VIEW FROM THE PEW A funny thing happened on the way to confession. I considered that lead for this column after a Lent event last week. Long story short, a friend and I went to the parish’s evening reconciliation service just in time to see the lights being turned off. It had actually started an […]
Mary Adamski: Happy birthday to you!
VIEW FROM THE PEW It put smiles on the faces of a lot of us uninvolved observers when a horn-honking horde in decorated cars did a drive-by birthday celebration at a neighborhood home. It raises the spirits, even for strangers, to witness happiness in a surprised honoree, exuberant spirits (as long as fireworks are not […]
Mary Adamski: Our unchanging, changing church
VIEW FROM THE PEW We’ve just accepted so many changes in the way we live since March 2020 that you wonder if we’ll ever get back to comfortable, convivial, to communal, not to mention safe and civil. Much as I don’t agree with the rebels who toss the masks and mash together in crowds, I […]
Mary Adamski: Magic bullets for healing
VIEW FROM THE PEW I’ve given a lot of thought to healing lately. Of course, a lot of my pondering is stimulated by headlines about our world today, people working themselves into a frenzy of dissension, disrespect and belligerence and our planet damaged and threatened by pollution and rising temperatures, bad bugs and viruses destroying […]
Mary Adamski: Planets, seasons and saints
VIEW FROM THE PEW Much ado about something that pretty much passes us by out here in the tropics. That was my observation as various TV weatherpersons last week talked about the “last day of summer.” Despite assuming the scientific title of meteorologist, most of those cheery chroniclers of climate conditions did not display a […]
Mary Adamski: And forever in peace may you wave
VIEW FROM THE PEW When or why did flag-waving become so belligerent and bellicose? We are about to join a global TV-watching marathon as the Olympic Games get underway. News media are already primed to expect how the traditional display of winners’ patriotic pride may be used as a platform for athletes to vent about […]
Mary Adamski: Infrastructure ponderings
VIEW FROM THE PEW Infrastructure. Bah humbug. The word has become an expletive in my life, a yardstick to measure how I’ve failed to tackle basic maintenance, a possible scary signal that I’m losing it. I mutter it when I navigate through a room that has become the graveyard of abandoned projects, because whose fault […]
Mary Adamski: Living the legacy of Babel
VIEW FROM THE PEW If you haven’t heard the expression “a Hail Mary” used completely outside the context of our religion, you must not hear or read sports commentators who love that reference to a prayer as shorthand for a last-ditch athletic performance that’s nothing short of a miracle. Another expression that has morphed away […]
Mary Adamski: Chaplaincy in the time of COVID
VIEW FROM THE PEW Here we are in March marking the one-year anniversary of anxiety as our daily state of mind. A year ago, people were just beginning to realize that the deadly, highly infectious disease in a distant country was indeed going to be our problem, too. We’ve faced daily breaking news from the […]
Mary Adamski: Feeling angry and disappointed
VIEW FROM THE PEW There were yardmen in the neighborhood and it always makes me think they are still boys at heart, loving to make noise. And how they do love those leaf blowers, roaring on and on while they herd leaves and cuttings to the green bin. I’ll bet these guys never think of […]