(Sue and Lee Ann spent five months planning a vacation to the five national parks in Utah, plus Monument Valley in Utah/Arizona. Everyone should visit the American West. Here is what we saw and did.) Saturday, October 21 – At 7:45 a.m. I was standing in line outside the Poison Spider bike shop across from our motel in Moab. There were skinny young guys in baggy shorts holding…
What happens when 23 of your 24 hours are wordless for a week? During my silent retreat last week at the Jesuit Center in Wernersville, Pa., I logged 36 miles walking and wrote 32 pages in my journal. I managed to read most or all of four different books, including “How to Be An Adult” by David Richo. I hid that one under my journal so my fellow…
Silence is beckoning me now more than ever: the opportunity to be totally unplugged, without even a book other than the Bible and my journal. Several years’ worth of waxy yellow buildup are obscuring my true self. The last retreat I took was in 2012, with the Benedictine brothers in Weston, Vermont. It was not a silent retreat. This will be my fifth silent retreat. Except for meeting…
I need Lent more than ever this year. My spiritual goal is to immerse myself into it with practices that clear my head, stanch the flow of negativity, and lead me to be more mindful and prepared to listen for the still, small voice of God. For one, I have resurrected this blog to chronicle the struggles of a 21st Century pilgrim navigating all the social media and…
Adventures in Babysitting – Toddler Edition
September 3, 2016Click on the photos to make them larger. [AFG_gallery id=’5′] We had Lincoln for the day. It is a joy to be able to see things from her perspective. She laughs all the time and makes us laugh. In fact, she has not cried at all the past couple of times we have babysat, other than for 15-30 seconds as her mom is leaving. We try to limit…
Floating through Paradise
June 8, 2016Jackson, Wyoming – June 8, 2016 Then there were the Grand Tetons. Floating down the Snake River, which was still turbid and swollen with snow melt, we called out jokingly about “rapids” ahead. It was calm enough to eat our lunches on board. I don’t think we even got wet, and I regretted leaving my Nikon on the bus. The young, jagged peaks of the Grand Tetons were…
A view from the top of that hill
June 5, 2016Sunday, June 5, 2016 – Billings, Montana Probably no other scene of American history is more embedded in my psyche than Custer’s Last Stand. It’s a mythic story that has intrigued me since I read a children’s biography of George Armstrong Custer – no doubt a sanitized version of his life and what actually happened on June 25, 1876. Over the decades, my knowledge of the Battle of…
Saturday, June 4 – Rapid City, South Dakota Today was a day trip out of Rapid City to visit the Crazy Horse Monument and Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills. It was our first trip together as a group of 48, and I detected a lot of New York accents as we passed ponderosa pines and quaking aspen trees. Was my stereotype coming true? The Crazy Horse Monument…
Standing on a street corner in Charlotte’s Fourth Ward at 5:15 a.m., a Jeep Cherokee comes rolling by slowly. I had just deposited an empty wine bottle in a recycling container, so I figured I was the one who seemed suspicious. The driver rolls down his window and asks, “Are you Lindsay?” He showed me his smart phone with Lindsay’s name and picture on it. That’s when I…
If God were trying to tell me something, would I know? If God were reassuring me or challenging me, would I notice? I ask for the grace to be free of my own preoccupations and be open to what God is saying to me. – From the Sacred Space meditations We are into the second week of Lent, and I am fasting from Facebook and commenting on social media. Every…
The last time I saw my mom, she didn’t know who I was. I flew to Texas to visit her because the end was near, and she was more interested in watching “NCIS” than in chatting with her daughter during what I knew would be the final visit. In her nursing home room, there was a yellow sticky on a wall with the word “Delaware” written on it. Before she had totally forgotten…