As a father, I haven’t been the best Catholic. But our faith is built on mercy and second chances.
When is a Friday not a Friday? →
We had pasties for dinner tonight. For those unfamiliar with this gourmet treat from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, a pasty is a mixture of chopped or ground beef, potatoes, onions, and (in its original form) rutabagas, baked inside a flaky half-moon crust. Pasties have their origin in Cornwall, England, which is why they are sometimes referred to as Cornish pasties, and they came to the U.P. along with Cornish miners during the copper rush of the 1840’s.
The best pasties, though, are made (in my humble opinion) by the descendants of Finnish miners, and the recipe Amy uses is from Lehto’s, a little pasty stand seven miles outside of St. Ignace, just across the Mackinac Bridge on the eastern end of da U.P.
By now you’re probably wondering what my point could possibly be.
Dandelion wine →
Snow yesterday; even more snow — 2-5 inches — tomorrow, and in between a beautiful, bright, sunny day.
And dandelions.
April showers →
Here in northeastern Indiana, it looks like God has a sense of humor. After a very mild winter, here on Easter Wednesday, snow is falling on the green grass, grape hyacinths and daffodils.
We could learn a thing or two from our creator.
A new springtime? →
In a radio broadcast in 1969, Father Joseph Ratzinger famously declared that “from the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge — a Church that has lost much. She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning.”
The future Cardinal Ratzinger obviously did not have the COVID-19 pandemic in mind when he wrote these words. In fact, he was discussing what he thought the Catholic Church would look like in the year 2000 — 31 years later, and five years before he would take the name Pope Benedict XVI.
Yet here in 2020, his words seem prophetic, in the original sense of the term.