• Thoughts

    Longing to Be

    I recently read an essay that laments the unrest in the world, concentrated, as usual, in the Middle East. Two specific statements (sentiments) shared by the author (editor of an art magazine) caught my attention, because each purports to be…

  • Thoughts

    Peace Travels Light

    Alice Miller has made me a minimalist. All that’s left? Me and the truth. The agendas; the philosophies; the advice and instruction; the judgments, opinions, and ratings; the rules and the “this is the way it’s done”s; the excuses and…

  • Thoughts

    Just a Pebble in a Pond

    St. Thérèse taught the value of the “Little Way”—a path to holiness that lay in performing all our daily tasks and duties in a spirit of love and in the presence of God. Dorothy embraced this teaching. She believed that…

  • Thoughts

    Peace on Earth

    Has there ever been peace in the world, and if so, will there ever be again? I suppose it depends upon who you ask. Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum, has an image of world peace that looks…

  • Thoughts

    New Narratives

    It has arrived: the first day of 2022. Why have I looked forward to it with such longing? Is it simply the notion of starting fresh, cleaning out the old and tired and worn? Is it that 2021 was a…

  • Thoughts

    All We Need for the Journey

    For one reason or another, I saved a Magnificat meditation by Dorothy Day. Her words appear in purple. Today the atmosphere is very heavy. Rain threatens. So often one is overcome with a tragic sense of the meaninglessness of our…

  • Thoughts

    The Tales We Tell

    It turns out that I have a tendency to make the most of a bad situation, and I write it that way because this was not readily apparent to me for the longest time. If I had been asked, while…

  • Thoughts

    Highwire

    What happens when you live life in a state somewhere between denial and acknowledgement, halfway between peace of heart and frustration with every aspect of the world around you? It is a precarious perch, and one wrong move can plunge…