by Beth Casteel | Dec 11, 2024 | Reflections
I unlock the door to a hot, quiet church. The lights are off. I am alone in the cavernous 127-year-old church. I lock myself back in and turn on some lights. I breathe in the quiet of the empty Catholic church that I have attended since I was a child. The images on...
by Beth Casteel | Dec 10, 2024 | Reflections
A month before Christmas 2022, I arrived at my parents’ house to make the nut rolls – small, cookie-sized logs of rich pastry that melt in your mouth, the dough shoved full of a sugary maple-flavored walnut filling and sprinkled with powdered sugar. My mom has...
by Beth Casteel | Mar 15, 2024 | Publications
As I back out of the garage and pull the car toward the woods I see her, shining full circle, white as alabaster behind the bare trees that stand like soldiers guarding her, the top branches spidery against the moonlit sky. She lights up their silhouette....
by Beth Casteel | Dec 3, 2023 | Publications
I am awakened by orchestrated bird song, an aching hip, a constant awareness of an uneasy earth and the rumbling of trucks down the cobblestone roads outside our room at the Hotel Porta Antigua, Guatemala. My stomach flips. I hurry to the bathroom. Traveler’s diarrhea...
by Beth Casteel | Dec 10, 2020 | Publications
“Having faith in God did not mean sitting back and doing nothing. It meant believing you would find success if you did your best honestly and energetically.” – Ken Follett, The Pillars of the Earth It is early March in Pennsylvania – still no sign of...
