A House in Haiti: A Counter-cultural Christmas Present “Wow…Really? It’s all paid? Someone in Haiti will get a house?” I was dumbfounded… I had emailed Food for the Poor because the money that had been debited from my account each month had stopped. I thought there was a glitch of some kind, it never occurred […]
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Gratitude: What is it? The word gratitude doesn’t resemble what it signifies. Both the noun gratitude and its adverb grateful seem to me to be passive, inert, easily overlooked. Maybe that is why so few of us talk about it. In a world where so many billions live in conditions which would be considered unacceptable
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City Slickers Revisited: yesterday, July 4th. Remember the movie City Slickers? Billy Crystal as the ‘Dude’ from Manhattan who persuades two Manhattan friends to join him on a cattle drive in the west? Although the movie was released over thirty years ago, certain scenes and characters remain vivid. Especially the yuppies with the mid-life crises
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The seduction of noise. Do an online search and you can see a 21st century way of conceptualizing our addiction to distraction: noise pollution. Researchers have studied the effects of noise pollution and discovered its surprisingly broad impact upon adults and children. But the subject of this piece is even more insidious. Truthfully, is there any
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Why do you pray? “Why do you pray?” “Because it is the only way I can figure out who I am.” My surprising response to my friend’s rhetorical question was heartfelt-perhaps too weighty to be understood by one who had not, like me, chosen to spend a large segment of their life without God. Being
Three seconds: time for worlds to end Three seconds, the time it takes to blink, yawn or for our whole world to end. I’ve been thinking, once again, about time. About how slippery it is, about how we tend, naturally, to think we have all the time in the world, preferring not to ponder the
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My dog Shadow “When he looks at me, it feels as if he sees straight through to my soul.” The vet was commenting on my dog Shadow’s face like so many who can see the purity, wisdom and dignity of this beautiful animal who adopted us about 12 or 13 years ago. A gaze which
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Child, have none told you? God is in your soul. That line, that stunning, arresting line is from a poem by Jessica Powers. Remember the Hallmark cards of a couple of decades ago? That is how I remembered Jessica Powers until today. August 18, the anniversary of her death in 1988. When I learned that Powers
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On this Feast of the Good Shepherd, I think of a hike I took up in the mountains behind our home here in the high desert about two years ago. The lone lamb suddenly appeared in the brush and then raced into the high desert running as fast as she could, both dogs close to
In these few remaining days of Advent, I read and re-read the words of St. Paul about the futility of sacrifice and oblation or offering to God. First, he quotes the words of Christ himself: You who wanted no sacrifice or oblation, prepared a body for me. You took no pleasure in holocausts or sacrifices
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