When Mary Margaret Gefre’s boyfriend drove her to the train station in their small North Dakota town, the 19-year-old farm girl didn’t tell him where she was headed on that brisk December day, clutching a small bag containing a rosary, her childhood prayer book, a few dresses and a pair of shoes. She was bound […]
Manaolana | Christina Capecchi: Come in from the cold: finding mercy in the city
It’s 15 below with a wind chill of minus 39 when I arrive at the cathedral tonight. The holy water is partly frozen. Perched atop Summit Hill in St. Paul, Minn., the Cathedral of St. Paul is the mother church of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, a Vatican-appointed National Shrine of the apostle […]
Manaolana | Christina Capecchi: Cold hands, young heart: the wonder of winter
Just when you think you’ve seen everything — every lion hugging human, every shark-eluding seal — the World Wide Web churns out a picture that makes you stare. We process a barrage of images so glibly that it takes something special to keep us from skipping and scrolling right by. And yet here it was: […]
Manaolana | Christina Capecchi: Waiting for a baby: on Advent and adoption
For years folks told Mike and Maria Slavik that their blue colonial-style house looked like a Christmas card. Maria would be out mowing the lawn in the middle of July and someone would stop to say he loved the way it was decorated for the holidays. So they decided to make it into a card, […]
Manaolana | Christina Capecchi: Door-to-door seminarian finding new roads
Going door to door to tell strangers about Catholicism and his plan to become a priest had to be the most daunting assignment Neil Bakker had ever received. The 34-year-old from Austin, Minn., had never done anything like it — never gone door to door to sell coupon books or magazine subscriptions, let alone the […]
Manaolana | Christina Capecchi: Something old, something new: the allure of the vintage
When we were married, my husband and I moved into a house that had never been lived in before. No nicks in the woodwork, no carpet stains, no glow-in-the-dark constellations stuck to the ceiling. A blank slate for a new marriage. We marveled over its pristine condition, breathing in that new-house smell and sprawling across […]
Manaolana | Christina Capecchi: The art of saying no
Somewhere along the line, as college-admission rates plunged and smartphones proliferated, “busy” became code for “important.” We got the sense that doing more means doing better. We fed into the flattery, the idea that a busy person is in demand — qualified, experienced, needed, loved. The person with the fullest calendar wins. Even our social […]
Manaolana | Christina Capecchi: ‘The vocation of love’: lessons from Mom’s retirement
Moving into a senior home can be the ultimate indignity. With the hefty monthly bill comes a hundred little losses — of the car keys, of the backyard, of all the familiar nooks and crannies: ticks on the pantry wall tracking the kids’ upward ascent; the Christmas-tree corner; the candy drawer; the cat’s favorite window […]
Manaolana | Christina Capecchi: The duty of delight: finding joy in obligation
Father Dave Korth’s dad had been declining for five years. That was the slow, haunting grip of dementia. The stories Leonard loved to tell had started to unravel. Something was missing from the hardy Nebraska farmer, so his wife and seven children began to wrap him in a patchwork of goodbyes. His early-morning death one […]
Manaolana | Christina Capecchi: Love, marriage and pizza delivery
It should come as no surprise that the story of how the Domino’s Pizza founder met his wife involves pizza. But indulge me in the details. It was a Monday night in early February, 1962, and the phones weren’t ringing at Tom Monaghan’s pizza store in Mount Pleasant, Mich., so the restless 24-year-old decided to […]