Sunday mornings, before mass, I try to experience God where I can. The attempt to experience God before mass, I realize, helps when I fail to have a spiritual experience at church, which is often. Should the music dry my already thirsty soul, should the homily fall in my expectations to be inspired to run […]
spirituality
Morning Pages: Sexual Violence, Advocacy, and Spiritual Endurance
There is it. The word, the “A” word: advocate. In my early days of being an advocate and educator for survivors of rape and sexual violence, I thought it primarily described my role as being a voice in times of silence. Silence during invasive rape examination kits, I would be an advocate with my eyes […]
Morning Pages: You Can’t Always Get What You Want, but Why Not?
The reading this morning is especially powerful but the same line always renders me confused: Ask for whatever you want and it shall be given. He must mean something more than just this simple message because the human comprehension of it isn’t true. Not everything we want is given. Is there something more? Yesterday a […]
Political Theology: Catholic Spirituality and Drones
At every intersection of political examination of conscience, I come to the word peace and rummage in my mind for an spiritual reasoning that explains why I have never heard the word “drone” in any Catholic space or conversation. I suppose because most Catholics, sitting upon the words “political” and “reflection” come to the two […]
Processing Sexuality & Spirituality: On Queer Identity, Love, and Un-Identifying
There were two rather unexpected events that took place yesterday. If I look closely, I see how these two seemingly different events perfectly illustrate my life and my identity right now. At two o’clock yesterday, I went for spiritual direction. Spiritual direction is a form of spiritual practice where you typically spend an hour or […]
Mary Magdalen as a Sex Positive Therapist: What Catholic Women Can Learn from the Most Misunderstood Figure in the New Testament
One of the mystifying aspects of my studying the US mainstream feminist movement has been the “sex positive” feminists. In my cursory reading of it (I nearly exclusively read authors on women of color feminism and poetry), my general understanding of it comes from the 1980s Sex Pos movement which came as a – somewhat […]
Lent is About Trying…and Trying Again
It’s well past 9pm and I’m on the internet. I have not been able to keep off the internet as I resolved this Lent. In both success and failure there is always a lesson. These are my lessons thus far from going 0-2 in my Lenten vows: 1) How we unwind at night is not […]
An Unlikely Baptism: A Spiritual Retreat at Miami Beach
Nick and I are on a private weekend getaway and we’re resting up before we go out on the town. For years I got flack and ridicule because I wanted to see Miami Beach. I had the impression that unless you’re 21 years old and looking for club hopping, music thumping nights, it’s not really […]
Spiritual Grub: Why Does God Needs to be the Center of Everything?
Coming up in this Sunday’s first reading…A few reflective thoughts… I am the LORD and there is no other,there is no God besides me. It is I who arm you, though you know me not, so that toward the rising and the setting of the sun people may know that there is none besides me. […]
Praying for Brokenness: A Free Write on Catholicism, Death, and Community
There are many things I don’t blog about. For as much as I write about “my life” there are certain aspects that I keep offline and in the confines of my home. One of them is my work offline, my work as a minister for a Catholic church. It’s odd. For as much as I […]