I was reluctant to join Facebook. Perhaps many of you have felt the same. I finally did for two reasons: I realized many of my highschool friends were present there, and a fellow theologian told me she was developing theological connections through it. So I joined. Continue Reading
I didn’t really expect to run into Jesus and Mary at an Alabama rest area it 11:00 PM.
Like Ric, I have been traveling–only north, not south, to Upper Michigan, not Alabama. And since I fittingly read chs. 50 and 51 of the Rule on the road, I interpreted them in light of my two weeks on “vacation”–which going to my homeland isn’t, really. Not at least when an uncle ends up in the ICU, and you are preaching a sermon during your trip (about Jesus’ own desparate need for vacations–see John 6), and you are zipping about across hundreds of miles (the UP is very long across) to see once more myriad worlds of families and friends. And on top of that, your brother bundles in unexpectedly (because of your uncle), driving 36 hours straight from Winnemucca, Nevada with his wife and their three youngest kids and two dogs. Continue Reading
12:10 Mass at the Cathedral of St. Paul in downtown Birmingham. I spent my entire young life in and around Birmingham, and I never walked inside this building until today. I don’t remember ever even seeing it till I was in my 30’s. I frequently ate at the Social Grill, just a block away, when I was in college at Birmingham-Southern. I discovered the Birmingham Art Museum when I was in my ’20s. But St. Paul’s Cathedral? Nada…till today. Continue Reading
Breakfast at the Microtel in Gardendale, Alabama is a real wake-up, a brittle break from my ordinarily sheltered, stained-glass routine. Truckers with the rural, southern linguistic twang so familiar to me from childhood and adolescence have a very different perspective on current economic and political concerns than that of my midwestern, middle-class community. I’m tempted to recoil, to take my English muffin and coffee back to the quiet isolation of my room, but somehow I manage to smile at my insecurities, take a breath and enjoy the banter around me. Continue Reading
This summer I have been asked three times to open my home to others to live for one to three weeks. Each time I have said yes. The third time–still coming up–I will be away while a family of five from England stays in my house (hopefully with no damage to the two year old in my not-especially-childproof home of many bookshelves). But with the first two visitors, I was reminded how good it can be to have a housemate, and how a long history of sharing a house leaves you with a muscle that springs easily into use again. Continue Reading
Last weekend I attended my 20th college reunion (at Carleton College in Northfield, MN). Since graduating classes are small by university standards (there were about 400 people in my class of ”89), students tend to know–or at least recognize–a fair number of their classmates. And since reunions include other class years as well, you can get a feel for the well-known stars of other classes, especially when they make featured presentations.
My days are sandy this summer–fluidly flowing from place to place and task to task, moving back and forth like the tide from this town where I live. I”ll be in and out all summer, more than usual, for a variety of largely joyful reasons. However, this does mean that my reflective work (researching and writing) is done in the places I am staying out of town–where the needs of my house and bills and errands cannot distract me–while when I am at home (as I am for two more days) there is nothing to do but catch up on the laundry and the mail and the yardwork and myriads of other practical matters.
Kerry Ligtenberg is a pro baseball model of Benedictine stability in the modern transitory norm. I got to see him pitch the Sunday night before Memorial Day when he closed the game for the St. Paul Saints against the Sioux City Canaries. He did so quickly and with style: two strikeouts and a pop fly out to end the game.
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Sr. Sheila McGrath talks about how illness can bring hidden blessings in this video.
Benedictine Oblate Musings 