"And if we love, naturally, we will try to do something." (Mother Teresa DID say this.)
Two essay collections, two columns, a poem and a podcast—all for you
Enjoy this week’s round-up of others’ holy labors! Books, essays, poetry, prayers, podcasts, art, music—anything I’m loving lately. Feel free to share with a friend who might be interested. Wednesday’s posts are always free, thanks to the paid subscribers who make this work possible.
Just finished two lovely essay collections: Upstream by Mary Oliver offers prose from the brilliant poet, including two of the most beautiful nature essays I’ve ever read (“Swoon” and “Bird”). Onigamiising: Seasons of An Ojibwe Year by Linda LeGarde Grover includes 50 short essays originally published in the Duluth Budgeteer about Mino Bimaadiziwin: the living of a good life.
Few things drive me batty more than people failing to fact-check quotes. Otherwise translated: That Saint Did Not Say That. Case in point: Mother Teresa did NOT say, “What can you do to promote world peace? Go home and love your family.” Read the rest: Start at home but don’t stay there in Northwest Catholic.
Got to have a delightful ecumenical conversation on the sacramental nature of parenting with
and Rev. Laura Di Panfilo on their And Also With You podcast. Listen here.“I wish I could be two women. I wish the days could be longer. But they are short. So I write while the dust piles up.” A poem for every artist who’s felt the tug: “Woman Enough” by Erica Jong.
Meant to share in August, but the truth still holds. From my wise former editor Elizabeth Scalia, an epiphany about Assumption and the marvel of fetal microchimerism:
“Every child leaves within his mother a microscopic bit of himself — every pregnancy, brought to delivery or not, leaves a small amount of its own cells within the body of the mother — and those cells remain within her forever…Microchimerism explained for me the very whys and wherefores of a dogma that had previously seemed like little more than piety on a sentimental rampage, leaving me too cowed to care.”
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This “not-said-by-Mother-Teresa” quote has always resonated with me. I am one in need of the reminder that the people in front of me, the ones in my home, deserve my Christian love first and most for they will then go out into the world and create their own ripple effects based on how full that love has been. It is very easy for me to get so distracted and absorbed in the projects and people I serve outside of the home that I am left depleted, lacking then in that same Christian charity for my own. This non-quote has always helped me flip my posture and reorder my perspective, and, while Mother Teresa may not have said it explicitly, I do like to think she would approve.