“If you stare at a painting long enough, you begin to see things you never saw before,” Tim says. We’re standing before the painting The Lamentation of Christ, by Rogier Van Der Weyden that hangs in the Uffizi Museum in Florence, Italy. With an open drawing notebook in one hand and a pencil in the […]
This morning I heard a sermon on Patience, one in a series on the Fruits Of the Spirit. It was a good sermon with good worship. Recently, when I’ve been asked by friends, “How can I pray for you?” I’ve responded with one word, patience. When a trusted, longtime friend and I made our yearly […]
There’s some healing going on in our house. My writing is changing as I continue on in my practice. I no longer feel like I need to retell the trauma of Temma’s birth, near-death, coming back to life with profound brain damage and the shame and guilt that I wrestled with for so long. That’s […]
Elena Ferrante, the Italian author of My Beautiful Friend, has a book of four essays out titled, In The Margins: On the Pleasures of Reading and Writing. These are deeply thought out and intimately written essays about some of the influences on her disciplines of reading and writing. She writes about finding her own voice […]
We do some reflecting back and forth to each other.
What are my spiritual practices now that I’m retired? No one in particular has asked me this question. My prayer sisters (especially one) keep on me about a church-going practice. But, no, I ask myself the question on this quiet day in November with the sun shining, Temma sitting beside me in her wheelchair looking […]
Temma was laughing last night. I awoke to her laugh–a sharp intake of air accompanied by a little shriek–a giggle that doesn’t last long, but when it does happen is usually followed by another and maybe another. Who knows what brings on these laughs? When I heard Temma in the night, I recalled our Pentecost […]
Yesterday, Tim and I made a presentation for a class at North Park Seminary, “Spiritual Issues in Chronic Pain and Disability.” We never really plan out these presentations, Tim shows slides of his work of Temma, he talks, I talk, and yesterday I read my post titled, “Oxford Temma.” I shared about my own developmental […]
I revised what will be going into my husband Tim’s book on his paintings of Temma. Here are the journal entries that will be a small part of the book. Piece for Tim’s Book Dream from my journal dated 8/14/1985…our baby is incredibly intelligent and becomes an object for study, is taken away. Have to […]
“How Good It Is To Center Down” is the title of a talk given by Howard Thurman, the great mystic and civil rights activist. Sr. Kathleen Flood played the audiotape of Howard Thurman’s talk on the first morning of the Five-Day Academy for Spiritual Formation held at the Bellarmine Jesuit Retreat Center in Barrington July […]
Writing From the Margins 