I learned a lot about being from my cat Goose; I learned also something about how God regards our being, delighting in the work of his hands and the extraordinary beauty of our ordinary lives.
Faith in Focus
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Learning and Teaching
I walked across the deck of the pool at Flick Park, one of the public pools in Glenview, the embryonic suburb north of Chicago where I spent the first 18 years of my life. Little children splashed their way through the kiddie pool on my right. I was there with some friends headed for the water slide
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South Bronx Funeral
Once I finally found the street in the South Bronx for which I had been searching, I almost immediately spotted my destination, a funeral home. From my vantage point inside the car, it looked like little more than a storefront, wedged in between a bodega and an apartment building. If it weren’
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Fundamentally, It’s Love
For longer than I knew, my father’s Arabic-language Bible lay on the dining table, a thick, gold-leafed tome, warm and fragile with years of page-turning, the family’s sacred text that had sustained Dad on his long journey from Syria to America. That Bible now sits atop my own bookshelf.
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Mass With an Ailing Pope
We were told to meet at the Bronze Door of the Vatican Palace on the morning of Dec. 23 last year. After the security check and a short wait at the foot of a monumental marble stairway, we were led up through the vast courtyard of St. Damasus, down a long gallery decorated with frescos of old maps a
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Rebuilding on Faith
At the age of 15 I was a girl who made it difficult for anyoneeven myselfto love. My upbringing has been a turbulent ride. There were struggles with anorexia, friends poorly chosen and my parents’ divorce. The only positive thing about me was something that I did not earn. I was blessed with a
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Taking It With Me: Mercy’s Grace at Work in the Public Schools
After a 24-year teaching career in Catholic education, 20 of those years with the Sisters of Mercy at Mercy High School in Baltimore, I took a big risk and leapt to the public schools. I had always wanted to round out my career with a stint in public education. My move back to my family home in sout
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Fasting? But That’s So Mortifying!
While I was baking Christmas cookies in mid-December (oh, good, here’s another broken one!), my thoughts suddenly turned to Lent. Clearly I was en route to surpassing the average 1.4 pounds we Americans gain during the Christmas holiday season. So in a perverse sort of way, while munching my w
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Mothering Dominican Style
About eight years ago, when my five children were between the ages of 9 and 18, I had my first opportunity to go with my husband to the Dominican Republic on a medical mission. It was a little scary to leave the children, because we would be incommunicado for a while. We also knew there was some per
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Who Prays to St. Valentine?
More than we imagine, probably. Hallmark. Fashion gurus. Purveyors of sentimental gifts. And I, too, once prayed to him.