We stand on the cusp of a new year, another threshold, which, oddly enough, tends to get us thinking not about where we are standing at that moment but about ...
Columns
Life Lines
When I was approaching my 60th birthday a couple of years ago, I decided to have two words from my favorite psalm tattooed on my left arm. “Be still,” it says, ...
It was a beautiful October morning, and I was seated in a jam-packed St. Peter’s Square waiting for Pope Francis to begin Mass on the Feast of the Guardian ...
When I initially developed the Stillpoint Retreat, which I have led at Pyramid Life Center for six years and counting, my hope was to give people a space where ...
Here’s the Life Lines column I wrote 23 years ago, in the days following 9/11. So much has changed since that time. Our world has changed. My family has ...
On a recent rainy morning, I ventured up to Trader Joe’s on Wolf Road in Albany, armed with a vacation snack wish list from my daughter, Olivia, who would be ...
Every now and then, something happens to remind us of our absolute faith in God. It might not even be something monumental. In fact, most times it is something ...
On the shores of Lake George — with the water gently lapping just beyond the trees and the Minne-Ha-Ha not-so-gently honking its passage — 36 Catholic women ...
When I first saw the wild geese standing outside the window of the conference room where I was leading a retreat at beautiful Bon Secours Retreat Center in ...
Think about the lead-up to the recent solar eclipse. For months there was non-stop coverage as scientists tracked the path of totality, giving us the locations ...
When I was in Guatemala on retreat earlier this month, I was humbled and heartened by the visible presence of Lent not just in churches but on storefronts and ...
Each year, as Lent begins, I can’t help but remember a scene from Sunday Mass a few years back. A little boy sitting in the second pew with his grandmother ...
When it comes to our prayer lives, we too often fall into the trap of setting goals, mapping “progress,” and jumping through spiritual hoops, as if our ...
The Advent season — with its message to “Be watchful! Be alert!” — felt uncomfortably timely for me this year. Coming off a recent health scare, I have been all ...
During these tumultuous and terrible times in our world, it can be easy to spiral down into the rabbit hole of despair, thinking we have no right to be happy, ...
The poet David Whyte says that most people are “living four or five years behind the curve of their own transformation,” refusing to accept a new season of life ...
When was the last time you let fear keep you from doing something you really wanted or needed to do? Maybe it was a lifetime ago, something in the distant past ...
Born in 1962, I am one of those tail-end Baby Boomers who doesn’t really fit the mold; my husband is at the leading edge of Gen X. All three of our children ...
One warm-and-sunny weekday recently, I took advantage of a canceled work appointment and headed to Five Rivers Environmental Center, just a short drive from my ...
At this point in the season, we’re past our Lenten promises — many of them unfulfilled — and wondering if we’ve allowed ourselves to be changed at all during ...