Pause+Pray

Reflect Even though we’re enclosed in the steel and glass bubbles of our cars, driving offers so many opportunities to connect with our fellow fragile human travelers who share the road with us. Moving through this complex ecosystem of routes and ...

Reflect An invitation to a Mardi Gras party at the Sisters’ Motherhouse—how could I turn it down? Picturing sedate older nuns listening to jazz, I was delighted by their three-piece band, New Orleans decorations, and a parade of costumed Sisters ...

Reflect “A stranger,” Irish poet William Butler Yeats is supposed to have said, “is a friend I haven’t met yet.” As Catholics, ours is not a circle-the-wagons religion. Our faith calls us to open our hearts and arms to those foreign ...

Reflect  After Mass, I trailed my husband in his electric wheel chair to the parking lot, where I would be hard-pressed to lift the chair into the trunk. I called to a parishioner yards ahead. “I’d love to help,” he replied hurrying ...

Reflect In the indigenous Lakota tradition, the Mitakuye Oyasin prayer offers thanks for “all my relations”: our deep interconnectedness to other people, animals, and all of the living world.  In our Christian faith, St. Francis of prayed in a similar ...

Reflect  “Don’t change!” I plead to the traffic light at the end of the exit ramp. No use. I brake to a stop beside a homeless veteran on the grass holding a sign. Embarrassed to turn my eyes away, I ...