“Luminous,” “mysterious,” “haunting,” “ethereal,” “otherworldly,” “timeless,” and “romantic” are a few of the words regularly applied to his work.
OUR COMMON HOME
ST. KATERI HABITATS AND PARKS
Saint Kateri Habitats and Parks is a ministry that “inspires Catholics and all people of good will to restore and manage homes, yards, gardens, parishes, schools, farms, parks, forests, rivers, and wetlands as healthy habitats for people and wildlife.”
YOU WHO ARE THIRSTY, COME TO THE WATER
Every so often, I get a definite, very clear feeling that Jesus likes having me around. He likes going places with me. He likes the way we travel together.
LENTEN ALMSGIVING: A CATHOLIC TAKE ON MONEY
The first rule is that it’s okay to save, say, for a house or a child’s college education. But money should be a placeholder. What is our money holding a place for?
TO CALL MYSELF BELOVED
“And all I ask for housekeeping
I get and pay no fees,
Leeks from the garden, poultry, game,
Salmon and trout and bees.”
MANNA IN THE DESERT
“True solitude is not the absence of people, but the presence of God. To place our lives before the face of God, to surrender to the movements of God, is to roam free in a space in which we have been given solitude”….
THE GENIUS OF JANE GOODALL
“My family has very strong women,” Goodall observed as she looked back on her beginnings. “My mother never laughed at my dream of Africa, even though everyone else did because we didn’t have any money…and because I was a girl.”
THE LIGHTED WINDOW
Each walk, or memory, or lighted window calls to mind a poem, a painting, a piece of music, or all three. So as you’re reading, you’re also being introduced to new artists, or receiving a fresh take on those you might already know.
LET’S NOT DIE UNTIL WE DIE
True activism, true resistance, consists precisely in an insistence upon life: a yes to life—for the benefit of every person on earth—that, like Mary’s yes, plunges us into the perilous but exhilarating unknown.
THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS: MY MOTHER
She never, to my knowledge, submitted another piece. She continued to be faithful to her marriage vows, her private vows to God, to her children, her church, and to her conscience: crystal clear as I imagine it. Long-suffering but dry-eyed, keeping her own counsel, along with God alone knows what secret sorrows and silent suffering.
A DREAM COME TRUE: MIGRANTS AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD
Since the dawn of human history, Father Alessandrini notes, humans have been on the move: driven by threats, curiosity, the search for food, and any number of other forces. Migration, he notes, could be “interpreted as a restless longing for a fulfilling final experience.”
RUN AFTER THE STAR
The whole of the Advent and Christmas season is for me liminal time. The Divine Office, with Morning, Evening and sometimes Daytime Prayer; emerging from daily vigil Mass in the dark and walking home down the light-festooned streets…
A SHATTERING AWAKENING
After the Angelus, whichever of the old ladies who had led would say another prayer that over time, I came to memorize. “Oh Jesus, through the immaculate heart of Mary, I offer you my prayers, works, joys and sufferings of this day, in union with the holy sacrifice of the Mass throughout the world. I offer them for the intentions of your Sacred Heart”….
ZAPOTEC MASTER WEAVER PORFIRIO GUTIÉRREZ
“I do not work with natural dyes simply because I was born into the tradition, or because there is money to be made, or because it is a trend. I work with natural dyes because I discovered my gift and calling within our traditional practice and developed a profound connection with Mother Earth.”