There is a reason I generally don’t post about headlines: it takes me time to process things and make sure my first reactions all hold water. I hate the tendency to react without thinking, the way it leads us to view everything in black and white and fail to acknowledge the nuances in every situation,…
Someone hurt me this weekend. It was like a sucker punch to your most vulnerable spot. It felt calculated. Cruel. And completely unnecessary. I reacted as most of us do when we are hurt. I got angry. So angry. I stewed over it, prayed over it, lived with it, and over and over I came…
The timing seemed a little ironic. An old post, called “Words Matter: A Disability Primer,” was in the process of sending my blog views through the roof, and where was I? I was sitting in a ballroom listening to a priest share a piece of advice he was given when beginning a challenging urban assignment:…
It seems to me that people come to blogs looking for one of three things: answers, inspiration, or solidarity. I have my moments for providing answers–at least, as they have revealed themselves in my life–and inspiration. But the truth is that I often wrestle with questions that have no easy answers. This is my place…
I dreamed last night that I met Pope Francis. Well, not so much met as happened to be standing right there when he blew by, laughing and carrying, of all things, a part of a broken toilet that needed to be thrown away. I was supposed to be meeting up with a friend from grad…
I woke up in the middle of the night from a deeply disturbing dream about turkey legs. Not the kind of turkey leg you find on your Thanksgiving turkey, but those big honkers you get at carnivals and Renaissance fairs, deep fried. I’ve never had one, but for some reason the image of people…
Why is it so easy to see or hear one detail and leap to the worst possible conclusion about a person’s motivations? Why is it so easy to give our past hurts permission to control our present reactions, and block out reason when it urges moderation? Why is it so easy to skip over grief…
On any given day, this blog is my go-to place to wrestle with questions that trouble me and offer what little insight I have. But today I would like to turn that around. I had another post planned, but listening to the daily readings podcast this morning, I found myself challenged almost right out of the…
There are offenses that we as a culture consider unforgivable. Murder, child molestation, adultery: These are the three that come to mind right now. Crimes that seem to absolve us from the responsibility of offering forgiveness and reconciliation. How do we apply “mercy” in these situations? I’m not going to pretend I have a pat…
