Let me tell you about Maria. Maria is a white woman in her late 50s who cleans toilets at a major sports arena. She lugs three bulky duffel bags bursting with...
The Examined Life
Discover The Examined Life columns, highlighting the intersections between contemplation, lived faith, and social justice in daily life.
“Your sons and daughters will prophesy . . .” (Acts 2:17). I write this when hundreds of thousands of middle and high school students across the nation joined...
The holiest of weeks began in procession, then and now. At some point we exchanged dirt roads and donkeys for concrete sidewalks and poster board, but the...
Art covers the walls of a hip storefront in downtown Waterloo, Iowa. On the Saturday before Halloween, 500 kids make their way inside to claim a piece of...
In April we will mark the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. He was killed in Memphis while supporting sanitation workers on strike...
January is a month of possibilities, full of the hope and newness of a new year. In this spirit of renewal, we reflect on the past and discern our desires for...
In mid-September I spoke at St. Catherine University in St. Paul, Minnesota where I met with about 25 middle-school students of the local Black Catholic parish...
As I entered the second trimester of my fourth pregnancy, my right leg became inflamed with dark purple varicose veins. As the pregnancy progressed and the...
“God loves us when we try to love.” In this simple quip, Dorothy Day identifies a central message of Christianity. In Dorothy Day: The World Will be Saved by...
I was visiting missionary friends in Turkana, a remote, arid, and desolate region of Kenya, in the summer of 2001. My friends had asked me to help baptize 40...
