From A Stage Four Cancer Patient: "Never Have I Felt So Accompanied in My Life"

I have shared by friend Frank Simmonds' journey of pain and faith. He has stage four neuroendocrine cancer. Here is another remarkable video from him, just before he undergoes open-heart surgery at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn tomorrow. Please pray for him, his wife and their two young sons. This Lenten season, Frank is facing the prospect of his own death with a deep gratitude for the life he has been given. We should all do the same.

"We live our life but a minute... like a whisper. Then we come fact to face with an unknown entity called Death..The good thing about me is. I encounter another entity...my faith in my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
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Carrying the Cross of Cancer with a Heart WIde Open

My friend Frank Simmonds continues to share his suffering and his faith in the face of cancer as he "walks toward the Infinite." He shows us how to live suffering with meaning.

One of my favorite comments is: "Where were you when the Universe was created?"

Near the World Trade Center: Contemplating an Open Heart

I had not been to the World Trade Center site in about five years, hadn't taken that big escalator up to ground level, hadn't seen World Trade One or Four or seen the memorial site. 

My friend M. and I on Saturday took the PATH train to the World Trade Center. Our final destination was about a fifteen-minute walk away and this was the quickest way there from New Jersey.

During this journey, my heart was full, remembering: how I used to take the double stroller here with our two boys to visit my husband at work up on the 68th floor of Tower One and to have lunch at the Stage Door Deli, how one sunny fall day we lost friends who risked their lives in the buildings so that others could escape, how my husband managed to survive even though he waited and made sure everyone on his floor was accounted for before he headed down the stairwell. 

On Staten Island: Feast Day for Our Lady of Good Health (Vailankanni), Fast Day for Syria

This is the day Pope Francis asked Christians worldwide to fast and to pray for our brothers and sisters in Syria. It also is the feast day of Our Lady of Good Health (Vailankanni). Today, I traveled with our younger son and three of my CL friends from New Jersey to a Staten Island parish where we joined hundreds of others in fasting for Syria and feasting for Our Lady of Good Health.

At Mohonk: Thinking About Fitness and the Inexhaustibility of Human Desire

This summer, I've been determined to get fit. Given my excess weight, I see my battle as a life-or-death struggle to stay healthy for my husband and our sons. In addition to swimming 30 minutes a day, I've been strength training with the help of a personal trainer and spending an hour a day on the treadmill, trying my best to increase the pace and incline of  the treadmill. This morning, on a hike in New Paltz, New York, I was reminded, once again, that whatever endeavor we humans undertake, nothing but the Infinite will satisfy us. 

National Shrine of the North American Martyrs: Blessings Amid Brutality

I'm a half-century old and have been a practicing Catholic most of those years. And yet, until yesterday, I had never visited a shrine.  I never really understood the point. As a Christian, I believe that Mystery entered human history and settled among us. As a result, Christ is our constant companion. He is with us in every moment, in the circumstances of every person we encounter. So what's the point, my thinking went, of traveling many miles to a shrine of people who lived out their destinies with an eye on the One who made them?

This was my thinking until I discovered the Jesuit Martyrs of North America, until I read and reflected on their lives, and until our son chose one of them as his Confirmation companion. Then I wanted to go to the places these brave, gentle men had lived and died. I wanted to be better inspired by their example by seeing their lived experiences. This is how Lucas and I found ourselves yesterday morning in rural Auriesville, New York, at the National Shrine of the North American Martyrs.

A Friend Faces Death: "I am Surrendering to Something"

Two weeks ago, I published a video my friend Rita had put on youtube. Her husband, Frank, (pictured holding the cross) suffers with from advanced-stage neuroendocrine cancer. Today Rita put up another video, one that shows her husband continuing to bear witness to the Mystery that called each of us into being and the Mystery to whom we all are destined.

Yearning: Shakespeare and the Rest of Us

Tomorrow, I will teach my high school students Sonnet 18, which is perhaps the most famous of William Shakespeare's intricate love poems. As I was preparing the lesson this afternoon, I was struck by how Shakespeare's words call out across cultures and centuries to our own hearts. This happened when I listened to this reading of the sonnet by David Tenant, the Scottish actor best known in this house as the tenth embodiment of Dr. Who. 

The Katrina Letters: New York Encounter 2013

Imagine knowing, really knowing the hearts of your parents as teenagers. Imagine hearing their thoughts and feelings, of being right there with them as they courted one another.

Chris Vath had such a privilege. He is part of a family who discovered, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, a duffel bag filled with 500 letters his parents (pictured here at their wedding reception) had exchanged during three years of separation during World War II, beginning when his mom was 16 and still in high school and his father was 18 and serving in the U.S. Navy. Although Katrina flooded his childhood home with nine feet of water, the letters inside the bag survived, still legible.

A Mall Visit Offers An Unseen Gift

Menlo Park Mall in Edison, New Jersey is one of the last places I wanted to be on a Wednesday night during Advent. And yet, I spent nearly three hours there tonight while our 16-year-old shopped for a winter coat and some clothes for upcoming Christmas parties. I spent most of my time sitting in the food court and contemplating what Monseigneur Luigi Giussani called "the domination of preconception, the tyranny of prejudice."

You see, the mall visit shattered a lot of my preconceptions and consequently brought me  gift I did not foresee.

A Question About Pie and a Thought about Circumstances

First, a question. Second, a proposal about how to look at our circumstances. OK, first things first. What is your favorite pie recipe? You see, my husband, who handles Thanksgiving dinner, has delegated the 13-year-old and me to  dessert-making duty.  I was hoping to avoid making pie and proposed to our son that we make cupcakes instead. A slave to tradition, my son is insisting we make pie, including a crust from scratch. Help! I never have done that before. Please share with me  your favorite tips and recipes. Crust from scratch sounds so intimidating.

Back to School: God's Mercy and My Anxiety

It's easy to let ourselves become anxious. But when we consider our lives in the light of God's overwhelming love and mercy for us, anxiety has a way of dissipating.

This morning, I woke up from a dream, a nightmare really. I was walking and I was trying to run and I just couldn't figure out how. At one point, I was late getting someplace too, and then, I thought two ominous-looking men were following me. I just could not figure out how to run.

Reflections of a Catholic in Amish Country

On a visit to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania last week, my husband and our younger son bought  combo passes to ride the historic Strasburg Railroad and visit the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania next door. From the train, the views of the verdant farmland were spectacular.    (Above is one I took with my iPad.)  Still, the two most powerful moments of the visit came when I least expected them.

You May Find Yourself...You May Ask Yourself

"You may find yourself living in a shotgun shack. You may find yourself in another part of the world.
You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile. You may find yourself in a beautiful house with a beautiful wife. You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?

This Talking Heads' song, "Once in a lifetime," was running through my head in the early evening as I searched for Locktown Road in Flemington, New Jersey.

"Everything Becomes Sign:" Even at the Swim Club

The Presence of Christ is everywhere: even at our suburban swim club. Tuesday afternoon, my husband and I laid in lounge chairs in the shade beside the pool. Several yards away, a mother spoke quietly with her son, while her three other children waited beside us. I have come to know these children a bit during my daily visits to the pool this summer. "He has a time out," the six year old explained to us. "C. woke us up from our naps when he was told not to. The five year old piped in: "I couldn't get back to sleep."

Here in Suburbia. Walking My Own Camino.

I have the day off while our sons are in school. It's been a day full of frustration and reflection. Thanks to my friend Webster's blog post (He's blogging as he walks the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, the pilgrims' walking route in Northern Spain, with his adult daughter) I actually found something to say about all this.

My morning was, well, wasted, because it had been so long since I'd shopped at Wegman's that I got lost driving there. Then, I headed to my local Costco, spent an hour buying more than $200 worth of groceries, only to discover my pin number on my ATM card is messed up. So I left the store with nothing more than what I walked in with. This is when my day got really interesting.

Three Wise People Help Me Find A Good Shepherd for Post-Modern Times

I never really got this Good Shepherd business. Sure, Christ is the Good Shepherd for me, but what about for all my friends and family members who do not follow Him? Most of the people I love or with whom I work or share a neighborhood would not call themselves Christians. Some of them, in fact, are decidedly anti-organized religion, preferring to place their faith in humanity or the universe or in some vague sense of karma.


How is Christ their Good Shepherd too?

Lenten Talk: Padre Pio

Tonight I had the beautiful experience of visiting St. Rita's Parish on Staten Island with two girlfriends to attend a Lenten talk on St. Pio of Pietrelcina, (Padre Pio).  The evening was a remarkable reminder of the reasonableness and the universality of our faith.

Morning Mass and Lenten Lessons with Timothy Cardinal Dolan

On this sunny, blustery February day, we have just returned, our little family of four, from a standing-room-only Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City, where the celebrant was the newly minted Timothy Cardinal Dolan. Given the politics of these days, I expected he might preach about the intrusions that politicians are making into Catholics' lives of faith. But he didn't, at least not overtly.

Instead, the joyful man in the red hat preached the Gospel, reminding us that, just as Jesus learned during his 40 days in the desert, during Lent we need to realize that our lives must be lived with God's will, not our will, for God's kingdom, not our kingdom, for God's values and not the passing values of the world we live in. (Thanks to my CL friend Dan Finaldi for sharing the photo he took after Mass)

When the Journey is a Trial, My Book of Hours Accompanies Me

Tuesday was a miserable night. You see, I work with human beings. I live with human beings. And I am a human being. And sometimes, that is all just. too. much.

I went to bed late after an intense family conversation about something I likely won't remember a few months from now. Something that seemed terribly important and urgent at the time and worthy of a late-night conversation.

I tossed. I turned. I reached for my little red Book of Hours.