An old friend of mine likes to joke that if you go to Mass and the opening song is “Be Not Afraid,” you probably have every right to be fearful. Either the...
Family
When I was about 6 years old, I finally got to participate in an Easter tradition in which I begged to partake every year: my Sicilian great-grandma’s roasted...
“Give us bread and give us roses.” —Slogan of female mill workers during what became known as the Bread and Roses Strike, Lawrence, Massachusetts, January 1912...
When our foster daughter was 2, we had to give her up for Lent. She had lived with us just over a year at the time, and over the course of that year her...
My four children were glued to the front room window when moving vans arrived across the street last summer. They watched each box and every piece of furniture...
A legendary African American musician stood up and told the story of how he collects robes from former KKK members. His strategy for getting them to leave the...
Last Ash Wednesday Sister Angie Kolacinski, S.H. marked a cross of ashes on the foreheads of hundreds of adults and children who streamed into Holy Cross...
In a recent meeting with all the players in our foster daughter’s case—social workers, attorneys, birth parents, adoption experts, and my husband and me—I was...
Gary Chapman’s bestselling book The 5 Love Languages (Northfield Publishing) is a frequent reference point in our family. Chapman’s premise is that when we...
The books I’ve read to my kids over the years bring back warm memories—everything from Goodnight Moon to Peter Rabbit to The Wind in the Willows. I knew...
