Trinity Sunday

Today is Trinity Sunday, the Sunday after Pentecost. Trinity Sunday is often lost in the whirl of graduations, Confirmations, and marriages. Preachers and teachers can find it a difficult, abstract sounding doctrine for liturgical preaching. I would venture to say that the doctrine of the Trinity is not...

Dealing with Bad Days

What do you do when you’ve had a really bad day? It happens to all of us. Sometimes days just seem to go south. I had one of those days recently (I’ll spare you the details), and I began to reflect on how to deal with days like this, as opposed to merely giving in to discouragement and...

The Power of Kindness

Be kind. It sounds simple enough, but the impact of it can be so overlooked. Really, that’s all it takes. Just be kind. Be friendly, generous, compassionate. See the people you encounter as gifts in your day, and be kind to them. Last week a friend sent me a link to a blog post that reminded me of this...

Life Goes On

My home in the country lost one of its more unique features last weekend. Heather, our white swan, was killed. She’d been sitting on a nest of eggs and had taken to sleeping on her nest rather than seeking the safety of the pond. This—and her coloring—made her easy prey for a coyote or fox on a...

Psalm 30

This is a highly dramatic prayer of praise and thanksgiving.  The psalmist has undergone a dangerous situation—perhaps a wound or perhaps a disease.  To add insult to injury, an enemy was gloating over the psalmist’s predicament.  He recalls how dangerous it was.  He was on the brink of falling into...

Paul’s Second Journey

At Mass this week we have been reading narratives from Paul’s second missionary journey. Acts of the Apostles, chapters 16 to 18, recounts how Paul and his companions reached Macedonia and stayed a long while in towns like Philippi and Corinth. Paul’s second missionary journey was a test of endurance. In...