We are in a sweet honeymoon period with our new pet birds. Everything they do is fascinating.

Our younger son has loved birds for as long as I can remember. And, at some point during this pandemic, he started asking for a pet bird.

The older I get, the more in awe I am of the witness and self-sacrificial love parents have for their children.

What have we learned over the past three months?

Grief is absolutely essential to being human, to being fully alive. When we cannot experience, own and befriend our grief, we cannot sustain our hearts.

Our visit to St. Anthony lifted me in ways only the Holy Spirit can.

May our eucharistic Jesus give us that renewed life, and powerfully change and transform us from the inside out.

Uncertainty can be scary. But just because the future is unclear doesn’t mean that what lies ahead is terrible.

Even though St. Anthony may have had a way with words, he is quoted as saying, “Actions speak louder than words; let your words teach and your actions speak.”

For a parish church to be a place of prayer, there have to be times of silence. For a domestic church to be a place of prayer and formation, there also needs to be periods of silence.