In the Dark
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I have an essay in this gorgeous digital issue of Ekstasis Magazine on my experience listening to a music performance completely in the dark. Still reliving Emerald City Music fantastic performance.
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Three Advent Poems
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I really enjoyed the process of writing these poems about the miracle of birth, hope growing in darkness and the journey to Christmas.
Read MoreImagining the infant Christ
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I couldn’t sleep. It was a cold and cozy December night. Maybe I ate too many cookies. Or had a list that wouldn’t stop unrolling itself in my head. All I know is I was awake. I left my husband snoring deeply in our bed, curled up on the living room couch with the remote and searched for something to watch on television.
Read MoreMy Favorite Reads of 2020
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Most years, I read 50 books a year. Each year, someone will inevitably ask me for book recommendations. I thought I’d share some of my favorite reads for this year. Maybe you need Christmas gift recommendations or are just stocking up for the next lockdown. Here are my favorite reads from this year.
Read MoreMotherhood: A Confession by Natalie Carnes
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What if St. Monica had written Confessions instead of her son? In Motherhood: A Confession author Natalie Carnes responds to St. Augustine’s work. Each of the thirteen chapters of the book center on a theme found in Augustine’s Confessions which is written as a prayer to God.
Read MorePermission to Notice
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Why not notice the sweet, simple things all around us each day? In giving ourselves permission to notice, to hold onto these small moments, we build a life of gratitude.
Read MoreBook Review: Stories of the Saints
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Check out my book review on Carey Wallace’s Stories of the Saints for U.S. Catholic
Read MoreMemento Mori: Confronting Death to Live Well
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The spiritual practice of memento mori confronts death, until we no longer find it frightening.
Read MoreEverything is Precious
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There are moments when I am driving in my car or taking a walk and everything my eyes land on is beautiful and precious to me. These moments do not happen often, so when they do, I really notice.
Read MoreAll Souls’ Day: Reflections, traditions and prayers
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If you were to walk past my parish on your dark and damp walk on the evening of Nov. 2 in years past, you would have heard the strains of Mozart’s Requiem drifting outward from the bronze doors of St. James Cathedral, Seattle.
Read MoreSecond Degree Joy
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My mother loved the sound of the sea. Listening to its rhythm subdued memories that shifted in her heart and soothed pain she carried in the present. There weren’t many books on our shelves at home but there were bits of the sea: sand dollars, bleached white in the sun, starfish and coral with their neon colors and iridescent abalone, mementos from childhood vacations.
Read MoreJoan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking
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Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking examines the year after her husband John dies of a heart attack. During this year, not only is she grieving the lost of her husband, but their only daughter is gravely ill. In this year of intense grief, Didion thinks to herself, John might return.
Read MoreJohn Cheever's "The Enormous Radio"
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There is a distinctly American fear; the fear of being average.
Read MoreHow Can I Keep From Singing?
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My young sons cannot, will not, be silent.
It’s not that they talk a lot, though they can and do. It is that they sing — all the time.
Read MoreLord Receive My Memory
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When our memories are inseparable from the formation and understanding of our self, what does it mean to pray, "Lord, receive my memory."
Read MorePrayers Before Zoom School
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My children, like so many in COVID times, are in Zoom school. Each morning we take our laptops to separate parts of the house to work, but before that we have what I like to call “Casa G Academy Morning Assembly.”
We meet in the living room 10 minutes before their school check-in. I make a few announcements like, We have online violin lessons later in the day, or, We need to eat the bananas before they go bad, or, Please, if you love your mother, spend a few minutes on the puzzle today, because I’m really getting tired of looking at it on the dining room table.
Read MoreFinding and Keeping Faith During a Pandemic
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I wrote about finding encouragement during the pandemic from St. Paul and some ways to keep connected to Christ during a pandemic.
Read MoreFinding Meaning in Laundry and Dishes
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I have spent more time in my house this year than any other. I know you have too.
Because I have been in my house so many hours, days, weeks, months, my life seems to be all about laundry, dishes, vacuuming and cleaning that little area right around the base of the toilet.
Read MoreThe Moment of Inhale
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Caravaggio’s art is incomplete without our gaze, the painted narrative waits for our eyes to unravel it. He needs us, the viewers, for the mystery in his paintings to be revealed. As his hues and figures set the stage for a narrative already in motion, Caravaggio allows the viewer to interrupt a story in progress, beholding the precise moment that the narrative curves from ordinary to astonishing."
Read MoreTrumpet Joy
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My ten-year-old plays the trumpet. I’m not just saying this because I’m his mother or because we have the same soul-searching eyes and fiery tempers, but this kid can play. I mean, he swings. He blows, bounces, and blips like he was born in the wrong decade.
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