After a year of living very near to my nearest and dearest, I sometimes feel as if the nuclear unit gets a bit radioactive. My gang gets bogged down by the sameness of COVID life, our family feuds looping like gifs. Parents and caregivers haven’t had the same access to our social networks or supportive…
EDITOR’S NOTE: Here’s a McCarty ClassicTM from 2018 that we might all need to read again. I’ve been fortunate the past ten years or so since I started teaching in Bloomfield, New York, my morning commute takes me essentially due east. So, for the first few months of the year and the last few months…
What is Home? To me it will always be the little map dot in Southern Kansas where I was raised. To others, St. Leo, KS is nowhere, but to me it is home. St. Leo is an intersection of a blacktop and a sand road thirty miles from civilization. A Catholic church with a 110-foot…
NOTE: Today seems like a good day to re-visit this excellent essay Julie shared several years ago. Enjoy! I hadn’t talked with our eldest daughter for several days when she called and asked what we’d been doing. I paused, trying to muster up an answer of substance. Coming up empty-handed, I winced and responded, “The…
There are some stories that echo the truths we hold dear and the things we long for most, even when we don’t always realize it. Those are the stories that always stay with us; they are the stories that have meaning, that make us grateful to be alive. They find hope in the midst of…
I used to believe that fear was the mark of weakness. I grew up with anxiety that really did weaken me, because of the pain that came with it: the turning stomach, racing thoughts, and hyper-vigilance that made me feel like I’d downed fifteen cups of coffee. Rarely did I have the choice whether to…
We learned how to be at home even as we stayed at home in 2020. We planted zinnias and baked bread from scratch and walked the countryside and waved to our neighbors, and to me, it’s all felt very Shire-like. If my friends weren’t losing their grandparents or my church members slipping out of fellowship, I wouldn’t…
While reading aloud The Lord of the Rings to my two oldest daughters for the first time, I have been repeatedly struck by something: the power of hospitality. The larger world that Frodo and company are thrust into can be perilous, even a bit grim, but it is never over much. Why, one might ask?…
Have you ever tried to move something with your mind? Maybe there was a pencil on the table, and you thought really hard about making it roll. Do you remember what it felt like to try to use a power that you don’t have? Maybe you frowned, gritted your teeth, clenched your fists, or burst…
To carry is to do something beautiful and intentional. We carry ourselves in a certain way, hung on a certain frame, approaching each new moment and face and place from a certain point, with a certain deposit of grace. We carry the ones we love through seasons of pain – in hugs and in hands…
There’s something about an empty church sanctuary. In the absence of Sunday morning busyness, you can better feel what it is at its heart. A place meant for safety, and holiness. A place meant to elevate us beyond the stresses and trials of everyday life, to remind us that we are loved, abundantly welcome, and…
Origin – For Katrine Present, as air and as possible to conjure, to craft. Though the heart believes itself still, maybe dead, I see it beating. I possess you no more than I possess the air you breathe, that I breathe, knowing it was not I who made your heart to beat. Not I who…
