Today is the last day of NFP awareness week. You’d think as a fertility care practitioner, I’d have been all over it, making all of my dear readers very aware of NFP. The only problem is, I couldn’t think of anything to say. I’ve been teaching Creighton for almost two years now and I have seen and heard things which have challenged my faith and filled me with tremendous joy. It has also humbled me beyond anything I could have... Read more
I’m doing this really interesting thing with a Catholic lady writer friend, where we are consecrating our creativity to Mary over a period of 30 days. We offer our “fiat” to God, to use us and our writing to speak His word into the world. So naturally today is day 1 and I wake up with anger. Sitting heavy like a stone in my stomach while drinking my coffee and reading the Gospel (my mostly daily morning routine) — and... Read more
It was the perfect time to drive to Notre Dame. There are a few weeks in June in Indiana where all is right in the world. The corn, not yet knee high, cast a lush green over the vast expanse driving on 31 between my home on the north-side of Indianapolis and South Bend. Fluffy, perfect cotton clouds of white against azure sky. The coldest iced coffee, the reddest lipstick, the loudest music chosen by a grown-up playing in the... Read more
I have had to stifle tears as a priest waxed eloquently about all of the "good, large families" he was seeing at Mass. Read more
To say I have a complicated relationship with Mother’s Day is an understatement. Earlier this week I found myself standing in the card aisle of the grocery store, staring at a wall of Mother’s Day cards that left me frozen and tempted to ditch my full cart of groceries, in a sprint for the door. Grief is an elusive companion, rearing her head at the most unpredictable and inconvenient times. This is my 26th Mother’s Day buying cards for other... Read more
We the faithful could do with something. The silence from the Church in the face of wide-spread systemic racism is deafening. Read more
This morning I burned my hair on the curling iron. I’ve been using a curling iron my whole life, but today I somehow managed to lose almost an entire lock of hair to the hissing, smoking, smell of death that is human hair burning. I am a disaster, but nothing if not honest. When you see a purple-haired woman with a wild look in her eyes and a chunk of hair missing, you found me. Yet, as I frantically tried... Read more
“Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack, a crack in everything That’s how the light gets in.” – Leonard Cohen, Anthem On Palm Sunday, we visited another parish. It was our children’s spring break from school, so we loaded a six year old and her three year old twin siblings into the van with an embarrassingly large pile of belongings, and drove to a state park with an indoor aquatic... Read more
I’ll never forget the moment when it “clicked” for me. The moment when I realized that being anti-racist was more than opposing overt racism, and more than sharing MLK Jr. quotes in January and February. It was in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting and the acquittal of his shooter. There were protests, not only in Florida where it happened, but all over the US. Most were peaceful, some included elements of property damage. And I remember sitting in... Read more
today, to be an American, for America is a place do not recognize, a language I no longer seem to speak. I won’t pretend I can speak to the refugee or immigrant experience; I can’t. But Warsan Shire can, so I will let her. I dare you to read every word. Home Warsan Shire no one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark. you only run for the border when you see the whole city running as... Read more
Fumbling Toward Grace
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