The Broadway musical Spring Awakening is the quintessential show about the torments of adolescence. HBO recently aired a concert with the original cast, 20 years after the musical opened. The show begins with a hyper-active, angst-ridden group of teenage boys bemoaning “the bitch of living.” It’s the bitch of living …

I attended an online poetry reading this weekend sponsored by Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry. One of the featured readers was poet, novelist and essayist Julia Alvarez whose works explore the identity of Latina women. Alvarez spent her early childhood in the Dominican Republic. …

Seemingly overnight, green buds have burst open on the neighborhood trees, as if they could no longer wait to pop. I try to track their changes from day to day. Ever since the pandemic erupted, trees have become important silent companions. I am increasingly aware of them wherever I go. …

My friend Larry Janowski is a Franciscan priest and fine poet who has published two collections. Larry emails his friends a daily poem during the month of April, National Poetry Month. The poems are welcome gifts in any year, but even more so this year as the world reels from…

A few days ago, I had the chance to meet online with monks of the Pax + Abbey monastic community. They are reading my book “How to Live” for their Lenten reflection. …

I consider singer-songwriter Carrie Newcomer one of the truly prophetic voices in our world today. If you have ever listened to any of Carrie’s songs, you know that she gazes upon the world through a lens of compassion. …

Surprise victories by the St. Peter’s Peacocks men’s basketball team over better-known, better-funded, more physically-imposing opponents have injected a needed ray of hope into a nation wearied by multiple crises. The spirit and grit of this team doesn’t surprise alumni like me of this “little university” on a noisy intersection…

Like many of us, I watch the heartbreaking images of the human suffering and senseless destruction in Ukraine with growing despondency. Add to it the continuous political squabbling in this country, rising consumer prices and threat of a new Covid variant and it all points to one word: despair. Sometimes…

I flew this past week from Rome to Lisbon. I arrived at the airport early, and spent time observing the people around me. In one corner of the waiting room, a group of Jewish men donned blue and white prayer shawls and stood bowing above their open prayer books. …