The Games We Play: A Reflection on Competition vs. Sacrifice
Games. Always playing games. Filling up the mind with plotting, and our heart’s surge crested with the thrill. Our little games, so all-important to us in the apex of victory or the crush…
Tag: Avellina Balestri
Pilate and Claudia
Author's Note: This story is a work of historical fiction, based on the Four Canonical Gospels of Holy Scripture, as well as additional information provided by historians such as Josephus, and legendary materials collected from…
All Things New: A Passiontide Reflection
Let us who are blind feel your face, the true Green Man, carved in the wood. But the green that you gave to the springtime, the green that you gave to the turning…
O What Can Ail Thee?: A Harry Potter Story
Voldemort had seized control of Hogwarts. Severus Snape had been made headmaster. The Carrows had been installed on the school grounds. Tortures were being carried out daily. Harry Potter and Ronald Weasley had fled to…
Song of Exiles: A Reflection on the New York City Draft Riots of 1863
Hear, O Africa, cradle of humanity’s first dreaming, the cry of your oppressed children rises high above the ocean’s crest. Hear the whip crack, splitting the skin baked brown in your fire-stoked…
Kingdom Come: Five Spiritual Exercises for Lent
Lent is the Christian season of penitence, traditionally practiced through the triple disciplines of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving. It marks the period when Christ spent 40 days in the desert to prepare for his earthly…
All in the Family: A Harry Potter Story
Hermione Granger Potter was busy at work on supper in the kitchen when she heard the sound of a wheelchair pulling up behind her. With eight years of practice, Severus Snape was getting accustomed to…
A One of a Kind Lady: A Tribute to My Grandmother Lucy
My Grandma Lucy (Dec. 13, 1923 [Feast of St. Lucy] - Jan. 21, 2013 [Feast of St. Agnes])was a one of a kind lady. There will never be another human being quite like…
Recovering a Truly Pro-Life Ethic
The phrase “pro-life” has often been solely identified with the abortion debate. But in reality, it should be much more than that. It should be wide-spread, all-encompassing ethic that sees the innate dignity of and…
Give Me the Words: A Bardic Rhapsody of Winter Feasts
Give me the words, let them form. The stories that course through my mind, weaving like star-light knotted into pitchers, pouring out the Milky Way across the onyx sky. Give me the words that…