Laurie Schmitt

The story of the wedding feast at Cana is one I’ve heard a thousand times. I prayed my way through it recently, Lectio Divina style, expecting a real good, feel good, prayer time. I wasn’t looking for anything fresh, nor expecting new insight. The story in sum: six large stone jars held dirty wash water, and, in response to Mary’s…

In my years BC, before children, I shopped at a local flea market and found a one of a kind find – a sturdy, slightly roughhoused, man’s immigration trunk. The Douglas fir grain, aching with age, is textured with tiny rivulets and boasts a host of small scuffs and steely spike impressions. Rustic iron grab handles, forged and…

 I just came back from pilgrimage with Joseph Pearce. Well, that’s what it feels like to have read his slim but bounteous book, Merrie England. Together we walked and he talked about all the sights and sounds surrounding. He brought to life the poets and prose–ers, the players and posers in England’s rhetorical, historical landscape. Reading this book, provided…

Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s painting ,“The Peasant Wedding” (1567), depicts a rambunctious, old world, small town celebration. Uproarious laughter and boisterous shouting, the banging of empty ale mugs on heavy wooden tables, the giggle of children munching on treats, spill out from the painting. It’s a snapshot of a typical village scene from medieval times and one of…

Another Monday after a busy weekend. My social, emotional and intellectual skills have all fizzled out. Not a good time, probably, to take a look at major life goals and try to fit them into the skinny slivers of time sporadically available to me in my ordinary and sometimes hectic life. Most middle-aged women these days have just…