The theme of vigilance is being struck again this week. It’s good to become alert and aware of what’s percolating inside at this turbulent time of endings and new beginnings.

What are you waiting for? The most disastrous answer anyone can give to that question is nothing. It’s the Advent question, boiled clean of all the theology and catechism we were taught and can’t use where the rubber meets the road of life.

In my neighborhood, the houses are small and so are the yards. We live very close to each other and therefore learn a lot about our neighbors inadvertently.

When Henry Ford put the Model T on the first assembly line, he boasted that you could have it in any color you wanted—as long as it was black.

Family members were on edge. A beloved aunt had died, and all her grown nieces and nephews were gathered in her home to figure out how to dispose of her lifetime of belongings. You could feel the tension in the room.

Brothers and sisters, as we make straight the way of the Lord, let us acknowledge our sins, and so prepare ourselves to celebrate the sacred mysteries.

You don't have to become something you're not to be better than you were.