First, thanks to all of you who sent so much love with my big announcement last week! I'm floored by your support and can't wait to share my "baby" with you very soon. Second, I've been getting lots of questions on the details (apparently cryptic reflections on liturgical feasts aren't enough to satisfy your curiosity?) so I wanted to answer the questions I've been getting via email and social media. What's the title? What's it all about? The book is called Everyday Sacrament: The Messy Grace of Parenting. I call it a spiritual-memoir-meets-parenting-memoir with a twist. It takes the seven Catholic sacraments as a lens for looking at life with little ones in a whole new light. So it's a sacramental theology from the ground up - the sticky, Lego-strewn, does-anyone-ever-mop-this-floor? ground zero of parenting. But the book can perhaps be best summed up by this hysterical - unofficial! - trailer that my brother made me. (Ok, actually it's nothing like this, but I can't … [Read more...] about introducing…the book!
humor
what i’ve been reading lately
Yesterday I made a shocking discovery. (For a book-lover, that is.) I was rummaging through my bookshelves, trying to find something for work. When I suddenly realized that I had completely failed myself. I hadn't organized a single book I'd read since I became a mom. Allow me to back up for a minute. Of course I've shelved all the books I own. (It took us months longer to get settled into this new house when we moved with two teeny kids, but I did manage to get that essential unpacking done in short order.) And of course, the book geek in me did find time to arrange by genre: all the theological tomes together on one towering bookshelf in my office, fiction on another, poetry and art history on a third, and old French paperbacks (and even a few of my husband's books I let him sneak in) on the fourth. Perfect, right? Wrong. Because here's the full geeky truth: the only way I really want my books arranged is autobiographical. (When John Cusack whispered that same line about his … [Read more...] about what i’ve been reading lately
where we Sabbath
We went to church on Saturday evening instead of our usual Sunday morning. The promise of good gardening weather and the weekend's plans all pushed us towards the deviation from the norm. But the boys were even squirrelier than usual, wrestling out of our arms, racing towards the altar steps, squawking during the consecration. One innocently inquired after communion whether there would still be church donuts since it was Saturday, and I seethed through clenched teeth that No One Was Behaving Well Enough For A Donut So It Didn't Matter Anyway. #parentingfail So Sunday morning found me instead at the park with the boys, whom I soaked up like perfect angels in the bright sun, cringing at my own Mass-time behavior of the night before. We laughed on the slides and ran down to the river and chased each other on the playground paths. Which is when I noticed: we weren't alone. The park was full of families enjoying the clear June day - biking, fishing, walking, jogging. I've never seen … [Read more...] about where we Sabbath
the loveliness of laughter
I once wrote that childhood is full of tears. And it is. But while I watch my two boys grow and see their sense of humor stretch each day like little spring seedlings sprouting out of the earth, I remember how childhood is full of laughter, too. We laugh every day in this house. At funny faces and silly words. At goofy games of peek-a-boo and chase-to-tickle. At jumping on the bed and running down the hall and hiding in the curtains and banging on the table and singing in the bathtub. My favorite moments as a mother are when the deep belly chuckles of boys still too young to hold back squeals of glee bounce off the walls and echo in my ears. What a gift to have all this time and space to laugh. Childhood's magic reminds us - we who live in the grown-up world of deadlines and to-do lists, of death and taxes - what it means to delight in life's simple joys. Today I'm posting over at Lydia's lovely blog, Small Town Simplicity. Her beautiful, wise writing on motherhood is some of my … [Read more...] about the loveliness of laughter