On Beauty and Love: The Qualities Central to the Christian Experience
I had a wonderful childhood with parents who loved me. Sometime when I was a young teenager, I became aware of beauty: the sea, green pine trees rising up into a blue sky at the…
Tag: Memoir
Solo Flight: Finding Inspiration in the Airport
It was my first solo flight. I’d made it through customs with only two near panic attacks and had now for two solid hours clung to both my backpack and my plane ticket like either…
Easter in My Landscape: Celtic Reflections on the Season
It is through the ‘Book of Nature’ that I came to Christ. My journey to faith was through a sense of the divine in all things, and some wonderful messages of Truth which I saved…
Me and Sister Mary Bernard: A Reflection from My School Years
Around 1925, Mother and Dad entered us into St. Matthias School in Huntington Park, with the Sisters of Notre Dame. One of the first things I learned about the sisters was how to pronounce Notre…
In Defense of Santa Claus: A New Understanding of a Timeless Tale
I was a firm believer in Santa Claus until I turned eleven years old. After all, it was always the villains or grumps who doubted the Christmas magic, never the characters I admired and wanted…
Air and Lighter than Air: A Boy’s Dream of Flying
Dougherty’s Flying Field was the first airfield I can remember, and it was little better than a few acres of pastureland with several hangars and a shack that passed for an operations office. Along the…
Little Plastic Army Men Campaigning on a Snow Day
~ by Lawrence "Mack" Hall If I were a boy I’d range my toy soldiers before the fire Vast armies of plastic in green and grey With the cannon blasting the enemy - A glorious…
On the Feast of St. Stephen: A Reflection on the Paradox of Christmastime
I am blessed with having both an older and a younger brother who are almost seven years apart from each other. Of course, being stuck between them during my childhood, I did not think they…
Ham for the Holidays: A Story from a Christmas Retail Worker
In its infinite wisdom, back in 1955, the “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church,” (don’t take my word for it, that’s from the First Council of Constantinople back in 381) declared May 1 to be the…
Grandpa: A Memoir from the Turn of the Century
My first few years were about normal for the early days of the 20th Century. I was burned, blistered, cut, trampled by horses, run over by a car, spilled off bicycles, beaten with a stick,…