October 17, 2024 “I don’t think she likes me anymore,” my daughter confided after school, talking of her new best friend—the one she’d made over the summer, just after her previous best friend moved across the country. Tears glistened in her eyes, lips quivering, brows tilted inward and down. Her normally bright face looks up at me, asking for me to make it untrue. “Oh honey, I’m sorry, that...
[Fortitude as an essential virtue which allows the ‘house’ of our soul to be kept in order for the presence of God; “s]uch fortitude is not the virtue of the dashing soldier. It means rather the virtue of the keeper of the fortress; the inconspicuous heroism that sits tight. And in the life of the spirit there is a great deal of sitting tight; of refusing to be frightened out of or decoyed away...
September 19, 2024 A rainbow of living interruptions seen on a walk in the woods The polka dot white freckles on the tan hide of a young deer, cautiously tearing at leaves as it makes eye contact with me, fifteen feet away on the trail, it’s mother a few feet to the left. Would I make a move? Is it safe to continue feasting? What is that flash of navy, my raincoat, one color in this animal’s...