What’s New
The Geometry of Authentic Community
Volunteerism is on the rise in St. Louis specifically, and in the U.S. in general. More people are spending more time doing more things they’re not paid to do. The same is true of financial giving. Though it is the 18th largest metropolitan region in the country,...
The promise of resurrection
One of our Ignatian Volunteers served at a day-time drop-in shelter for the poor and the poor in spirit. Late in the season of Lent, he observed a severely mentally ill guest at the shelter admiring a holy card of Christ crucified. Many times the guest snapped his...
Failure and defeat never have the last word
“Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life” (John 3:14-15) Jesus reminds his hearers of the odd way God saved Israelites who had been bitten by poisonous snakes in the...
A Lenten Visit
The Gawler family came to Walton at just the right time this month. Bad news has been the regular currency for our town most of this year. The school budget was slashed again. The economic plight has only seemed to deepen over the winter with more store windows...
IVC and Me
When I first heard about the IVC, it was in 2002 in the context of Pastoral Formation Institute, a diocesan school for lay people on Long Island, NY. One of the IVC members was traveling a great distance to a school in Brooklyn, and she wanted to know if there were...
The God of Christmas is the God of Lent
“Know that I am with you and will keep you, wherever you go” (Gen 28:15) “Even if I sin?” "Especially then.” The conversation (related with permission) between Our Lord and a retreatant of several years ago plays in my ears through the days of Lent like the refrain of...
We are an immigrant nation
I wish the people who grumble that immigrants should be “required” to learn English could sit in on one of my ESL classes at Cabrini Immigrant Services in Manhattan. It’s a daytime class, so the students are mostly senior citizens and mothers of schoolchildren. This...
Changing Lives: The remarkable story of “El Sistema”
It’s February and it’s snowing here in Walton, NY, a small town in the foothills of the Catskills. Winter is supposed to be a quiet time, a time to read and reflect, but my mind is anything but quiet. It is swirling with ideas and possibilities. It all started when...
God with some skin
A delightful story recounted in The Holy Longing by Ron Rolheiser tells of a 4-year-old girl who feared spooks and monsters in the dark of her room. One night, she ran to her parents’ bed, and her mother calmed her down. As she led her daughter back to her room, she...