An excavation of memory, technology, love, and some hilarious home movie footage from Fr. Zachary Burns. The “greatest hits” of my family’s recovered memories, I think, are something like a debris field. Maybe they’ll never be as important as the events by which our lives are measured—the birthdays, weddings, and landmark family gatherings; or even the cleaner, streamlined events we set out to purposely record. Like debris forever separated from the body of a ship, they’ll always be viewed as separate, and somehow of a different tenor. They may not be the events that define the life of a family, but they are surely the events that explain it. They are the events that, when rediscovered and appraised, seem to point to something beyond themselves—to the larger discovery: the love that infuses them all.
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A reflection on the pandemic, and life, from the perspective of English teacher Allie Griffith. Read it here. This could become a bigger question when we think about who we decide is the “author” of all of this. Religious folks might say God, some might turn to political leaders, doctors, medical experts, your favorite news source, all the “isms” that often give us a source of theory, maybe your mom…To simplify this step, I’m going to let the author be You. Us. Me. If we are the author, then the search for meaning in this becomes an individual and collective task. Thank you, Ally Bartoszewicz, for this reflection on a summer to remember in the "Black Diamond" unit. I was struck with the truth that that boy was still in between those two freckled ears, lost in a silent scream of a dropped signal. I no longer saw an enigma, a violent other who rocked back and forth and moved his hands in ways I could never comprehend. I saw a child, a man, a human. A meditation on poverty by Mary-Kate Burns. It is a phantasm, the desire of a desire. There is always the creeping matter of subjectivity, the self-centeredness of personal preference. I want poverty, but I do not want it to be so poor. I can say that I want us to be stripped bare, cut open, letting blood, not counting the cost. But in the end, my heart is small and selective, and I cannot accept this ocean into it. I can only sieve what I think will nourish. |
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