"Augustine": Robin Lane Fox's extraordinary biography (my review in the Philadelphia Inquirer)

http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/20160103__Augustine___Magisterial_biography_of_a_crucial_Christian_thinker.html

"Vatican Prophecies": a primer on miracles, exorcisms, apparitions and other supernatural phenomena

An interview with  writer John Thavis, an expert Vaticanista who takes us behind closed doors as the Holy See looks into testimonials from the four corners of the world, employing medical experts, skeptics, theologians and an army of experts to decide whether these occurences are illusions - or miracles.

http://lancasteronline.com/features/faith_values/how-does-the-catholic-church-sort-out-miracles/article_0950494a-a9b4-11e5-a13e-737f6ac379b6.html#fb-root

And strangely fell our Christmas Day

To-night ungather'd let us leave
      This laurel, let this holly stand:
      We live within the stranger's land,
And strangely falls our Christmas-eve.

Our father's dust is left alone
      And silent under other snows:
      There in due time the woodbine blows,
The violet comes, but we are gone.

No more shall wayward grief abuse
      The genial hour with mask and mime;
      For change of place, like growth of time,
Has broke the bond of dying use.

Let cares that petty shadows cast,
      By which our lives are chiefly proved,
      A little spare the night I loved,
And hold it solemn to the past.

Alfred Lord Tennyson In Memoriam CV

It wasn't until I escaped the house late this afternoon and strolled towards the elementary school across the street that I finally felt a sense of peace settle over me.

Grey light (there had been just a few breaks of sunshine throughout the day) erased the line between afternoon and dusk.   The rain which had come down intermittently throughout the day made the ground soft under my feet. At the end of the school driveway, several people (I couldn't distinguish teenager from adult) tossed a ball back and forth between them.

As evening came on swiftly, I found myself almost alone on the path, yet more at home than I would have been in a house full of people.

Christmas is tough, harder this year than in many past, and there have been numerous challenging ones. For years, after the death of my brother and then, in swift succession, my mom, it was almost impossible to rejoice.

The birth of my two children allowed space in which to construct a few family traditions - the creche, the simple ornaments my mother had lovingly collected, the huge tree which sat in our brownstone music room replaced by a less spacious, ambitious pine.

But a marriage also provides a ready-made family.  In the years since the kid's dad and I separated, we have maintained a husk of those traditions - but what we have lost, perhaps what we never had, is the joint effort, the spiritual anchor, that binds a family celebration together.

The holiday also raises a host of discomfiting questions - why don't we fit in anywhere? Who are our friends? Where is our "tribe"? If I was less of a loner..if I had joined the HSA...if I was a more conventional Christian, if I volunteered more...

I want my little family to be desired, to be desirable - never an object of someone's second thought. At the same time, I know that there are many like us who, for whatever reason, whether it's a lack of local family, divorce, or unconventional lifestyles, don't fit the boxes.

I have a feeling that my son will find his tribe.  There is a cost for patrolling the periphery, as an old friend who used to work at the Inquirer used to call it - and I often don't think it's worth the cost.

At the same time, walking by the cars lined up in the subdivision a few blocks away, the aroma of Christmas dinners perfuming the damp air, lights twinkling in the fast-growing darkness of this winter season, after a challenging day in which we skated on thin ice, an afternoon which could have been a catastrophe...I reclaimed the mantle of the solitary observer stalking the habitat of those who find solace in each other's company.

Equivocal comfort indeed. But for tonight, it would probably have to do.

That day I had "the talk" with my son

In a time of terror and anti-Muslim rage, this mom, a Christian of Jewish heritage, had a frank conversation with her son, a teenager in high school. If they attack your Muslim friends, you must stand up and defend them, I said.

http://lancasteronline.com/features/faith_values/having-the-talk-i-didn-t-want-to-have/article_9b277d2c-a28c-11e5-bd43-67651b920861.html

Keeping the faith in an anxious American moment

A conversation with University of Pennsylvania chaplain Chaz Howard about fear, gratitude, new generations, and how this Thanksgiving differs from the norm.


http://lancasteronline.com/features/faith_values/practicing-gratitude-in-a-fearful-world/article_8fd9f6a0-92df-11e5-8c97-2f3fb687fbac.html#fb-root

Yes, we are at war

In a Mexican-themed restaurant in West Philadelphia, we celebrated my cousin's daughter's graduation to the next step of her career - a gouache of ceviche, sangria, jicama salad and lively chatter.

Over the past decade,   the neighborhood that is home to the University of Pennsylvania has become a lively hub for ethnic restaurants (and chains), upscale makeup boutiques, and a nightlife designed to appeal to sophomores and their visiting parents alike. 

At nine o'clock, the streets were crowded, mostly with young people on their way to hear music and sip lattes,  party with friends in a dormitory, or study for a Monday exam (not likely).

As my son steered expertly through the illuminated city, past the theaters and Chinese restaurants and the darkened Catholic basilica, I glanced at my Facebook page, then quickly turned to my BBC app.

And wept. "No. No. No."

Young people, like the ones on the Philly streets, gathered for a concert.  Families watching a soccer match, indulging in the (relatively) harmless national competition that Europeans seem to love (considerably less lethal than using swords and crossbows, which they did for centuries).  Couples eating in one of the city's countless restaurants.

ISIS knows no borders, respects no treaties, professes a toxic mockery of one of the world's ancient faiths. 

Not in my name, said countless shocked Muslims across the world today, awaking to news of this massacre.

Yes, we are at war .  But not with Islam.  Not with the people of Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria. 

We fight the people who slay innocents celebrating the small and great rituals of life on a Friday evening, doing what human beings have done after a work week is over as long as there has been civilization.

Which isn't to say that this war will be won with lethal force - it seems, at best, a most imperfect solution.  Or that those who simply assign this battle to the realm of Christian apolocalyptic are doing anything more than desperately trying to file this chaos in a place that comforts them.

But I do believe, affirming the words of Pope Francis this morning, that we are engaged in a battle to save all that is redemptive and human and civilized about modern life.

I haven't a clue as to how we will win. But I don't believe that we can, whether in France or America, find places anymore in which to duck and hide - and pretend, like children in the dark, they aren't coming for us. 

The Synod on the Family: a view from the Bishop's Chair

http://lancasteronline.com/features/faith_values/view-of-the-synod-from-a-bishop-s-chair/article_fea88c8c-7f3d-11e5-8734-a362280fecf6.html