Reading Francis

Not to sound all judgy, but I tend to think that there’s a right and wrong way to read. For those who were raised as Christians, there’s a tendency to read the Bible piecemeal, where we pull out a line or two from what is a diverse collection of writings cultivated over many generations, and…

Where is God in this? Or for those less God-inclined: Where is Love in this? I find this question really helpful. Sometimes it’s a lament, but more often it’s like one of those “Where’s Waldo?” puzzles that were big a couple decades ago, where the question invites you to stop and look at the easy-to-miss…

There’s a lot of power in shredding your past. As a convert to Catholicism, I was not initially a big fan of the sacrament of reconciliation (or confession, as it’s generally known). I was a firm believer that you didn’t have to confess your sins to another person, since you could always confess them directly…

Why did Jesus appear to the women first after his Resurrection? John 20 has the beautiful story of the resurrected Jesus appearing to Mary Magdalene, who at first mistakes him for a gardener. This comes after she discovers the empty tomb, and John awkwardly inserts a story of John beating Peter to the tomb in…

Who decides what is too little, too late? I was on a conference call today where someone said one of the more honest things I’ve heard lately on a call like this. She prefaced a question with “I’m sorry, I was multi-tasking, so I didn’t catch what you said…” That is as close to “I…

You know how the NCAA Tournament always ends with the song “One Shining Moment”? What’s the opposite of one shining moment? Recently, a friend sent me a long message outlining how awful the Church is. How arrogant and sinful and greedy and power-hungry the institution is. I realized that that message came from a place…

What if the fundamental human failing is not greed or lust or pride, but the belief that we are not worthy of love, that we are not enough? I was reading a book on discernment pulled from the writings of Henri Nouwen, and he makes this point. But so does Brené Brown. So does Father…

Because Facebook knows marketing, I have ads for Catholic t-shirts. (Go figure.) The first one to pop up was of St. Catherine of Siena, with the caption: “Be you. Set the world on fire.”  She is one of my top-5 favorite saints, but what I loved about that ad is that it showed up the…

During the height of the COVID pandemic lockdown, the state of Florida provided robotic pets to assisted living facilities as a way to provide companionship to residents who were forced into isolation by policies enacted to stem the spread of the deadly disease. That lockdown highlighted something aging advocates have known for quite some time:…