BIG NEWS!
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I have signed a contract with Liturgical Press to write a biography on BRIAN DOYLE for their People of God Series.
Looking forward to getting to know Doyle even better as I contemplate his life and writing.
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What Does it Mean to Be Content?
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This year, I found out I can be a lot happier with a simpler life.
Read MoreThree Minute Ministry Mentor: The Many Gifts of Examen
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Honored to be included in this collection of Examen stories for Three Minute Ministry Mentor. If you have every wondered about praying this Examen, this is a great resource and inspiration.
Read MoreMolly McCully Brown: Places I've Taken My Body
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Molly McCully Brown cannot forget she has a body. Many of us can. We float through life without recognizing the way we move from one place to another. Brown lives with severe cerebral palsy. She is “visibly disabled” so she must “talk about [her] body everywhere [she] goes.” In this captivating collection of essays Brown explores living with this body; hating it, learning to love it, what she says to her body, what it says to her, where she has taken her body and where she has pushed it to its limits.
Read MoreCannonball Moment: A Friend's Death
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Like St. Ignatius, we all have "Cannonball Moments", a moment where your story could have taken a darker path, but instead brought into God’s brilliant light. I wrote about one of mine for Ignatian Spirituality's #31DayswithIgnatius
Growing Stronger in Body, Mind and Spirit
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Learning to take a holistic approach to my health; my physical, mental and spiritual health are all intertwined.
Read MoreThe Year We All Became Bird Watchers: Writer Brian Doyle Finds God in the Birds
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This year, we all became bird-watchers from our windows, on those long walks we found ourselves on more frequently and when we learned we really didn't have anything better to do than to sit and stare at a body of water.
Katharine Smyth- All the Lives We Ever Lived: Seeking Solace in Virginia Woolf
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“Perhaps there is one book for every life,” Katharine Smyth writes in her biblio-memoir All the Lives We Ever Lived. For Smyth, that book is Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse and it is the lens with which she views her father’s life and death.
Read MoreStrangers and the Funny Papers
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I think we want to see goodness in each other again. This past year we began to view each other as the enemy. But now, with our faces open, we see the Imago Dei, the image of God, shine out of our being.
Read MoreHow We Can Be a Blessing to Others
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Poet John O’Donohue said "It would be lovely if we could rediscover our power to bless one another." I've been trying to discover it for myself.
Read MoreGrace in Laughter
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I’m in my home office. I can hear my sons laughing in the room above me. My younger son, more in control of his emotions, delivers great one-liners with a straight face. My oldest absolutely delights in his brother and cackles like some sort of Amazonian bird. It’s a loud laugh — always louder than the joke calls for — brassy, joyful and free.
Read MoreRachel Cohen: Austen Years: A Memoir in 5 Novels
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Jane Austen’s novels conjure up images of country ball rooms, empire waist dresses and teatime in the parlor---not grief. Yet Rachel Cohen’s biblio-memoir, Austen Years: A Memoir in 5 Novels, does just that. Cohen looks at the well-loved British novels through the lens of grief, mirroring Cohen’s own in her in the death of her father. Walking through Austen’s work with Cohen, one will wonder why they never looked at this literature in this way before.
Read MorePeter Schjeldahl: Let’s See
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Turns out, writing about art doesn’t have to be as technical as one might think. Which makes sense because so much about art is how it makes you feel. Peter Schjeldahl who writes on art for The New Yorker uses metaphor and similes to convey how art makes him feel.
Read MoreMichel De Montaigne: On Solitude
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Whether is it on the topic of books or anger or fear or sleep, Montaigne seems to meander his way through these various topics, giving the reader the sense that he is simply gabbing. It helps that Montaigne is well read and educated, so even in this wandering, the reader is learning, growing, and thinking.
Read MoreScreen Time and St. Ignatius
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Scroll, refresh, click, repeat.
After an hour of this, I don’t feel any smarter, wiser, content, or connected. I just feel empty.
Read MorePower Made Perfect in Weakness
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"Marked by the Spirit with that indelible birthmark, as the Priest wanders, he wanders towards God instead of away. Perhaps Graham Graham too felt this relentless pursuit as an agnostic Catholic, felt the pull of a God who will not let you go."
Read MorePete Hamill: A Drinking Life
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There are two kinds of people in the world; those who were born and raised in New York City and those who wish they were. Pete Hamill’s A Drinking Life is a great book for both kinds of people.
Read MoreLetter to the Church
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A year ago, during the first months of the pandemic, I filmed a video for my parish. A love letter really. To encourage believers and to remind myself of what was true and real.
I shared that even in the midst of isolation I hadn’t lost my joy.
Read MoreLet Us Not Grow Weary of Doing Good
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I have grown weary of doing good.
Of reaching out. Of pursuing. Of waiting. Of praying. Of standing firm.
Even if I do all these things I am still alone, tired and discouraged.
Read MorePandemic Parenting Requires Families to Adapt to New Narratives
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Is it just me or does every mother feel as if we are just winging it? Motherhood is the ultimate "on the job training." We read all the books, ask advice from more "seasoned" mothers than us, but nothing could have prepared us for mothering this year. There isn't an issue of "What to Expect When Parenting Through a Pandemic."
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