As we approach the celebration of Pentecost we pause to consider the Third Person of the Holy Trinity, the Holy Spirit.  The First Person of the Trinity is God the Father.  Known as the Creator of the universe, He is…

Maybe it's just me, but in our modern age family life seems to have been thrown into the back seat of a fast-moving minivan.  Parents and kids alike are living as though life were a drag race, speeding past historical…

The other day I fell into a pit of despair.  Okay, honestly, I didn't fall.  I wasn't even pushed.  I flung myself in!  I had been wrestling for weeks over a decision about co-curricular activities for one of my kids, and before I knew it I had reached the end of my emotional rope.  So, I jumped, headlong, into the rocky pit of despair, and had a nice little breakdown.  It wasn't so much the circumstances as the feeling they were causing me to have that threw me over the brink; feelings of inadequacy, feelings of having failed my child, and that meaning that as a mom I was worthless.  A total wash up.  In the midst of my carrying on, the Holy Spirit visited me with a word picture.

Tea is a stranger to me.  Coffee is an old friend.  Coffee tastes like comfort and feels like being connected.  Coffee smells like relaxation and looks like afternoon sunlight.  This cozy relationship is a bit of a problem for me,…

By nature, and as a photographer by profession, I am constantly aware of sunlight.  Watching sunlight move through the day, arranging itself around objects and landscapes in ever-changing ways, is a constant source of joy and hope for me.  It is, perhaps, for this reason that enduring the winter months when the sun gets up late and goes to bed early can be a challenge.  As early as four o'clock in the afternoon, while there is still much to be done in my day, the beauty of twilight is snuffed out by cover of night. 

There are other things about winter that make it challenging for the natural photographer in me as well.  The winter landscape lacks color.  Trees clothed in the delicate greens of spring and summer, and in the brilliant reds, oranges, and yellows of autumn are stripped to a uniform brown in winter.  Barren branches provide good studies in contrast and pattern, but all in all they are not nearly as spectacular as branches plump with leaves, flowers, and fruits.

Peace is like a cookie.  Peace is a result, a final product, not a raw ingredient.  How do I know this?  Well, I know it because in trying to create peace, I have never been able to do so in…

Yesterday, I wrote about the importance of keeping our spiritual fuel tanks full in order to better weather the storms of life.  I touched on one way that God had planned to help us do this by asking us to…

I am unreasonably afraid of running out of gas in the car.  I think it is because I learned to drive in Northern Wisconsin, where running out of gas in the middle of winter could be a fatal mistake.  Driving…

As a cold drizzle soaked the soccer fields, I huddled on the sidelines with another mom.  Her only child was in third grade, like my youngest, and she was sharing how she had recently re-enrolled in college to finish her…

This is the ninth in a series of columns on the importance of giving all Catholic kids a Catholic education (Part one, Part two, Part three, Part four, Part five, Part six, Part seven, Part eight).

God created the world.  The…