The other night we did something pretty remarkable with a group of friends at a Christmas party. Wedged in right between the overconsumption of some terrible red wine and a white elephant gift exchange, one of the guys invited us to share “desolations and consolations” from the previous year. Between…
December 21, 2018Today marks the beginning of my absolute favorite period of time of the whole year: the O Antiphons. It’s the beginning of the end, the final countdown till Christmas. Advent’s last hurrah. I have not strictly observed the Advent action items – or inaction items, as it were – which…
December 17, 2018Ciao to my internet people. I’ve missed you guys. 9 days of stomach flu + fevers + a side of croup for the baby, and it feels like we’re crawling to the finish line of this week. We had a miraculous 30 hour window this past Friday sans barf during…
December 7, 2018Heading into a kind of weird weekend for our crew: 2 days off followed by a day and a half of school and then fall break. I don’t remember having fall break as a kid, so I sure hope mine appreciate it. Dave will be doing the lion’s share of…
October 19, 2018One of the best/weirdest parts of Catholicism is definitely the Communion of Saints. If you think hard enough about how the Bible talks about dead people and how all Christians uniformly revere St. Paul and St. Luke and St. John and the rest of the NT crew, it’s not too…
October 11, 2018Because our littlest rooster woke at the ripe hour of 5:20 this morning (that’s what you get for uttering the phrase “sleeping through the night” on the internet) I’ve already been to the gym, showered, done dishes and laundry, and dropped more than half my kids at various locations across…
July 12, 2018I was going to double down on Lent this week. I had big plans, flush with grace from surviving Palm Sunday’s armed liturgy, sweating with the exertion of having spent 90 minutes sit-stand-and kneeling + slapping palm ‘swords’ out of my toddlers’ (and not-so-toddler-sized kids’, ahem) fists. My prayer…
March 27, 2018We try to communicate the “not-yet-ness” of Advent to our kids without totally squelching the pleasant, anticipatory joy of Christmas on the near horizon, and I think we’ve achieved a moderately sane balance, though I’m sure we come across as too grinch for some and gluttonously liturgically abusive to others.…
December 7, 2017In past years, in my enthusiasm to be liturgically aware and impart said knowledge to my offspring, I think perhaps I’ve been a little intense in the Advent department. We had a rigorous (laughs softly and stares vacantly into space) tree-decorating schedule involving the procurement of a real!fresh! evergreen on…
November 29, 2017It’s the Feast of All Saints, which means everyone has a raging sugar hangover and we’re on our second round of costumes in 24 hours – which, I admit, sounds miserable but which I manage by encouraging, nay, insisting, that would-be Halloween costume contenders transition almost effortlessly into saint costumes. So,…
November 1, 2017