Don’t drink the last root beer in the fridge. That was the cardinal rule in our house.

Years back, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd interviewed former President Jimmy Carter during a book tour. Dowd wrote about Carter's notorious confession in a Playboy magazine interview in 1976.

Last summer a storm hit our area dumping record amounts of rain quickly. It started to pour while I was celebrating Sunday Mass. By the time people were leaving church the streets were rivers and sewer tops were blown into the air with geysers of water shooting out of them.

Bland. What a horrible trait. It sounds like a punishment: "Since you've worked yourself into an ulcer, you need to eat bland food for three months." I knew a guy in college who could best be described as bland.

My sister was discussing the significance of offering the sign of peace at Mass with the students in her C.C.D. class.

Jenn stood on the sidelines, clipboard in hand, coaching the sixth-grade girls’ volleyball team. She encouraged, she cajoled, and she redirected as she moved the girls in and out of the game.

Presbyterian scholar Michael J. Kruger likes to fish.

Fishermen figure prominently in today’s gospel, and the fisher motif has been a favorite with religious artists ever since. Art imitates life, the saying goes, but sometimes, it seems, life imitates art.

In Richard Wagner's magnificent opera Die Meistersinger, a night watchman walks through an apparently deserted street calling out, “Hear, people, what I say, the clock has struck 10; guard your fire and also your light so that no one comes to harm! Praise God the Lord!”

Years ago, Mary Mitchell, in a column in the Chicago Sun-Times, introduced readers to a woman named Cheryl Breaux.