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...
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...
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....
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...
“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 spring. My...
Originally published on Dappled Things. Without salt the feast is spoiled.-Polish proverb The salt arrives in the usual brown corrugated shipping box with the Amazon logo emblazoned on the side. The red 3-pound box of Diamond kosher salt and a smaller, somewhat...
Originally published on Dappled Things “The aim and final reason of all music should be none else but the glory of God and refreshing the soul. Where this is not observed there will be no music, but only a devilish hubbub." - Johann Sebastian Bach. The liturgy...