Who is “the world” we so like to vilify? In a particularly involved student debate in my Catholic Morality class, some of my classmates kept referencing “society” as if it were an individual force acting on others. Eventually, I interrupted and asked, “What is society?...
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Much has changed. I’m sure every new Mom can relate after coming home with her newborn. There have been many physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual changes and adjustments in the past month for me. An important category of change that I’ve been reflecting on is identity: how I...
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I recently realized that many people do not see the beauty of the Catholic faith. The social stigmas concerning Catholicism blind people, asserting that faith and reason cannot coexist, or that the basis of faith is weak or flawed. Catholicism seems inflexible, dull or dry in its tradition. Some fr...
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The mental stresses and lack of sleep during finals week drained me. To push through it, I continually reminded myself of the prayer to St. Joseph in Reitz Memorial High School’s Holy Family Prayer Circle, specifically the line, “I shall work, above all, with a pure intention and with d...
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It is May 1st as I am driving from my home in New Harmony to work at the University of Southern Indiana. I am looking out on farm fields being made ready for the growing season. Much preparation is needed – getting the equipment in working condition, making sure the field, grai...
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I recently went to a synagogue to celebrate a dear professor’s birthday.  Shabbat service was 4 hours long, consisting of readings from the Torah, chanted in Hebrew by members of the congregation, as well as times for personal prayer and a lot of sung psalms and other prayers.  ...
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One in five people suffers from mental illness. Look around you. The chances are good that one out of every five people you can think of probably struggles with a mental illness. It could be someone you see every day at school or work. It could be the people sitting next to you at Mass. A broken bo...
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As high school seniors across the nation receive their acceptances to colleges and universities, they join Facebook pages for the admitted freshman class of each institution. They post a few pictures of themselves and a short autobiography, and they scroll through others’ posts to find roomma...
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I’ve always been sensitive. As a child, I was also a dorky little thing – as evidenced by my beaver-like front teeth, frizzy hair, oval glasses and, later on, braces to boot. (For a while, all these traits were piled on top of one another; I know … yikes!) To top it all off, I was...
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Sometimes we can be the biggest obstacles to our empowerment, and sometimes we can be the only motivators pushing ourselves onward. Sometimes we can be too hard on ourselves, and sometimes we can be too easy. I think each one of us has a tendency to be more of one than the other. I know for myself,...
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