IN ORDINARY TIME BLOG
-
Speak, Lord
“The right scripture at the right time, every time.” That’s what a little Bible reference book in my library promises. Want to know about repentance? Take off your hair shirt and turn to page 106. Pondering forgiveness? Stop plotting revenge and flip to page 134. Struggling with lust? Go to page 178, and quick. This…
-
Always We Begin Again
I’d like to report that my first week practicing the Prayer of Examen was flawless in execution, spiritually enlightening and emotionally fulfilling. I’d like to, but I can’t. Being the impatient overachiever that I am, I imagined myself immediately getting into the groove of this daily spiritual inventory. I figured it was a matter of…
-
True Love is a Folded Newspaper
If you dare to open a newspaper, watch TV or venture into a store in the frenzied run up to Valentine’s Day, you’ve probably run the gift gauntlet between the sublime (anything with diamonds) to the ridiculous (silly silk boxer shorts printed with large red hearts). Perhaps you’ve had the overwhelming feeling of shame that…
-
A Road Paved with Questions
“You sure do ask a lot of questions for someone from New Jersey.” Saturday Night Live fans of a certain age will recognize Rosanne Rosannadanna’s response to all those letters from Mr. Richard Feder of Ft. Lee, New Jersey. Like the fictional Mr. Feder; I sure do ask a lot of questions. It’s like…
-
Right Thing, Wrong Reason
or How I Wound up Building a Shack I’ve been a writer most of my life. When I was in elementary school, I wrote in a little red diary with a gold lock and key, then graduated to spiral bound notebooks full of poetry and teenage angst. I wrote in marble composition books, in…
-
In God We Trust
I spent this morning in a room full of pain. It is not a space designed for comfort, physical or otherwise. The wooden benches are hard and the heat is stifling even on a frigid January day. An aisle separates the “sides” in this judicial proceeding — the victim’s family and friends on the right,…
-
What Now?
Today we celebrate Epiphany, the visit of the Magi to the infant Jesus. After worshipping Him and offering gifts, Matthew tells us, “Having been warned in a dream, they left for their own country by another road.” This is the last we hear of the Magi in Scripture, but do you ever wonder what happened when…
-
Gimme Peace!
One of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite movies has Robert Duvall shouting at God: ”Gimme peace!” I feel like the whole world is shouting that lately: “Give us peace! Give us peace!” Of course, opinions about how we achieve this run the gamut: more gun control, less gun control, accepting refugees, banning…
-
Jesus Is
“It depends on what your definition of ‘is’ is.” This was the famous response then-President Bill Clinton gave to a question asked of him about the scandal that rocked his presidency. Much fun was made of his lawyerly parsing of the question, of his squirrelly, squirming attempt to avoid telling the plain truth. Oddly enough,…
-
The God Who Will Come
Sometimes I get discouraged. I think whatever needs saying about a particular subject has already been said. And I’m sure that its been said in ways far more persuasive, incisive, poetic, amusing, enlightening and inspired than anything I could offer. Sometimes, I’m right. Yesterday, I heard a brilliant sermon on what would have been my…
-
Laura to Daily News: Drop Dead
I grew up reading the N.Y. Daily News, “New York’s Hometown Paper.” Its the paper my Dad brought home from work, the paper I cut articles out of for my “current events” class in elementary school. It was the only newspaper I knew until I got to my college-prep junior high school, where they made…
-
The God Who Came
We are no longer in Ordinary Time. We have entered the season of Advent, and all around me I hear calls to hope, to anticipation, to stillness. I know that I am supposed to mirror the prayerful waiting, the confident expectation of God’s deliverance that the prophets Anna and Simeon so beautifully embody, but this…