I watched mystery and glory revealed each time my mother knelt down to pray. Mom didn't look particularly different—no far-away gaze, ethereal glow, or contorted features that you might associate with someone tapping into eternal life. She had the same sweet, friendly look she always had—except for the tears.

Listening to an opposing team's coach giving the pep talk against our school's team, I was appalled by how completely negative all the comments were.

For me, one of the few blessings that came out of the pandemic was all the online faith community I discovered. Certainly people have been connecting online for many years, but once in-person gathering wasn’t doable or ideal, groups that had never been virtual before suddenly were, if they wanted to continue.

I am the oldest of 10 children. For most people, the task of raising 10 children would stretch them beyond capacity. Just the thought of making school lunches and feeding 12 people dinner every single night is exhausting.

When my husband and I discovered in my fifth month of pregnancy that our baby had Down syndrome coupled with a serious heart defect, the doctors and geneticists encouraged us to terminate the pregnancy and save ourselves a lot of heartache.

Built in a simplified Prairie School style with Chicago bricks on the outside and stained-glass windows and walnut trim, the home of my youth, three stories with an English basement, covered two lots on Briar Place.

At the time I probably thought of him as a party pooper, but now I'm grateful to Don. I was in high school, and a bunch of my friends and I were scheming to pull a prank on a guy in our class who was often the butt of our jokes.

The RCA company was one of the first to develop the phonograph, or, as they called it, the Victrola. Their logo was a dog sitting next to an old-style phonographic speaker with his ear cocked and listening.

He’s gone now. But 50 years ago you could always find him on the corner of State and Madison in Chicago, which back then was called the "world’s busiest corner.”

Not long ago, I felt overwhelmed with my position as pastoral minister in a thriving parish. People were in the hospital; I had promised visits and could not get to them.