Category: Spirituality
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Give Me Your Fire, I’ll Do Your Work
“What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross. It is much harder to believe than not to believe.” ~ Flannery O’Connor The great fifty days of Easter are now over. It is now time for us, as Christians, to step…
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Grandma’s Hands, They Really Came In Handy
As spring flowers once again begin to bloom, I am drawn to happy memories of Grandma. Some of my very earliest and favorite memories are of learning how to plant flowers in Grandma’s backyard beds. Of planting an apple seed in a tin can and week by week watching it grow. Learning the importance of…
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The Trouble With Hello is Goodbye: Saying Goodbye with Love
This is the post I almost didn’t write. It’s easy for me to wax philosophically, or historically, or musically, for hours. Although I can and do get extremely emotionally charged about these topics, they don’t require delving into the depths of my soul, the most closed off places of my emotional being. Talking about any…
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When Magazines Were Used For More Than Reading
I am eternally grateful that I was afforded the opportunity to have an amazing relationship with both of my grandfathers. They were both born in the summer of 1923, within two weeks of each other. Both of them grew up on farms during the height of the Great Depression. They would both find their way…
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O Righteous Judge, Grant They Gift of Absolution
As a society we have become inundated by emojis. Most of us have become like robots when scrolling through social media sites, handing out countless compulsory “likes.” Everyday, all day, usually without giving much thought to what we are “liking.” We wish happy birthdays to people we have not seen in years. Sometimes even to…
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Who Thee By Faith Before The World Confessed
On this blessed Solemnity of All Saints, I would like to offer a reflection on the littlest Saints of God. These precious ones were not famous martyrs, theologians, missionaries, kings or queens, yet they shine before the Altar of God just as beautifully as any of them. Their witness is not recorded in grandiose stories…
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For One Brief Shining Moment Perfection Was Grasped
Justice, Chivalry and the noble pursuit of Perfection. A trifold approach to achieving Plato’s idealized Utopian society. Those of us familiar with English history, or perhaps musical theater, will recognize these as the hallmarks on which the Court of Camelot stood. We recall Camelot today with heartrending emotion. A sort of unattainable, Garden of Eden…
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I Was Dead But Now I Am Alive!
It’s funny the amount of things that we take for granted on a daily basis. Lights turning on immediately after hitting a switch, cars starting right up, our bodies taking breath after breath without a single concentrated thought from us. Three years ago this month I was lying in a hospital bed struggling by the…
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The Gift of Apples and the Churning of Fall
Nietzsche once quipped, “I notice Autumn is more the season of the soul than of nature.” On a recent trip to the apple orchard I was reminded just how true this sentiment is. The falling leaves, the crisp fall air and the wafting smell of fermenting apples completely rejuvenated my spirits. Perhaps it was the…
