Anne Satorius ia a pretty typical hardworking, faithful Catholic. She teaches catechism at her parish in Milwaukee; she and her husband, Tim, edit the newspaper at their daughter's school (where they also serve on the PTO); she looks after her aging parents, helping with yard work and more; she is a full-time dental hygienist.
Every time Mary Borner goes to church at St. Thecla Parish in Chicago she pictures her husband's casket going down the aisle. She and Jack had been married 40 years when he died two years ago. Friends suggest she switch parishes, but Borner prefers to stay rooted and engaged in a place full of both joyous and devastating memories. "It would be easier to run away," she says, "but I have to face this."
Last year in our Parish Church, I preached on Father's Day. I'd never before given a true in-the-pulpit sermon, but I was there as a sort of expert witness. I'm a father, first of all. My wife, Cathy, and I have two children: David, who's 13, and Sarah, 10. And a couple of years ago I wrote a book on fatherhood called Daily Meditations (with Scripture) for Busy Dads (ACTA Publications, 1995).
"Judaism," writes Rabbi Lawrence Kushner in his new book, Jewish Spirituality: A Brief Introduction for Christians(Jewish Lights), "is a tradition that may at times, for Christians, feel strangely familiar." He adds, "To be sure, you can only have one religion at a time. But you can, from studying another one, even from the outside, learn to see your own spiritual tradition through a new lens." And so follows his eloquent and straightforward exposition of Jewish spirituality.
On an otherwise sunny day The Holy Mountain is enveloped in fog. It may be an omen. A hundred meters out, there's a white statue of the saint. Those who are going to turn back do so at the statue, the pilgrim has been told. Mere tourists. Staff in hand, the pilgrim pushes ahead. A pristine stream splashes down from the mountain-holy water too potent to be bottled. The trail of rough boulders and sharp stones circles behind a lesser mountain before attacking Croagh Patrick, locally called the Reek, a 2,510-foot-tall cone of white quartz pointing to heaven.
Robert E. Burns wouldn't approve of this approach to Journalism. He wasn't one for shining a light on one of the editors. During his regime-executive editor of U.S. Catholic from 1963 to 1984-he strictly followed the policy of not identifying authors by more than name (he felt articles should be judged by the strength of the ideas they contained, not the writer's credentials or celebrity). For most of the 37 years he wrote this column his authorship was sparely acknowledged by the initials R.E.B.
One reason "Mission Impossible" was so successful as a thriller this year it that lots of American workers could understand Tom Cruise's sense of betrayal when he discovers that good ol' Jim Phelps, played by Jon Voight, his trusted friend and benevolent supervisor, has decided to "downsize" the Impossible Mission team. But Voight isn't the only downsizing fiend around. In Arnold Schwarzenegger's summer slugfest "Eraser," James Caan is a back-stabbing boss who decides to "erase" Arnie (and several other employees) as part of his own restructuring and retirement plan.
The scary part of parenting is that you never know when you're making an indelible impression on your kids, nor what lesson your child is taking from it. Looking back warmly on efforts to foster couth and culture in his children, a father might be prone to cast about for a word of appreciation.
Do you remember when we took you to the library every Saturday morning for those Classics for Young Readers sessions?"
"Yeah, I learned a lot. That's where I met Larry, and he taught me how to burp on command."
"Ah, splendid."
Two years into her work at a New York advertising research firm, Joan Conroy realized her workdays were making her miserable.
"A lot of it was just the way I was feeling when I would come home at the end of the day," says Conroy, 27. "I wasn't feeling like I had energy; I was burned out. I didn't want to come home every day feeling like this."
Conroy, who has a bachelor's degree in psychology, longingly thought of her past social services work with homeless people, which she had done for two years after college.
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