It was my daughter’s first high school cross country meet. I was there to be moral support and transportation, and a small gaggle of parents and coaches and I wandered around the course cheering on the runners. After three miles of wet grass, tree roots, and inclines (I hesitate to call anything in Lafayette by […]

It’s always amazed me how the thing I need to hear often shows up exactly when I need to hear it. As usual, I was late to get around to reading an article (clearly I missed it the first time, it’s from 2023!) but Zina Hitz’s piece “Other Monks” in Plough found its way onto […]

Rather than giving you a list of excuses for why it’s been four months since I posted anything, I thought I’d give you a little taste of what I’ve been up to when I’m not typing away frantically at my computer. For the last several months, what once was blocked off as “writing time” has […]

Often when I consider Lenten reading, I turn towards spiritual classics or stories of the saints. Poetry, however, offers a meditative way to focus our minds and hearts on just what it is that we remember in this holy season. Herman Sutter’s Stations: A Poem Cycle and Nikki Grimes’ At Jerusalem’s Gate: Poems of Easter […]

I want to take just a minute to brag. In 2019, I started looking into the Zero Waste movement. After some reading and research, I despaired of ever reaching the “only a canning jar of trash a year” level, but I also decided to make an effort to reduce the amount of trash our family […]

At the start of October, I spent a weekend at the Catholic Imagination Conference hosted by the University of Dallas, and (though it has taken me an unconscionably long time to get started) I suspect it may be the topic of posts for the next several months as I unpack the many, many ideas I […]

It’s rare day in my life that I’m only reading one book at a time. In fact, I’m more likely to be reading a few too many at once. One advantage to this practice, however, is that sometimes books shine a light on each other that wouldn’t be as obvious if I had to remember […]

It’s been awhile…It seems that after a year of posting (almost) every week, I needed a breather. But so much has been going on lately, I think it’s past time for an update. We spent Easter week outside of Asheville, NC with Craig’s family, where we enjoyed hiking, cooking, and yarn-shopping. It was a peaceful […]

Warning: this is another post about tea. And children’s books. And art. So basically the usual. I read a lovely article this week by Amy Baik Lee about Beatrix Potter, china tea cups, and wonder. It was one of those situations that happen to me occasionally: that morning I had been reading The Tale of […]

Christmas is almost here, and with the last week of Advent comes the frantic rush to finish buying and making Christmas gifts. Despite my best efforts, it seems like there are always one or two people (at least) who still have me stumped right into the week before Christmas. Usually, it’s not the kids who […]