urbantrappistblogastery

The best word to characterize the daily Mass readings of Lent is dismal. Even today’s Hebrew Scripture portion, in which Moses discusses how God kicked some Egyptian tail and why that deserves some dap and some grub, emphasizes words like “suffer” and “toil” and “harsh” and “oppression” and I have no shortage of further [...]

I think most of us know what Catholic schoolboys give up for Lent.  (You don’t?  Well, it rhymes with fornication and has other similarities).  And thus, most of us know what Catholic schoolboys are doing at 11:55 p.m. on Fat Tuesday.  (Not that you should be thinking of such things).  The theory, of course, is [...]

The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and get on with their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.
—Billy Graham
I’m not talking about unbelief. I don’t even think that statement is true anymore (the [...]

Introducing myself in my first MFA workshop, I was prompted to say my genre of writing. I stumbled and self-effaced, then spat out that e-mail is my genre. Stretching the definition of genre, this seems correct. I’ve disseminated some good stuff via the send button. This one is a response to [...]

This writing adventure brings a lot of frustrations. Through my first 24 years, I generally had the ease of an immediate transition from production to completion. I did my work (studying, essaying, youth planning) and saw it relatively quickly completed (tests, grades, events). I didn’t anticipate the gulf between writing and publishing.
Now, [...]