Category: A Sampler of Posts
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“Unprofitable servant”… of God.
A few Lents ago, I chose Dorothy Day’s diaries and letters for my daily reading. I occasionally posted snippets to Facebook, which means these come up in my “memories” every February and March. Here’s the one that popped up for today, on a date that wasn’t Ash Wednesday that year, but still a good sentiment…
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Mardi Gras recipe hack: Bread Machine king cake.
Reposting from 2012. (Original post is here) + + + Back just after Epiphany, I received this great email from a reader named Jenny: Am I? Am I? . I almost feel bad about this because… this is a reasonably healthy recipe! That’s why I use it for an everyday, if fun-to-eat, breakfast bun.…
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Minnesota furious.
The last two months here in Minneapolis have been beyond educational… maybe “astonishing” is the right word. Faced with an unprecedented occupation of the city and its surroundings by armed and hostile federal agents, using law enforcement as a pretext for terrorizing the city and coercing the state, neighbors have come together rapidly. Organizing has…
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The danger of relying on “in good standing.”
Today’s gospel, Luke 18:9–14, is a story about two particular people and two particular types: but “tax collector” and “Pharisee” aren’t the types, that’s just background information. All tax collectors aren’t represented by the character in the story Jesus tells; all Pharisees aren’t represented by the Pharisee character either. But often when two people are…
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The new ground rules.
For a couple of years, 2008 or so, I wrote frequently about exercise and eating strategies. Sometimes I wrote about how those intersect with theology of the body, or Thomist morality. I returned to the topic sporadically, but not steadily, since then. It's been a while since I've written much. I wrote all that because…
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All those weight loss posts: Bathwater or baby? (Updated Oct. 2025)
Anyone who has been reading this blog for more than a few years knows that starting in 2008, I wrote a long series chronicling a number of lifestyle changes: learning to run and swim, ending some destructive food behaviors, and dealing with the mental and physical fallout of the significant weight loss that followed. …
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St. John Bosco and how to *not* punish kids (a repost).
St. John Bosco, like St. "Mother" Teresa or St. "Padre" Pio, is one of those whose names started to sound a little weird when their popular monikers got altered by the application of sainthood. He's often "Don" Bosco even though his name is John-actually-Saint-John-now, "Don" being the honorific applied typically to diocesan priests in Italy. I…
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A strange turning point.
In the last couple of weeks, as I rushed around with Mark and without Mark trying to pull items together to help my grandmother when the relative who lives with her was hospitalized, I had the oddest impression. It went like this: This is the week when I began to grow old. …
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Satisfying bleakness.
I left Mark and his dad with my sick kiddo in her hospital room yesterday afternoon so I could go to Mass at a parish on this side of town. The rest of the family will go this morning, the usual place, the usual time. Now that the 9- and 13-yo boys are both serving…
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Temptation at home.
It’s been a long time since I was writing a great deal about weight loss and gluttony*…. (believe me, I will probably need to write more about it sometime after I have this baby… maybe even sooner, because while trying to lose weight isn’t appropriate right now, dealing with old impulses always is…) … and…
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Coming up on Lent.
One weekend left, and in a few days it'll be Ash Wednesday. All this spring I've been coming back again and again to this passage from The Imitation of Christ (Book 2, Chapter 12, "On the Royal Road of the Cross"). What I like about it is that it answers a question I have…
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The ends and the means in dialogue.
I caught part of last weekend's This American Life while I was driving around running errands on Saturday. The show is called "Red State, Blue State." (Transcripts aren't available yet, but you can listen online by clicking links from the pages I'm pointing to.) Act One, "I Know You Are, But What Am I?" discussed…
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