Seeking Authentic Voice

Time flies. I swear it was just March, with only a hint of spring in the air. In a blink of an eye - it's June. Where in the world did April and May go? We did have the most beautiful spring, days and days of glorious sun warming the earth, enabling the blooming trees and flowers to linger longer than usual. Unlike last year, when we had unseasonable warm temps in March and then a frost that took all the fruit. he harsh, unseasonably late frost and heavy rains didn't hit until the blooms were gone and the leaves had unfurled. All we lost were a few fledgling vegetables in the garden - all of our cucumbers, beans, zucchini, and basil, and many of our marigolds succumbed to the frost. The day before the rains and frost hit, (and oblivious to the weather forecast) I was determined to get my planting done before the little plants toppled over in their temporary plastic containers. So I set forth with gloves and shovel to get them in the ground. Five long hours and a major backa...

I was barely four years old but I remember the day my brother was born. Although we always called him David, he was formally named Richard David after uncles on both sides. On the day David was born my brother Ron  and I were at our maternal grandparents house. I remember trying to take a nap, at least that is what we were supposed to be doing. But instead the house was filled with anxious excitement as we awaited news of the birth.  His life was never easy. Before he was two, David and I were living with my paternal grandparents while my mother and Ron lived with a friend. My parents were getting a divorce. My mother, at the young age of 22, with three kids under the age of 5, was determined to build a better life for her and her kids. That better life never really transpired.  David was the third child in our family, preceded by me, the oldest, and Ron who was born 14 months after me. Our youngest brother, Don, was born five years after David, a second marriage ...

I have been so busy lately that I have literally had no time to reflect, let alone read and write. I have managed, more or less, to maintain my exercise routine. My hope is for both, mornings when I can read, reflect, write, and exercise. This means I need about three hours most mornings. Seriously, who has that kind of time while also working a full time job as a parish priest, being a wife and mom, and  having three dogs and two cats? Sigh. So I exercise most days and read and write as I am able. Life is full and good and I am not complaining, I am just honoring the urges within and my inability to satisfy the many diverse directions my life is pulled in. The philosophy book I am slowly making my way through has moved on from pondering the question of the "ultimate, that which one finds when one reaches the very heart of existence" to the idea of "being" and "becoming." Ultimate, according the various philosophers who have pondered this question ma...

Yesterday it rained, slow and steady, with a chill in the air. It was the kind of day that beckons one to stay indoors, curled up with a book, or knitting. It was my day off and I didn't do much of anything. Today the sun rises, and it's back to work. But first a moment of prayer, and a poem. Have you ever seen anything in your life more wonderful than the way the sun, every evening, relaxed and easy, floats toward the horizon and into the clouds or the hills, or the rumpled sea, and is gone - and how it slides again out of the blackness, of every morning, on the other side of the world, like a red flower streaming upward on its heavenly oils, say, on a morning in early summer, at its perfect imperial distance - and have you ever felt for anything such wild love - do you think there is anywhere, in any language, a word billowing enough for the pleasure that fills you, as the sun reaches out, as it warms you as you stand there, empty-handed-...