The morning is gentle. I’ve come at the perfect time to sit and pray near the old living room windows. The sign of the cross, coffee on the window sill, closed eyes. I’m opaque inside today. I pray about yesterday. And sometimes my prayer isn’t always clear.
What would St. Augustine have to say about freestyle rapping? It’s a remarkable talent that reveals more than just a rapper’s skills, like those showcased by the great Harry Mack. It can reveal how we are created in the image and likeness of God. And Augustine shows us how.
I’ve been throwing pottery for over a year now. For a while, I had the technique down, or at least down enough to center the clay and build from there. But lately, I have had the worst time centering the clay. As I sit with my struggles to center the clay, my mind wanders to the world around me: does anything feel centered these days?
“This whole year has felt like a Lenten penance in the desert, so I’m not thinking about what to give up. Instead, I enter this season replaying images of that day with Javier.” Christopher Alt, SJ, recounts the story of his friend’s first day out of prison and considers what lessons it has for us as we see promises of the end of the pandemic and move into Lent.
The prophet Joel extolls the people of God to rend their hearts and not their garments to be touched and broken and changed at a deeper level than what is visible, a profound, inner conversion, one of the heart. And God will find us in the most beautiful ways. All we have to do is open the door. Find out what happens when I open a door and start seeing Christ on the other side.
I love musicals. I love watching them, discussing them, debating about them, criticizing them, comparing them. I work out listening to soundtracks from esoteric musicals from the 1960s. I appeared in musicals every year from when I was 5 to 22, and wrote a musical in lieu of a philosophy final. God can find us wherever we are, and God found me right where I love to be: in a theatre.
Through all of our joys and sorrows, we use songs as a way to express ourselves and bring us together as community. Some people use the Psalms, some use sea shanties.
For the first time during my break, I was able to concentrate on something. I began sketching a chubby leg, two hands hovering above a halo. This was the infant Jesus that would become the object of my prayer over the Christmas season. What I created also became my prayer, a prayer to be less active and more present.
Fantasy and the imagination have much to contribute to our religious experience. We’re excited to announce this new series, “Fantasy, Fiction, and Faith,” that will examine imaginative literature from the lens of faith.
The newest pixar movie, Soul, raises the question about each person’s purpose. It deals especially with the question many of us ask ourselves, “what if I choose the wrong thing?”
