Relevant Radio Interview: 3/31

Hiya folks. Listen in this coming Tuesday, March 31, where I’ll be joining Morning Air on Relevant Radio to discuss praying through the pandemic. I’m slated for 7:45 am. You can open up this player and listen live on the device of your choice. Or, find your radio station here.

Edit: I can’t believe I forgot to add the best memes of the weekend. Which is your favorite: fiddle ears dog or not all sports are canceled? I laugh so hard I cry when I look at that dog (and wish I were beside it, hugging it, feeling the wind on our faces).

Prayer on the Fifth Friday of Lent

Photo courtesy of America Magazine. I love this image.

My latest article, Praying Our Way Through the Pandemic, is up at Catholic Stand. St. Corona, now is your time, homegirl!

Speaking of prayer, Holy Trinity in Georgetown has moved a few of its Ignatian programs and retreats online. Holy Trinity is where I have made several Ignatian retreats, and where I was guided through the 9-month 19th annotation retreat in daily life. I cannot recommend the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius enough. Our current quiet, solitary, contemplative status makes this a perfect time for a prayer retreat.

Another powerfully prayerful thing from today: the Pope gave an Urbi et Orbi blessing. Here is the transcript of his homily, which I highly encourage you to read. It was quite a thing to see the Pope in an empty St. Peter’s square, with the rain coming down and great torches lit along the path, and a deep blue sky becoming more deeply blue. It was the perfect kind of alternative universe image for what we are all feeling inside. It was Moses going up on the mountain to pray for his people, and I think the way will forever remember Pope Francis.

It is a Friday, so I will get outside in a bit, then virtual dinner and rosary with some gal pals (and one toddler!).

I am reminded that God is still doing wonderful things. All of this could be leading to something - strangely wonderful and new. Even when I feel hopeless I think, well, I’ve never, ever known what God is going to do next. And usually He does something I once thought impossible.

Praying through Pandemic

I am working on an article about praying through pandemic. See below something that came into my inbox via the Busch School of Business: a prayer written by Katy Hamilton, a grad student in the business school. I am sharing because I love the concept of writing one’s own prayers. There is power and beauty in what one could term the “classics” - the rosary, the Our Father - but there is a special beauty in God’s people using their own creativity to co-create and commune with our Maker in one’s own voice.

I like knowing that these are the saints someone else picked and trusts. I learn something, and I feel a part of something bigger than myself.

Well, life goes on in quarantine. I have walked many miles, I have picked daffodils by the side of the empty highway, I have made banana bread, I have taken out the recycling, I have sat in different chairs to do work and learned that different ones are good for different moods. I have felt like my soul now resides in Zoom, I have a new contender for favorite quarantine meme. Thanks be to God I am healthy and employed. And of course, praying.

I have also noticed how pandemic makes me nostalgic. At first I thought, “I want my old life back,” and I meant the life of a couple weeks ago. Increasingly, though, I am remembering other snatches of life, like a car ride with my best friend around my hometown in 2010. My mind keeps on reeling back to old experiences I have not considered for a long time. Is that happening to you? It must be because my brain has categorized those memories as “simpler times” and is just trying to help me out.

For some reason I have noticed that this all makes me want to watch old movies, probably because it’s an escape. So I started a list and will get to it, eventually (this is also remarkable because I am not much of a movie person): Austin Powers, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Wayne’s World, Saturday Night Fever.

I dare you to listen to the theme from Austin Powers, by the way, and not be immediately cheered. It’s an actual song called Soul Bossa Nova. Go on. Listen. Groovy, baby!