Our Easter Best
Welp, I turned into a priest-mom-Easter-morning-psycho.I mean, Christ is Risen, right? Might as well go crazy on your family.
Parenting
Engaging Wonderment on the Lesser Feast Day of John Muir
Recently on a car ride, my four-year-old asked my ecologically-minded fifth grader and me the question, ‘Why do trees grow?’
Alleluia! Christ is Risen!
This year I have two parental goals during Eastertide: Remember to teach the story of Easter and remember to celebrate Easter for its full fifty days.
Staying in the weighty matters of death on Good Friday
On Palm Sunday, during the reading of the passion gospel, my three and a half year old learned that Jesus died. On the one hand, I was swelling with parental pride for his calm attentiveness and understanding of the story. But on the other hand, I was worried about how this new information would begin processing in his young mind.
Parenting: when every day is Palm Sunday
Getting ready for Holy Week, I’m struck, as always, by how jarring the Palm Sunday liturgy is. One minute we’re all shouting “hosanna, hosanna!” (Greek for “save us”) and then the next thing we know, we’re shouting “Crucify him.” It’s emotionally wrenching; hope and expectation give way to fury and fear. No settling in, no probing depths. Our liturgy moves us from place to place, scarcely able to take a breath.
Lenten Swim Class
I don’t like doing things badly. I don’t like doing things badly in front of other people. I really don’t like doing things badly with a bathing suit on in front of other people. This was the set of parameters I had to work with for my Annual Discernment of Kit’s Lenten Practice this year.
Cultivate Kindness
My mom is a retired high school English teacher, and in her retirement, she works part-time at a well-established location of a pretty popular Texas-specific chain of market/gas station for highway travelers.
We Interrupt Your Bedtime Routine for this Christian Formation Opportunity
Last Sunday I had to bat cleanup after my own sermon. Sometime during the Nicene Creed, I realized that I’d left something out. It was an important point with significant pastoral implications.
Songs From Our Hearts
Last week, I was in the doctor’s office with a sick kid. My son had a HIGH fever, so he was not acting like himself. I knew he was sick because he was cuddled up in my lap as opposed to exploring everything around us. With his fever-flushed head on my chest, I found myself singing to him.
Changing the Subject: Parenting on Ash Wednesday
Every year my sermon for Ash Wednesday comes down to one thing: this business of smearing ashes on our faces? It’s for us, not for God.