Category Archives: Uncategorized

I just finished Carol Kent’s A New Kind of Normal  — Hope filled choices when life turns upside down.  In 1999, Carol and Gene Kent watched their good life unravel when their only child was arrested and eventually sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.This book is Kent’s story of how youContinueContinue reading “Normal, really?”

"A Christmas Carol," a poem by eighteenth-century writer Christina Georgina Rossetti, always has fascinated me.  I read it every year.  See if you can see how Rossetti deftly moves the reader back and forth between the original Christmas scene, the present, and the future return of Christ the Lord.  The final 8 lines really bringsContinueContinue reading “Giving Jesus our heart at Christmas”

I read Matthew 1:1-17 this morning.  It’s Matthew’s version of Jesus’ ancestry.  Jesus’ forebears included children born of incest (Perez) and children born of mixed races (Boaz).  Solomon is in there, too.  Imagine stepping in this Christmas scene and someone trying to explain who Solomon is …"See that pretty woman sitting there to the leftContinueContinue reading “Accepting your ancestry at Christmas”

After John the Baptist was thrown in prison he sent his disciples to ask Jesus, "Are you the Messiah  we’ve been expecting, or should we keep looking for someone else?"  This verse popped into my mind this morning as I read the New York Times and the story of thousands of Congolese fleeing their homesContinueContinue reading “Christmas tension: John the Baptist felt it too”

One of my favorite Christmas poems is "The Burning Babe" by Robert Southwell (1561-1595).  Southwell was a Jesuit priest during the time of intense religious-political conflict in England.  He was martyred in 1595.  Most of his poems were written from prison.  This poem is an strange, extended metaphor in which the baby Jesus is likenedContinueContinue reading “The fiery Babe”

Isaiah 40:3 says, "A voice cries out: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.  Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.  Then the gloryContinueContinue reading “Transparency … A rare Advent gift”

Philospher Peter Kreeft says:"The whole material universe is a maternal universe, a Great Mother, a womb.  Its basic law, from  galaxies to guppies, is growth, evolution, a purposive change.  Like a womb, it is not for itself or its own survival.  It eventually grows old and dies.  Its purpose is to mother a child.  TheContinueContinue reading “Wombs within wombs”

"You, too, must keep watch!  For you do not know when the master of the household will return — in the evening, at midnight, before dawn, or at daybreak.  Do not let him find you sleeping when he arrives without warning.  I say to you what I say to everyone:  Watch for him!"  Mark 13:35-361. ContinueContinue reading “Always keep watching”