Let's talk about your need for holy leisure, interior freedom, poetic education, creative expression and cultural engagement. Authentic, joyful, humorous...many talks to choose from...custom crafted presentations...workshops, retreats, group facilitation...let me help you!
A mom is the caretaker of a huge, wonderful, potentially beautiful, critically important place! She, herself, this actual, unique person, is the single most important ‘environment’ in the lives of her children. Like Mary, like the Church, she is an atmosphere.
She is an atmosphere of affection. This is not just warm, fuzzy feelings, but her capacity to be affected, to be moved. Home is Mom’s joy infused into persons, like grace.
She is an acoustic atmosphere. Think of all the sounds she makes besides yelling, “Off with their heads!” now and then! Home is Mom’s voice lifting persons toward God.
She is an aesthetic atmosphere. All the order and beauty, color, line, pattern, radiance, and integrity of the environment she is, and the environment she creates, is the child’s first taste of love-in-formed. Home is Mom wrapped around persons like love.
With thanks for the poem, The Blessed Virgin Compared to the Air We Breathe, by Gerard Manley Hopkins, I designed this talk for the 2014 Kansas Catholic Homeschooling Conference, and will gladly present it again for you!
Here’s a collection of my talks that feature poetry, poems, or poetic formation.
In a discussion of my poem by this title, we look at the pain a woman may feel upon being loved by Christ. It is sometimes a very difficult thing to be loved, and to receive love. Many women have related to my example of a woman who fights that love as though her life […]
I had so much fun presenting “B is for Brick” at the Kansas Catholic Homeschool Conference! This was a brand spankin’ new talk, created just for this event. It’s about the ways our conversation with kids can help build the ‘interior arch’ that supports them against burdens both internal and external. Related
St. Teresa of Avila had such great advice for us on how to pray. Her ‘method’ is simple, but profoundly helpful. I’ve noticed that the simple, interior hospitality toward God is the most helpful disposition to cultivate in order to avoid intellectual confusion and ideology that interferes with that sweet communion of the heart. I […]
For the National League of American Pen Women, I got to tell the surprising story of my book, Souls at Rest – the inside scoop for fellow writers and artists. People understandably think I’m a bit crazy for self-publishing the first edition of SAR instead of going the more conventional Real Publisher route. (It is […]
Weaving Supernatural Joy into Natural Life I created this talk for Benedictine College’s Symposium on the New Evangelization. It’s about the role art can play in helping us realize our ideals of virtue and holiness. I linked G.K. Chesterton, his character Innocent Smith (from Manalive) and St. Francis of Assisi to show how Chesterton wove […]
I enjoyed creating this talk to fit into a women’s retreat about Christ’s offer of “living water”. They gave me a free hand to choose my topic and approach, and I chose the promise, in Psalm 1, that we “shall be like trees, planted by streams of living water.” Their focus was on the woman […]
They Loved It! Related
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FREE Parent Education Opportunity for Homeschoolers!! I’m getting ready for the 2017 Conference: Homeschooling to Rock the World and The Intellectual Life. This offer I made for you last year still stands! I am available to give FREE Parent Education presentations for small groups. Get the pdf here. Related
For Groundhog Day, I imagine Catholic bloggers everywhere are weighing in about the movie by that name. It’s so Catholic! How can we resist? I love this movie, Related
For Groundhog Day, I imagine Catholic bloggers everywhere are weighing in about the movie by that name. It’s so Catholic! How can we resist? I love this movie, Related
Link to the whole talk on YouTube, here. Related
Click here for the whole series I call the Bishop Q&A. …it is difficult for poets to remain acceptable or contented party men; they ask too many questions. Dorothy Sayers, in the Introduction to her translation of Dante’s Purgatorio Related
Purgatory – you’re in Heaven’s ante-chamber and there’s work to be done. But you can’t do it. The days of your power to act in your own behalf, to cultivate the self, are over. You’re here to be acted upon, to be purified, to be loved. As C.S. Lewis has pointed out, the “weight of […]
