My niece, Elise, challenged me to write this week’s 7 Quick Takes in sonnet form. April is National Poetry Month, after all. I think she believes—and rightly so—that I turn too often to limericks. And I do love a challenge.

John Garvey reflects on not having his sense of smell.

Forget the hair, go back to your family roots.

“Mom I am.Oh, Mom I am. I love to be just Mom I am. What’s that? Here comes a quarantine? But what could all that home time mean?” “Here comes the schoolwork—there’s a lot. So make sure that each day you plot.” “I’m teaching math? And ELA? Can’t we just let the kids go play?” […]

When overcome with fear, do we pray to a merciful God or see God’s wrath punishing us?

Here are a few tips if you find yourself starting your own home salon.

Holy Saturday is such a powerful day. It’s a day of quiet. A day of transition. Today we stand between the sorrow of Good Friday and the joy of Easter. It is a peaceful, hopeful, expectant day.

Somehow in this time of anxiety and indefinite quarantine, when so much seems uncertain, we seem to be primed for those moments of happy discovery—those moments when we see how much we are loved by God and by others.

It is irresponsible to assert that we know enough about the virus to encourage, in good conscience, the sorts of decisions that could very well end up becoming matters of life and death.

This plague has opened our hearts and minds to questions that we should have been asking all along: What is most important to us? Do we love well? What can we count on?