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The Face of Prayer

On Divine Mercy Sunday 2017, Bishop Frank Caggiano of the Diocese of Bridgeport announced an exciting new movement – The Face of Prayer – an online crusade that brings together social media, text alerts, and the power of prayer.

Now, nearly four years later, we are celebrating the eight million prayers that have been shared in this venture.

Joining the movement is easy. Simply text the word PRAY from your smartphone to 55778. You will automatically receive a response to confirm your subscription (standard texting rates apply).

Each day around 4 pm, you will receive a text from Bishop Caggiano inviting you to stop whatever you are doing and to pray for a specific intention. All prayers end with an invitation to recite one Hail Mary.

For the past several years, the Donovans have been blessed to write the prayers that are sent.

Sign up today. Right now. Stop reading this and text the word PRAY to 55778.

Visit https://thefaceofprayer.com to sign up to receive the texts via email if you are still paying for texts or have a flip phone (or just can’t figure out this whole text thing).

What better way to step up your prayer game this Lent.

 

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Movie Night for Tech Users

As any long-time reader of this blog knows, we have movie night at the Donovan household. Usually it’s Friday, though during Christmas or in a snowstorm it can be anytime.

This week, on the recommendation of a colleague, we watched The Social Dilemma.

If you have children, you really ought to watch it.

It can be found on Netflix and is a docu-drama exploring the rise of social media and the damage it can cause in society. As parents, it reminded us of the manipulation happening under our noses and for our children, it helped them realize what we could not teach them – they are the product being bought and sold online.

Watch it. Talk about it.

A few things struck me that I would challenge you to think about.

  • The rise in hospitalizations among young females and the increase in self-harm we see in young girls.
  • An increase in suicides among young people.
  • The rise of cyber-bullying.
  • The practice of positive intermittent reinforcement used by app developers to keep you engaged.
  • How algorithms created by tech companies influence everything from how we get our news to where we shop to who is in our social circles.

Remember that line from Mark Twain about how a lie could get halfway around the world before the truth can put its pants on (or something like that). Well, that’s still true. False information on Twitter spreads six times faster than real information. Think about that for a minute.

As the credits roll, those who have been interviewed throughout the show – mostly disillusioned tech workers who helped create these problems, make some recommendations that we’ll be trying to implement in the Donovan household.

  1. Turn off all notifications on your phone. Yes, your fear of missing out will take some time to adjust and you will want to make excuses that your boss might need you or you might miss an important call, but consider this: a group of scientists were able to put a man on the moon without email, texting, or social media. Is your work any more or less important?
  2. Uninstall all social media apps and new apps that waste your time. Deep breath. You can do this. Install an app that helps you read faster or check out an app that encourages you to pray every day. Or just put the dang phone down and play outside.
  3. Use a search engine that does not track your use and search history. For example, Qwant is a good alternative to Google, Bing, and all their siblings.
  4. Never, ever click on a recommended video, story, or post. This information only feeds the algorithms that are part of the manipulation process.
  5. Keep devices out of the bedroom after a certain time. This one is tough, especially if you have gotten rid of your home phone.
  6. Avoid screen time among children altogether. Our kids are older, but if I had to do it all over again, boy would I do it differently.
  7. Fact-check before sharing. No matter how interesting the story might be or how much you think your friends or family will like it.

The film got great reviews by those who understand the issues social media has created. It got criticized for being too simplistic and, of course, some social media companies panned it outright.

One thing is for sure: it generated some great conversations in our household and a willingness by the children to at least talk about restrictions when it comes to devices and how we let them rule our lives.

It’s a long weekend. Think about spending some quality screen time together in front of a movie that will get you talking.

And, just maybe, hiding your phone.

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It Was Always Going To End Like This

Someone sent me a meme last week shortly after the horrific events at the capitol. I received it later in the week too, but it was that first person’s reaction to the meme (and the meme itself), that really irked me.

It was essentially a conversation where one side yells, “The Republicans are to blame.”

Then the other side yells, “The Democrats are to blame.”

Then a third side yells, “No, we are all to blame because we let you fight each other instead of fighting for us” – or something to that effect.

I remember it made me mad. My first thought, to be honest, was to be irritated because only hours after an attempted coup in our country, social media had done what it does best – turned it into a game.

Then I showed it to my oldest and she said, without hesitation, “Dad, that’s what guilty people say when they want to share the blame.”

Out of the mouths of babes.

I have voted for people from both parties and I have never considered myself very political, apart from stealing yards signs when I collected them and could actually run without getting winded. But all this week I have been thinking about the events of that day. Maureen and I sat down with the children to talk about it. We watched coverage on television. We prayed together for our country. We avoided talk of who is to blame and we talked about ways we could be people of peace.

But I kept being bothered by that silly Internet post and Ace Number One’s reaction to it. Then I figured out why.

It was always going to end like this. It is hard to say that and not sound arrogant or haughty, or better than those who backed the man. But that is the reaction of so many young people with whom I’ve talked about it. So let’s think about this for a minute.

When you begin your campaign by insulting people from other countries and spewing racist nonsense, you attract people who buy into that.

When you yourself have a history of corruption and surround yourself with people who are corrupt, when you begin your term in office by substituting the truth with alternative facts, when you promise to care for the most vulnerable at the expense of the living, and when you reinstitute a policy that actively seek the death of other people, you can hardly be surprised when followers begin to copy you.

When you tell violent people to stand back and stand by, when you simply refuse to accept that which is fact, and when you were default reaction is to condemn other people by making fun of them, ridiculing their families, insulting them on social media, and bullying other people to acquiesce to your demands, how can anyone be surprised that we are here?

When you ignore science, when you downplay the greatest threat to humanity in decades, when you not only hide the truth from people but knowingly and willingly lie about what you know, you are not called a leader. You are called a despot.

When I was a child, my father told me a story about a small boy who went up a mountain and, even though the child was wrapped in a coat and a hat, the air around him was frigid and the boy was cold. A snake approached the boy and begged to be picked up and kept warm. The child refused, “If I picked you up, you will bite me.”

The snake begged again and again saying that he would not bite the boy if the boy would only pick him up and keep him warm and take him down the mountain with him.

Finally, the boy gave in. My father never told me whether the boy gave in because there was no other option or because the boy didn’t like the other options that he saw or if the boy was simply overcome by the sales pitch the snake put forth. But one thing was clear, the boy believed the lies.

When they got to the bottom of the mountain, the boy took the snake out of his coat and placed him on the ground. The snake recoiled and bit the boy. The boy was stunned.

“You promised. You promised. You said if I helped you, you would not bite me.”

The snake, slithering away into the darkness, finally told the truth.

“You knew what I was when you picked me up.”

The snake bites.

And we knew it all along.

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A New Year Reflection

I have posted this reflection in one way or another for as long as I can remember. The copy I have (see note at the bottom) is faded and yellow and won’t stick to the new refrigerator. Time to frame it and hang it somewhere we can all read it.

Enjoy and Happy New Year.

Death and Life are in the Power of the Tongue

I’m sorry…I didn’t mean it

I take it back

Strike it from the record

What is as irreversible as murder, violates its victims more than theft, is as deadly as an epidemic? And is a lot closer to you than you want to think

Gossip, slander, and thoughtless speech. Gossip is a million-dollar industry in our country today. We tend to think of it as a sport, harmless and fun. After all, it’s only words.

As Christians, we are called to see it differently. Which is worse, we must ask, to steal from someone or to speak ill of someone? To defraud a person or to humiliate him? Answer: Property can be restored, but the damage done to another can never be undone. In fact, our Jewish ancestors compared slander and humiliation with murder: the destruction is irreparable and enduring.

You can’t take it back. What we say about each other is terribly powerful: words have a long, long half-life, and they can destroy in unseen, unhealable ways.

Our words are a footprint we leave for the world. What will they reveal about the way we treat our children, our parents, our friends, students, co-workers, employees? How we treat ourselves?

It’s a new year. Perhaps none of us will find a cure for cancer, or feed the world’s hungry, or bring about world peace. But nearly every day we find ourselves with someone’s reputation or sense of worth in our hands.

We can improve our world in a powerful, pervasive way; we can act as though our words had the power of life and death.

They do.

About this reflection

When I was a child, there was an advertisement in the Wall Street Journal with the headline and text above, though I have edited some of the text. The ad was in celebration of the Jewish New Year, I believe. My mother, wise as she was, cut it out and posted it on the refrigerator. If you said or did something that warranted further reflection, you got to stand in front of the full page of newsprint. In time, I had it memorized. When her children moved out of the house, my mother made sure we each got a copy. Mine hangs on the refrigerator and I can still say it by heart. We learn slowly as children…and sometimes more slowly as adults.

Happy New Year Mom. Happy New Year One and All.

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A Year in Review

The family sat down together – which has been much more commonplace in 2020 – and decided to come up with a list of all those things that happened this year that were good, worth celebrating, and worth remembering. On the whole, the year has been spent indoors, detached from family and friends (at least in person) and devoid of vacations and visits from family and friends. We’ve uninvited our beloved Aunt B more than once and pray that Easter 2021 will be the winner. We had a few visits from close friends where we either stood on the lawn six feet apart or in chairs around the bonfire pit.

Still, we came up with this list as we reflect on the year that’s about to close.

Good health

Though we’ve seen close friends and their family members suffer from COVID and even have nieces and nephews fight the virus, our immediate family has been incredibly blessed. It helps that we wear masks, wash our hands, and stay away from large gatherings, but it has been a huge blessing that we have not contracted the disease. Fingers crossed this continues as we wait for the vaccine to make its way down the line.

New neighbors

Just before the pandemic hit, the folks next door moved in with their two young children. Quarantine started almost immediately, but it didn’t stop from us from watching their children enjoy a huge new yard, a new play set, a new puppy, all the while watching our children engage with them through the trees and across the yard. Now, when it snows, they bang on the back door and ask for the big kids to come out and play. Another unexpected blessing from 2020.

Treehouse

In the early winter of 2019, we started building a treehouse. The first real attempt led to six broken bones in my finger, so the project sat there for a bit. But this spring, as quarantine took hold, we did some virtual shopping from Lowes and, once the delivery arrived, we got to work. The children now have an 8×8 treehouse (really a house on stilts) to enjoy. They have screened the windows and I have run electricity to it so when warm weather comes back, I expect them to spend a lot more time outdoors.

Kitchen and mudroom

It only took about 11 weeks (and we still seven tiles and one door short), but the kitchen and mudroom are both amazing. The week before Christmas we enjoyed our first real meal in weeks and quickly fell in love with our gas stove (okay, propane) and our new double oven. The kitchen had not been upgraded, except for some minor paint and counters, since 1955, so it was due. The oldest child commented that she likes that it’s finally a kitchen where we can all gather and still have room to move around. We would approach the project differently next time, but no one is anxious for “next time,” so those ideas will have to wait.

Jobs we love

Maureen and I are blessed with jobs we love. Though friends and colleagues lost their jobs amidst the pandemic, we were busier than ever. Another unexpected blessing was to have to make a shift to interact with our constituencies in new and exciting ways. Working from home while the kids are learning remotely can present some challenges, but we are blessed with Internet that works (most of the time) and enough space for people to spread out.

New schools and new friends

Speaking of schools, three of the children began new schools, met new friends, and struggled through remote learning for the first semester. The school system has been amazing in their regular (sometime overwhelming) communication and we are blessed with good teachers, good administrators, and a school system that genuinely seeks the best for the students. More adjustments will be made in the second half of the school year and it will be some time before we see the real effects of the pandemic in terms of the social, emotional, and academic cost to our young people. We are grateful for jobs we can work remotely so we can be present to our children as they try to get their work done.

Zoom

I really wish I had bought shares of Zoom in January, but it’s on the list anyway – especially as it allows us to connect with friends and families, not to mention dramatically changed the way we work with each other.

Family Time

We have redefined family time. From binge-watching our new favorite shows (The Mentalist, Mandalorian, and Rizolli and Isles) to putting puzzles together and playing Phase 10 or Uno, this year has certainly increased the amount of time we spend together. The days before Christmas were spent cleaning the house, removing all the mess of remodeling, and putting the house back together. The children are old enough now to work mostly independently and it is a process for parents to give away responsibility to the children who will always be infants and toddlers in their mind’s eye.

We hope your 2020 was filled with as many blessings for you as it was for us. While the media will try to convince us that 2020 was horrid and cursed and filled with more negative than positive, we are people of hope, and hope never, ever disappoints.

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A House At Rest?

Today is the feast of St. John of the Cross, which always reminds me of putting our house at rest. To be fair, this place is more a house at dust, disarray, and disillusionment (will we ever be finished…).

The painter comes tomorrow, the backsplash is in, the appliances are slowly making their way from the garage to the kitchen. The bathroom walls are up, the finishing touches are slowly appearing, and soon, very soon, the house can be put back together and be at rest.

In the meantime, I am reminded of John of the Cross:

On a dark night
Kindled in love with yearnings –
Oh, happy chance!
I went forth unobserved,
My house being now at rest. 

Now I know John was speaking metaphorically about the perfection we seek for our souls, but it works for the physical house too, no matter how chaotic it becomes. Reflecting on John’s words led me to a poem by Jessica Powers, a Carmelite nun who wrote well into her eighties and was introduced to me by a bishop-friend. They are both gone now, yet her words continue to inspire.

How does one hush one’s house,
Each proud possessive wall, each sighing rafter,
The rooms made restless with remembered laughter
Or wounding echoes, the permissive doors,
The stairs that vacillate from up to down,
Windows that bring in color and event
From countryside or town,
Oppressive ceilings and complaining floors?

The house must first of all accept the night.
Let it erase the walls and their display,
Impoverish the rooms till they are filled
With humble silences; let clocks be stilled
And all the selfish urgencies of day.

Midnight is not the time to greet a guest,
Caution the doors against both foes and friends
And try to make the windows understand
Their unimportance when the daylight ends
Persuade the stairs to patience, and deny
The passages their aimless to and fro.
Virtue it is that puts a house at rest.
How well repaid that tenant is, how blest
Who, when the call is heard,
Is free to take his kindled heart and go.

As we look to the day when we will welcome the Christ child into our hearts and homes, we also look to the day when this nine-month advent will end, our families will be back together for celebrations, and when Zoom gives way to true communion.

In the meantime, may our houses be at rest – inside and out.

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Ka Ka Occurs

I thought the title for this entry was better than the traditional colloquialism.

For those of you keeping up with the ongoing renovation saga at the Donovan household (blame Covid), here’s an update.

After weeks of silence and wondering when the kitchen might see progress, waiting for the drywaller to finish touch ups, and coming up with great recipes for the grill and slow cooker, we received a call late Wednesday afternoon asking us to confirm installation of the cabinets on Friday.

Surprise!

They said they would arrive at 11 am, so I texted the drywall guy and he agreed to come at 7:30 am to get the final sanding, etc. finished. We would have to forgo painting until the kitchen is finished, which is not ideal, but at this point, it just needs to get finished.

Drywall man didn’t show until 9 am and fifteen minutes behind him, the cabinets guys pulled up. What a circus. These cabinets guys were amazing, but if you got in their way, they just sort of walked through you. With the kids quarantined in their room and every one in a mask, I vacated the kitchen and sought refuge in another part of the house, only to return every fifteen minutes when the guy in charge would yell, “Sir?” and I would come running to answer a question.

Just as I started to think, “It’s all coming together nicely,” the water starts coming out of the hallway ceiling. Then the light switch, then down the wall.

Then one of the children yells from the basement that we’ve got water coming out of the basement ceiling, then another spot in the basement, then down the wall….

Then another shout from another child in another room that the toilet is overflowing.

At this point, I seriously thought about just ducking out the front door, but I didn’t have a dang mask and really didn’t want to wrap boxers around my head just to get out of the house.

We called a plumber and the drywall guy shows up.

He wanted to start opening holes in the ceiling and I quietly wondered if this is some secret plan for job security – open a hole, then close it, then open another. But I digress.

We called a real plumber and he arrive within the hour. By this point, we had turned off all the water to the house and traced the issue to the toilet. Jimmy the plumber puts a snake down and hit something. So Jimmy the plumber put something else down that was attached to a drill and after 32 feet, hit found the issue.

Roots.

Oh, but wait there’s more. When Jimmy the plumber pulls the line out of the toilet, Jimmy’s not that careful and now we have a bathroom – with new tile – covered in that which shall not be named.

We shut the door, opened the window, and poured a drink.

The next day, Jimmy the plumber is back and he’s digging a hole in the ground near the septic tank. Yes, we are on septic. Fourteen grand in property taxes gets you snow removal, but no sewer. Two weeks ago, we spent $5200 to replace the 52 year old tank in the back of the house. By the way, that little project took six tries to get a hole that didn’t hit ledge and now we have a giant pile of mud for a back yard. But Jimmy’s in the front because there is another tank there.

He digs and puts a camera down. Nothing.

He digs some more and puts that snake thing down and finally gets a breakthrough. I honestly don’t know what the solution was and I am not sure I care. For twelve hundred dollars, it’s fixed and now we have a clean out vent in the yard to match the new one in the back. Future snaking can be done outside now.

We are blessed that it’s not our last $1200 and the kitchen cabinets look amazing, so it’s all about perspective.

My wife spent most of Sunday cleaning the bathroom so Christmas is looking pretty good for her. The kids were amazed at how calm their old man remained and I heard one of them say, “When do you think he’ll lose it?”

The drywall guy came later on Saturday and after an hour started to leave. I told him he wasn’t going anywhere until he was finished. He almost cried.

They say it’s easy to be overwhelmed by home renovation projects and I think the overwhelming part is coming soon for me because I just discovered we are out of Jameson.

Stay tuned.

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A (Baby) Grand Plan

Last year for Christmas, Santa gave child number three a keyboard. He had been taking keyboarding class and was getting pretty good. It was his “want” on our traditional list of “one thing you want, one this you need, one thing you wear, one thing you read” so Santa obliged and then Baby New Year gave him headphones on behalf of the rest of the family.

This year, his “want” was a piano and while no one was in a hurry to oblige (“Sleighs are not that big, kid”), the request started some conversations amidst the ongoing construction in the house. I even took him to a local piano shop to see if he could really play. Turns out the kid’s not half bad.

Then, several weeks ago, I received an email to my office address. The person identified herself as Lina and said she had taken a workshop with me last year for liturgical formation, but that I probably would not remember her. She was right. There were 110 sessions with more than 4,000 people and even with a unique name, I hadn’t a clue who she was. But her dad had died and she was looking for a home for a baby grand piano. She sent pictures, made a connection with the moving company, and left it up to us.

I checked out the moving company online, called to get an estimate, and asked that they send us an invoice. When the invoice for $780 came in, we paid it and made arrangements for the baby grand to arrive while Liam was at school.

Now I should pause here to say that Lina was the second person in a year to email about a piano. The first piano went to the diocesan youth choir for their practice sessions. Since I work for the church, it’s often the first place folks contact for pianos, religious objects, or statues from grandma’s yard. I do what I can to find new homes for that which folks leave behind.

But Lina wasn’t real. The whole thing was a scam. The moving company, complete with a flashy website, did not exist. When the piano did not arrive as scheduled, it occurred to me that perhaps we’d been had, so I started calling and emailing and texting and doing some online research. I even called other moving companies in the area (Johnson City, TN) to find out if they had ever heard of this company. “Nope,” came the response that sent my stomach lurching.

Angry, I called the bank. Here’s where the real warning comes in for all of you that use online banking. About a month before this happened, Chase sent me an alert to confirm my email address so that, within their app, I could use a feature called Zelle to instantly pay someone. Like most notifications in the mobile apps these days, I made a mental note to come back to the app at another time to do that.

But since Chase had mentioned Zelle, I recognized the feature when the movers asked me to use it to pay the $780 moving fee. I had logged into my Chase app, pressed Zelle, entered the mover’s information and sent the money. Within an hour, I got the receipt and the next day we got a confirmation email with the delivery date.

When the piano didn’t arrive and I went back to Chase. They initially sent me to their fraud division. I had already filed a complaint with the police and the Internet Crimes Division, so I thought I was on sound footing.

Chase responded by saying that I was a fool for using Zelle. They actually used the word, “foolish.” I hung up thinking, “I hope someone really is monitoring those calls for customer service because that was pretty bad.”

“But Zelle is in your app,” I told them. “I would not have known about it unless you had emailed me to verify my email.”

“We offer it, but we don’t protect you when you use it,” came the response.

It turns out that Zelle was created by a group of banks to compete with Venmo, another app that lets you pay people like babysitters, friends you share a pizza with, etc. If you download and open Zelle on its own, there is a giant warning that tells you not to pay someone you do not know. The banks, however, have disabled that warning. By their own admission, the folks at Chase told me that they feature it in their app to drive people to their app and, “as a courtesy to their clients.”

Now I am a pretty smart guy and at this point, I am feeling really stupid. Maureen said I was blinded by a desire to make my son’s life a little better, knowing that his struggle with diabetes has been a real pain for him. But all I could think of was that I should have realized that Lina was playing me and for days, I beat myself up for falling for the scam.

Chase Bank and it’s whole Zelle trap really ticked me off too. We are in the midst of moving our payroll deposits to another bank and closing our accounts. Banking intuitions that knowingly set up their customers to use services that are not protected from fraud should have gone the way of savings and loans by now. (By the way, I also contacted Zelle directly and they never even had the courtesy to respond).

Even writing about it makes my blood boil. I spoke with a priest friend about trying to pray for Lina, the movers, the bankers, and all the other players, but what I really wanted to do was sign them all up for Scientology emails so they are bombarded from now until L. Ron Hubbard returns.

A few weeks after all this happened, a friend told me of an estate auction about two towns away. I knew the person running it and asked if there was anything worth looking at. “Well, there’s a baby grand…” I laughed. She didn’t know the story so I asked some more questions, talked it over with the family, and placed a bid. By this point, I had confessed to the scam, if only to let them share in my anger.

We won the baby grand for $200. It is gorgeous, plays beautifully, and cost $450 to move. It arrived a week or so ago and when my son walked in the room, he was overwhelmed. All the kids play it and, though it has no headphones, we are getting used to the sound bouncing off the empty kitchen walls. It’s not what we needed in our house at this moment, but it is what we needed in our lives.

The irony that the fake piano cost me more than the real piano is not lost on me. I try not to look at Betty (yes, the piano has a name) and resent the lost money. It’s not her fault.

It’s Lina’s.

And the mover’s.

And the bank’s.

And, most of all, it’s mine.

So buyer beware this Christmas. Avoid Zelle unless the person is standing six feet away from you and you can tell who they are even with their mask on. Avoid Chase and banks that don’t have your best interest at heart. And avoid being too trusting until you verify that what you are getting is real.

In the meantime, have a blessed Thanksgiving.

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The Kitchen is Closed

We are in week three of no kitchen. The room that once housed the kitchen is down to studs. The electrician has done what he can. The plumber’s job is mostly finished.

So the room sits empty, waiting for someone to put the skin on the bones. This will be followed by that dusty period of taping and mudding and sanding and more. Then the floors go in.

While all of this happens, the rest of the house looks like a bomb went off, except that in my privileged life I have never really seen what that looks like, so I can only guess. We have gone through a whole tank of propane and all the pellets for the smoker are now gone. Tonight’s dinner sits in the crock pot on the table in the sunroom, teasing all of us with the smell of garlic and onions.

The children are wondering when the house will go back to normal and when the tape and plastic will come down and the dumpster will be out of the driveway. So do the parents.

Still, it has been an adventure. It has been a reminder of how blessed we are to be able to refinance, to stay employed, to afford the first-world luxuries of choosing cabinets and hardware and tile and backsplash – in a country where many cannot do any of those things. It has allowed us to get creative with meals, to eat things we don’t remember buying, and to eat outside around the campfire, or on the floor near the coffee table, or really anywhere you can find a seat.

Maureen and I are trying hard not to let this project become like the story, “If You Give A Mouse A Cookie…” where we find that when one room looks great, another one doesn’t so maybe we should do something there too. That temptation is real, let me tell you.

With the kids home three days a week and in school only two, it can be hard to find a quiet place to do our respective assignments. There is some yelling and some tears, but I stop after a while. (Insert smiley face).

If we were on social media more, you could follow along, but that seems like a poor excuse to join that melee. For now, we will focus on today’s readings from Ephesians: “Be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving one another as God has forgiven you in Christ. Be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us…”

Good advice in times of upheaval and change and dust and renovations.

I suppose it’s good advice for every day.

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Anniversaries

I have been thinking a great deal about anniversary lately. Maureen and I celebrated 16 years of marriage earlier this month. Saturday was the ninth anniversary of the death of my father and the second anniversary of the death of Uncle Bill.

A year ago today, we returned home from the Holy Land after ten days with young adults walking in the footsteps of our Lord, reading Scripture, studying the landscape and the people.

Two years ago today, the family was in Paris. It was the first day of a  three-week adventure and someone (me) had signed us up for an eight hour walking tour of the city. It looked like a great idea and the guide had rave reviews, but who knew that it would be 100 degrees in Paris that day and I would catch a stomach bug (try finding a bathroom in Paris, I dare you)? After 27,000 steps and the traumatizing of at least one child I dragged into the bathroom (who would refuse a child who needed to go?), we collapsed at the un-air conditioned apartment we had rented while the children plotted a coup against their father.

Twenty three years ago this week, my dad and I were in Rome and, having just met Pope John Paul II, we set off to the catacombs. I remember our bishop asking if the afternoon visit to the tombs would be anti-climatic, having just hung out with the Holy Father. “After this morning,” my dad replied, “the rest of my life will be anti-climatic.”

I have an app on my phone that shows “photos from this day in history.” Sometimes, it is really neat to see how the kids have grown and to remind us what was happening. Other times, I stare at the picture and wonder what happened to that younger, thinner man I used to be.

The summer doldrums have set in and the children have begun to realize we will not be going to the Jersey Shore this year. I did convince them to take a break from electronics today and paint or draw or, heaven forbid, do some summer reading or their respective math packets. It’s 100 degrees outside, so I suggested we repeat our death march through the town but, not surprisingly, no one raised a hand.

I pray your summer is restful. I pray you and yours are healthy. Mostly, I pray for a return to some semblance of normalcy and a vaccine to keep this virus at bay.

Stay well this week and let us continue to pray for one another.