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Badges and identification speak volumes. They shout, “Official!” and “I’m representing something/someone bigger than both of us.” Let’s imagine that each of us wears under our jacket or on our vest a badge that claims “Agent of God’s Reign.” What power we’d feel! How official we’d become! Imagine yourself walking into a situation of conflict.…

Ronald Rolheiser in his book Sacred Fire writes that our emotions, appetites and thoughts are so huge and insatiable because “we have the image and likeness of God inside of us.” And “God is fire, infinite fire, and that infinite fire…is also inside us,” causing our hearts and minds wanting to be everywhere. When Mary…

Summer is coming to an end. With some sadness do we count our losses? No more picnics, no more swimming, no more trips to the beach. Or do we look back over June, July, and August and count our gains? What have the bits of extra leisure gained for us or for others?  Did we…

When you miss an important message, when the toilet overflows, when the pork chops burn, when all your hard work seems futile, when the lawn mower doesn’t start, when you break a fingernail or glass, when you can’t find a parking space, when you’ve lost your date book, and when you wonder why you even…

You have probably heard of Gregory Boyle’s book Tattoos on the Heart. The title comes from a situation in which Boyle catches Sharkey doing the right thing and telling him that his courage made him a “giant among men.” Sharkey responded, “I’m gonna tattoo that on my heart.” When I read Scripture, I am sometimes…

Recently I read an article about the millions of microbes in and around me—how in some way they’ve been around since the Big Bang and will continue in existence, how they are all necessary in the plan of creation. I’ve been making myself more conscious of the interdependence of all things. Maybe I achieved a…

Throughout the past two weeks I have marinated in the spirit of the Sisters of Notre Dame. Well, since I am a Sister of Notre, I am surrounded by the Notre Dame spirit all the time, but I mean the events of the past two weeks have left me supersaturated, drenched. First on July 3…

Many people frantically run through the day, although students on summer break might be exempt from the hurry-hurry, “got-no-time.” While summer may afford a bit more leisure, leisure is still a commodity hard to come by.  Who has time for leisure?     David Steindl-Rast has said that leisure is not the privilege of those who…

Several evenings recently the sunsets have been fantastic—but you have to catch them! That’s the fun part. Just walking or driving along, and suddenly you stop breathing. Everything stops—even breath—for a few seconds of pure awe and joy and wonder and incredibility and thankfulness. For those few seconds we are contemplatives. I imagine that our…

Everything is too quiet—no breeze, no chirping of birds, no movement. The scene could be a painting on a canvas. But something—with no evidence to prove it–is stirring, brewing, intensifying. What will come? A much-needed rain? Hail? Damaging winds? The storm of the century as happened with West Virginia’s flooding? Or nothing at all in…