"Turbo props are ok. They won't hijack a turbo prop," my ex-boyfriend insisted as I squirmed and looked for more reasons not to fly to my upcoming family reunion four ...

Empty, desolate and dry. Although these are the words most commonly thought of when describing the desert, they only tell a small portion of the story. For much of the world the desert ...

Men and women of a certain age were simply unable to reach maturity without attending some social event that featured the soundtrack from the movie Grease, particularly that portion in which the phenomenon ...

You feel for Moses. He walks through the desert for forty years leading his Jewish people to the Promised Land, and in the end, he never gets to live there. Move the scene a few thousand ...

 I've been listening to the stories of young immigrants lately. To me they sound to me a lot like the classic tales of the spiritual journey of life. Not so religious really, but they are all ...

This Saturday I went back to my old apartment and finished packing my things to move them to my new apartment. Clothes, books, file folders, even an old computer. But there was something, actually someone, ...

I've never found the rosary particularly helpful to my prayer. Truth be told, most of the time when I pray, I use my own words. Having learned that prayer is conversation with God, ...

"I'll be right here." - E.T. to Elliot before blasting off for home "Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." -Jesus to his disciples, before blasting off for heaven So E.T. is twenty ...

A country is a piece of land surrounded on all sides by boundaries, usually unnatural. -JOSEPH HELLER I just received an invitation to a wedding in India from ...

Volunteering to teach confirmation classes at my mid-town Los Angeles parish is challenging work. Let's face it, most teens sign up for the two year, twice-a-month program, because it's SUPER important to their parents, while ...

Ever since growing up in Frazee, Minnesota, a small town with a population of 1,700 people, and living next to two Lao families, I had a dream of going to the Thailand/Laos. (Similarly, both ...

He walked into the diner with his blue windbreaker and disheveled gray hair. His clothes were rumpled and his glasses were slightly askew. In short, he was a mess. He sat in the ...

As images of war fill a greater share of the nation's TV news, many Catholics are tuning in to organizations like Pax Christi USA to uphold the doctrine of nonviolence. A peace movement ...

What would it be like to see the face of God with your own eyes? In the year 1084 St. Bruno of Cologne and six companions climbed a mountain in ...

"We got some other girls together and we went out to our first strip club." It may sound like the beginnings of a wild bachelorlette party but in fact it ...

What's that? I'm buckling my son into his car seat the other morning when he points to the tool used to scrape snow off the windshield. "It's an ice scraper, sweetheart." ...

The death of civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks on October 24th coupled with the fiftieth anniversary on December 1, of her refusal to relinquish her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus ...

Like Erin Tribble, I can often get to feeling like prayer is another item on the to do list rather than a way to just be. I recently heard that Americans are working about 140 hours ...

"You might as well bombard the Rocky Mountains," an engineer boasted in 1829 of Fort Pulaski , a behemoth of brick and moat strategically entrenched in northern ...