If I'm honest, I hate it when I share something emotional with someone, and their immediate response is, “I know how you feel.” I get what they’re trying to say, but it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. If you’re reading this: I don’t know how you feel. I don’t have any clue about the vast majority of people who will read this. You might love your life. You might be a day away from ending your life. I can only know what I have been through and what I feel. If you’re strug

I remember sitting there on the dirty concrete floor of my dad’s workshop. The cold and damp cement had caused those moldy old porno magazines my dad kept there to have a dusty feeling and a stale smell of mildew. I had stumbled upon that sinful stash; a tangible mark of my dad’s struggle that would, in time, become my own. I think I was probably about 4 or 5 years old and I knew shame in that moment. From that early exposure to a reality of sin far beyond my tender age, I kn

The Adirondack Mountains are most beautiful in fall. I once heard the season explained as “God showing off." The tension and dynamism of the natural world during this time of year forces me to face my humanity, and there is a tendency to lose myself in the color and the spirit of this swansong to the green and life. In fall, I feel deeply my inner self and the inescapable reality that everything that lives must die in order to come back to new life. I was raised in these moun

The explanations in the post-Boston Globe early 2000s came fast and furious. We were quick to quote statistics based on pre- and post-pubescent minors. The problem was clear, wasn’t it? “It’s a homosexuality problem.” As a self-righteously devout teenager, I was quick to say it too, and with gusto. After all, didn’t we need an explanation for a world that would call our entire Church corrupt? As Caiaphas said, “it is better for you that one man should die instead of the peopl

“Brothers and sisters: We hold this treasure in earthen vessels...” It's the feast of St. James and today’s first reading is getting real. We may be children of God, but our lives are fragile things. It’s been a surreal couple of months for us at Eden Invitation, sharing some of the most vulnerable pieces of our lives and hearing hidden things from strangers we didn’t know before. That said, there’s a tension we live in, you and I. For most of us, even our parents’ generation