Franciscan Life
Franciscan life is a love story — with God, with the poor, with the earth, with the stranger. Rooted in the spirit of Francis and Clare of Assisi, these posts explore what it means to embrace simplicity, kinship, and courageous countercultural choices in a world that constantly pushes the other direction. From returning land to Indigenous communities to the spirituality of dumpster diving to what the feast of St. Francis has to teach us today, this is a space for anyone drawn to the Franciscan way — whether you’ve taken vows or are just beginning to feel its pull.
With apologies to Agathon
“O happy fault, that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!” ~ “The Exsultet: The Proclamation of Easter” It seems lately that many people around…
Holy Week is here
Here we are! The Lenten journey is ending and it is time to emerge from the desert and enter into the Paschal mystery. Holy Week…
The beauty of brokenness
An old building in disrepair, collapsing toward the ground. A rusting, defective car, stuck in layers of mud. Shattered glass. Melting candle. Cracked eggshells. Chipped ceramics…
Praying with my feet: called to El Camino
For over a thousand years, millions of pilgrims have walked across Spain to the Catedral de Santiago (Cathedral of St. James). During Holy Week, I…
Celibate Living in a Sex-Obsessed Society
Driving home from another ministry excursion, I pass billboard after billboard saying there are sex shops nearby. With each sighting, my stomach turns with sickness,…
Anxious resistance
I had a knot in my stomach all day. I couldn’t focus at work. I lost my appetite. I felt exhausted as soon as I…
Be perfect
Hypocrisy. According to Google, it’s “The practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one’s own behavior does not conform; pretense.” It’s…
Marked
Most days, our schedules are clogged with avoidance: We’d rather ignore the inevitable smudge of human decay. This morning though, Ash Wednesday, we step…