amid all the flashier days of Holy Week but it is the part that I relate to the most. Palm Sunday looked like so much fun, didn't it? All pomp and circumstance, and weren't they lucky to have such perfect weather? The Facebook … Continue reading Holy Saturdays
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