Latest Reflections
Stories of faith, memory, Scripture, and the quiet ways grace meets us in ordinary life.
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When Mary Finally Came Home: The Queenship of Mary
There are certain words in our Catholic faith that can become so familiar that we stop hearing the human story hidden inside them. Assumption. Queenship. Coronation. We see paintings of Mary floating above the clouds with angels surrounding her. A crown is placed upon her head. Christ sits upon His throne. Everything is gold and…
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The Courage to Say No: Prague Spring 1968 and the Music of Freedom
There is a photograph I have known for a long time. I suppose everyone sees something different when they look at it. Some will notice the Soviet soldier first, his uniform, and shaved head, with the crowd pressing in around him. Maybe they imagine the tanks sitting somewhere just beyond the edge of the frame.…
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What A Good Boss Leaves Behind
I have started writing this several times. Each time, I find myself staring at the screen, trying to figure out exactly what I want to say about Tony Gowan retiring from the City of Papillion. The problem is that “congratulations on your retirement” doesn’t seem like enough. Neither does “thank you for 33 years of…
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Nazareth Was Never the Final Home
There are houses we leave that somehow never quite leave us. Years can pass. Families change. People we love die. Rooms are remodeled. Someone else eventually sleeps in the bedroom that once belonged to us. And yet we can still walk through those houses in our memory. We remember how the light came through a…
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The Freedom to Love: St. Maximilian Kolbe at Auschwitz
There are some saints whose lives are so extraordinary that, if I am being truthful, I sometimes have a hard time knowing what to do with them. St. Maximilian Kolbe is one of those saints. We know the ending of his story. Auschwitz and the starvation bunker. The condemned prisoner who cried out for his…
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The Little House That Leads Us Home
There is something about the story of Our Lady of Walsingham that has always moved me. Perhaps it is because the story does not begin with something grand. There is no enormous basilica. No great cathedral. No throne room. It begins with a house. A little house. And not just any house. The little house…
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Before Matt Damon Was Odysseus, My Dad Read Me Homer
What an ancient story, a new Matt Damon film, and my father’s bedtime voice taught me about the journey There are some books we remember because we read them and there are others we remember because someone we loved read them to us. For me, Homer’s Odyssey belongs to the second kind. Christopher Nolan’s new…
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The Grandfathers Who Taught Me How to Live
Two men born twenty-one days apart in the summer of 1923. Two boys shaped by the Great Depression. Two grandfathers who taught me that a good life is built less by extraordinary moments than by showing up for the ordinary ones. There are certain coincidences in a family that do not seem particularly remarkable when…
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One More Morning: Reflections on Survival, Faith, and Grace
I suppose there are easier ways to decide to write a book. Some people begin with an idea, perhaps a subject they have studied for years. Others have always dreamed of seeing their name on the cover of something. That really is not how 7 Reflections From the Edge of Death happened. In fact, for…
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