Mary: The Background Music to My Spiritual Life
For over two years, every night it’s the same: At the appointed time, I gather my freshly bathed and pajamaed toddler into my arms, all…
motherhood
Saint Mom: Why Are There So Few Saints Who Were Mothers?
It’s fair to say the saints have taken over our home. I am up to five statues of Mary in my kitchen alone, all cheering…
How Becoming a Mother Helped Me See Easter in a New Light
“Then the [women] went away quickly from the tomb, fearful yet overjoyed.” (Matthew 28:8) “Fearful yet overjoyed”? Aren’t those emotions opposites? Reading this passage from…
Growing in Grace: Wisdom Learned From Gardening With My Mother
Growing up, my mother’s garden was my heaven. There was no other way to describe it. We were blessed to have a decent-sized backyard in…
I Never Connected With the Rosary… Until I Became a Mother
If you asked me just a few short years ago how I liked to pray, I would name everything from a holy hour in Eucharistic adoration…
Going to Mass with My Son Who Has Tourette’s
We park our truck in our parish’s parking lot. That’s where I ask my son to start his breath-holding techniques. As a team of three,…
Motherhood? No thanks.
While wandering around a bookstore in LaGuardia airport, the cover of TIME magazine caught my eye. “CHILDFREE” stood out in bold, block letters. A couple in…
The Sacrifice-Free Life: When ‘Having It All’ Isn’t Enough
The August 12 issue of TIME Magazine features a cover story entitled, “The Childfree Life: When having it all means not having children.” Before this…
We need to talk about We Need to Talk about Kevin
“We Need to Talk About Kevin” is already playing in NYC; it opens today in LA, Chicago, Houston and Phoenix and is rolling out nationwide.
Sometimes Zuzu’s petals are all you have to hold onto. That’s the underlying message of We Need to Talk about Kevin, Lynne Ramsey’s remarkable allegory on the transcendent nature of relationships. At first glance, it would seem that Kevin is yet another installment in the pantheon of post-modern films intent upon assaulting the human desire to give meaning to the world. Indeed, Kevin is a relentless film that gives its audience few opportunities to come up for air from the depths of anguish to which it plummets.
Yet it is in those infrequent instances of relief, conversion and mercy that the film finds its identity and direction. Kevin is a story of hope for a new millennium, an It’s a Wonderful Life in the age of school shootings and planes crashing into buildings — a world-weary world that has been bombarded by nihilistic themes in their narratives for the better part of a century. It is a world where any attempts to offer a message of mercy, conversion and redemption must be done deftly and authentically, because at the end of the day, sometimes the community won’t rally around you and more often than not Mr. Potter carries the day.
Sit Up Straight and Drink Your Milk
La Lupe is probably the best nagger on the planet. Everyone around her is poked and prodded to change certain habits. Of course her constant…
