This was kind of exciting so I had to share it with you. CBS Washington published a despicable photo spread of the March For Life in which only pro-choice demonstrators were shown instead of the 400,000 pro-life marchers. The resulting hue and outcry from pro-lifers was swift and terrible, flooding the comment boxes and grabbing [...]

When should you open your mouth?

We were simply commiserating over children when she blurted it out. “You know my children were conceived by in vitro fertilization don’t you?”

I was stunned into silence. What could I say? [...]

“Do you remember that girl, Marisa?”, was how the conversation began.

How could I not? She was the cute one who sat behind me in Latin class in high school.

The pages in my yearbook are filled with grimace inducing pictures of our awkward adolescent selves, bad haircuts, cryptic references, best friends, and roller coaster loves and hates.

Oh yes, our loves were epic!

Let the eye-rolling begin.

Congratulations to my brother, Shoe, and his wife, Girl Friday, on the birth of their first born daughter, Babs!

In any family life there are major milestones that mark the way. These things stick out in our memory.

In between signposts is a lot of highway. It’s not particularly interesting, but it must be traveled in order to get to the next waypoint.

I’ve been on that highway lately, in between nowhere and somewhere else.

It seems like I’ve been a tumbleweed most of my life growing up.

On the plus side, you’re a citizen of the world, gathering amazing and varied experiences not available in local stores. On the minus side, you never quite put down roots; you’re not “from” anywhere.

Have you ever desired God? I mean really, really desired to be with Him? Not just a vague “I hope to avoid Hell, it sounds like a nasty place”, but a deep, keening longing that feels as if it can never be slaked except by an even more overwhelming Presence?

To be honest, it doesn’t happen to me that often, but it has happened. [...]

Adventures in parenting with a toddler who thinks he’s Spider-Man.

This is where all you Catholic Dads (and others) get to help a brother out. You’ll recall the heart wrenching story of Nub, my Down Syndrome child. He’s the fourth out of six Nodlings and now a healthy and scrappy six year-old. He is progressing in ability and knowledge, and we are making good strides in our communication, both by sign and some words.

However, this does not seem to extend into staying in the bed at night. With any other kid, that’s simply annoying; with Nub it can be dangerous.

What’s a father to do?

One of the things that’s hard to gain and easy to lose is the wisdom of the ages. Ask anyone who has ever tried to trace their family line back more than a couple of generations. At a certain point the thread is lost and all you are left with are unanswered questions. Who were they, and what were they about? What does that mean about me?

One of the biggest fallacies of our age is the prejudice of modernism, that we are inherently “better” than our ancestors: stronger, faster, smarter, more “enlightened”. Oh, we’ve got technology aplenty, but not necessarily wisdom.

And that frankly, makes us kind of stupid.

Life happens; God is near.

“Jesus loves me, how do I know? Because my oil cap tells me so.”

Well, those might not be the exact lyrics of the Sunday school song, but that’s how I’m singing it this week. The difference between a grade-school ditty and a man’s life comes down to experience.

One of the characteristics that Catholicism shares with our progenitor in Judaism is a practical earthiness, a visceral experience, a faith rooted in the created yet elevated all the way to the foot of the Throne of Heaven. Grace builds on nature, it does not pass it by. By the same token, we apprehend the realities of our soul through the window of our bodily senses.

It could happen at any moment; any time could be the last, when we’re called to lay our lives down and stand before the Father.

Our eyes met over the fender as he suddenly appeared from behind the semi, merging into my lane; I knew one of us was going down.

There was a screech of brakes, an oath of surprise and anger, and a loud crunch of heavy metal meeting asphalt. The guy laid his motorcycle down right in front of my car’s wheels and himself with it.

I thought: Oh, no, this is it! Someone’s gonna die!