I can’t remember exactly when we met her. We had arrived in the snowy tundra in January of my fifth-grade year. I know it was after the permafrost had thawed, and it was after “mud season,” because she was wearing high heels as she stood there, not mud boots. It had been a hard winter. The transition to the sleepy town of two stoplights was not an easy one for our family. We were far […]
When I was a child, my brother and I spent long summers with my grandparents on their retirement farm outside of Cornwall, Ontario. My grandparents were both immigrants from Latvia and often offered perspective or advice from their old country. Most of what I learned from them came in the form of storytelling. In 1944, my grandmother gave birth in a hospital with bombed-out windows and little heat in the December cold. After recovering from […]
“Boys, stop throwing that ball in this room! I have one room of nice things. One. Go play somewhere else!” I screamed as I caught a ball just as it came dangerously close to shattering a glass owl vase. As I handed the boys the ball and ushered them out of the room, I stopped to run my hand along the wood grain of the table that held the now-safe owl vase. Its dark-red stain […]
Reflect today with this video of the popular poem “Fall in Love,” attributed to Fr. Pedro Arrupe, SJ. The poetic prayer is appropriate at any time of year, but in this month of Valentine’s Day we also recognize the formal opening of Arrupe’s cause for beatification and canonization, just days ago. As Jim Manney writes in An Ignatian Book of Days, “In the Ignatian view, love is very concrete. Arrupe says that it is practical. […]
Standing in a piazza in Lucca, Italy, dappled sunlight shining down on me, I licked gelato al limone while my husband peeked in storefront windows. Our boys traded licks of their own flavors as they critiqued them with the seriousness of a Food Network expert. I whispered “I’m happy” to no one but me and God, as I often do when the moment comes, to capture it and make it more real. A small bus […]
Loyola Press, sponsor of this website, proudly celebrates the winners of the 2019 Illumination Book Awards. Among the Loyola Press gold medalists are God Isn’t Finished with Me Yet by Barbara Lee, Make Today Matter by Chris Lowney, and Sharing the Wisdom of Time by Pope Francis and Friends. Find all the Loyola Press winners here. In lieu of an acceptance speech, here’s Chris Lowney talking about gratitude in a brief video. Watch Lowney’s other […]
The launching point of Ignatian spirituality is that God loves us fiercely, passionately, and unconditionally. Because of this love, God’s desires and hopes for us are based on who we are: our gifts, talents, preferences, and joys. What God wants for us is the same as our deepest desires. What, then, should our response to God be? In Ignatian spirituality, this response is known as the Principle and Foundation. Let’s unpack this, using a contemporary […]
Ignatian spirituality offers us a variety of prayer tools to help us listen for God. One of these Ignatian prayer tools that I turn to frequently is the triple colloquy, which is introduced in the First Week of the Spiritual Exercises, when we are meditating on sin. A colloquy is simply an intimate conversation. In the Spiritual Exercises, it is offered as a way of having an intimate conversation with Mary, with Jesus, and with […]
My son recently developed a new fascination with the mailbox. “Mom, how do I get a letter from me to someone else?” he asked one day with tremendous curiosity. We went through the steps: write the letter, put it in an envelope, address the envelope, and don’t forget the stamps. Then one morning my son showed me a picture he had made for his best friend that he desperately wanted to mail. It was perfect […]
Jesuit Higher Education: A Journal is, as their website states, “a scholarly, peer reviewed, open access, online journal focused on the development, advancement, and critique of higher education in the Jesuit tradition.” The latest issue has articles on topics including “Sport at the Service of Human Development: Distinctly Jesuit Athletics,” “Teaching Magis at College: Meaning, Mission, and Moral Responsibility,” and “Occupational Therapy: A Partner for Justice in Jesuit Higher Education.” Read journal articles and subscribe […]
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