“When you encounter difficulties and contradictions, do not try to break them, but bend them with gentleness and time.”

At the risk of being labeled naïve and unrealistic, I am exploring in this week’s column a reality I have experienced myself on many occasions.

I was scrolling social media this week when I came across a quote by philanthropist Melinda Gates from her book “The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World.”

With a new year ahead of us, a reset or grounding might not be a bad idea.

In many ways, 2025 has been a year of sharp, jagged stab wounds.

Well, winter has spoken, and her official reign doesn’t even begin for another two weeks.

Our nation’s officially-designated day for giving thanks has come and gone.

Angels are messengers from God. How those messengers take form will always be a mystery to us, but if they bring a sense of hope, peace and goodwill during our darkest days and nights, then it should not be too much of a stretch to believe they are real.

He is Pope Leo XIV, and he recently marked his first six months in the role he was elected to in May after the death of Pope Francis.

Through every season, Nature sings different songs, and if we listen closely, those songs can inform the cycles of our soul’s internal seasons we move through in life.

But it is precisely because we see and feel all of the cruelty, pain and destruction, that we have no choice but to continue to live and give from the heart.

We have been hit hard with celebrity deaths recently.

Looking for comfort in difficult times.

So, what is heaven, and where is it? Is it a place, a state of being, or a journey? Or is it all of the above?

As summer 2025 winds down and harvest season will soon arrive, it is good to reflect on the generosity of God.

The Assumption of Mary is a dogma in the church, declared in 1950 by Pope Pius XII. But the popular belief that Mary was assumed body and soul into heaven upon her death stretches back to the early centuries of Christianity.

If you do notice them, does anything pass through your mind about them? Is it a good thought, or a not-so-good thought?

Categorizing people into neat and tidy boxes can make it difficult to remember we are each utterly unique, unrepeatable souls. And souls remain, and should remain, in the realm of mystery.

As summer turns the world a vibrant green, now is a time to embrace the soothing powers of the color.

I learned through both of those experiences the value of spiritual community, and supporting each other in our spiritual walks, using the spiritual gifts we have been given.

Taking care of yourself is essential if you intend to take care of others as well. The modern world makes that harder than ever.

We might not consider ourselves religious, or even spiritual, but if we live our lives with heart-centered values, we are living out our spirituality from the heart.

The late spiritual writer Henri Nouwen once wrote about the child of a friend asking him how big the heart is. Nouwen responded by spreading his arms out as far as they could go, and telling his young friend “Our hearts are as big as the world.”

"No one wants to think about dying, but death educators tell us the best way to deal with our own death is to acknowledge its reality while we are still healthy and full of life," Jerrilyn Zavada Novak writes in her weekly Spirit Matters column.

"Believe it or not, one of the highlights of the trip was going to a living, functioning mall. Remember those?" Jerrilyn Zavada Novak writes in her weekly Spirit Matters column.

"Her email got me thinking about how we honor the day we were born, throughout the different phases of our lives," Jerrilyn Zavada Novak writes in her weekly Spirit Matters column.

"During these times of wild uncertainty, rest in the unequivocal certainty that our God indeed is everywhere, and in everything," Spirit Matters columnist Jerrilyn Zavada Novak writes.

"Both instances jarred me out of my everyday reality into an ineffably dazzling moment of feeling a genuine spiritual encounter with the divine," Jerrilyn Zavada Novak writes in her Spirit Matters column.

It turns out Christ was referring to the universal church, and Francis’s enduring impact on the church is evident 800 years after his death.

May has been meaningful for me in many ways, and yet none of those individual ways can adequately explain my love for the month, other than it just has a beautiful feminine vibe.

I woke up Monday to a message from my niece that Pope Francis had died at the age of 88.

By the time most of you read this week’s column, the somber remembrance of Good Friday will have given way to the mournful grief of Holy Saturday or the renewed hope of Easter Sunday.

The tree outside our window reminds me this morning of how the grounding aspects of the natural world have guided me through life.

I was a student at Illinois Valley Community College when I first heard Kenny Loggins’ “Conviction of the Heart,” in 1991.

Back in the 1980s, my younger brothers and I religiously listened to Kasem’s America’s Top 40, every Sunday on the radio.

On Thursday, the first official day of spring, I caught a “glimmer.”

For most of my adult life, I have been on a quest for wisdom with a capital W.

Who here has not heard the old proverb “Every cloud has a silver lining?”

Lent begins next week on Ash Wednesday.

What are you most passionate about?

Since the substance of the Origin of all things is Love, that means at your heart, you are love too.

Deep inside of us, no matter how old we are, we long for our mother.

January seems to go on forever.

The blessed virgin Mary is an intricate part of my life.

How do your eyes look at the world around you?

If there were a popularity poll for “Least likely to use TikTok,” I would be a strong contender.

January can be a tough month.

As this year closes, I can’t help but wax melancholic about where we are and the uncertainty of where we are headed, as individuals, communities and a nation.

During my childhood, Christmas was magic.

As a Gen-X kid, sitcoms and soap operas were my thing in the 70s and 80s.