When I was five or six years old, I had a neighbor named Mrs. Wonders who lived across the street from me. Mrs. Wonders, who was in her sixties at the time, invited me to visit her any day, any time. She kept a candy dish on the end table closest to the door and …

We had a lot of rain this spring. So much, that the roads were flooded on several occasions. The flooding affected my granddaughter Rosie’s bus ride home several times causing her bus to be rerouted. The first time this happened, the school called her mother, my daughter Rebecca, to tell her that Rosie would be …

In the New Testament and the early Christian church, healing was an essential aspect of Christian ministry and discipleship. It still plays a role in our churches and our liturgies, but I think most of us do not consider ourselves to be healers or to be called to heal. One reason for this is that …

I recently went shopping for a new dress to wear to a wedding. I usually order my clothes online, but hoping to add something new and different to my wardrobe, I went to the mall. I re-discovered something I already knew. I really don’t like to shop, especially for myself. I don’t think anything fits …

As I write this blog, summer is coming to a close. It is less than one week until school begins. My granddaughter, Rosie, will be starting kindergarten and so her preschool days are winding down and her parents and grandparents feel both excitement for all that is beginning for her and sadness at all that …

I still remember a homily I heard years ago while on a family vacation at Bethany Beach. The gospel reading for Mass that day was the parable of the Sower (Mark 4:1-20). The priest drew my attention to an aspect of this passage I had never thought about before. My reading of the passage always …

Bonnie Thurston’s book, Shaped by the End You Live For: Thomas Merton’s Monastic Spirituality, has a chapter exploring the monastic vocation to solitude. After reflecting on the gifts of solitude for a monk, Thurston writes, For those of us who live outside the monastery, the solitary vocation is to simplicity, silence, poverty, emptiness, anonymity. Shaped …

I recently read Henri Nouwen’s journal, Sabbatical Journey, written during the last year of his life. When he wrote this journal, he didn’t know it would be his last journal or the last year of his life. He died suddenly of a heart attack on September 21, 1996. The journal describes a trip Nouwen took …

One of my favorite quotes from Cistercian monk Thomas Merton, comes from a talk he gave to a group of Catholic Sisters in Alaska two-and-a-half months before his death. His talks in Alaska focused on the spiritual life, and when he tried to articulate the experience of the depth of God’s love for us, he …

A year and a half ago, I was given an alumni award by Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. To celebrate that occasion, my daughter-in-law, Christina, gave me a small Willow Tree figurine called Wisdom. The small six inch figurine is a woman dressed in a long white dress; head tilted in full concentration toward an open book …