Archives – Page 4 – Perpetual Adoration

May 22, 2021

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The Death of a Champion

The champion of our family neighborhood died last week. I’ve written before about how I grew up in a family neighborhood that included seven families. My grandparents, Tom and Effie Williams, lived next door to my parents. All the other families in the neighborhood were made up of my aunts, uncles, and cousins. While all the women in the neighborhood were generous, loving, hardworking Catholic women who did a magnificent job of managing their households and raising their children, there was one woman who stood out among all of them. To me, she was the champion of the neighborhood.

May 15, 2021

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The Plan is Almost Complete

I graduated from high school in May 1975 and left home for college three months later. A week before I left for college, my dad said to me,

May 9, 2021

Rising Against the Wind

Do you know when the best time is for a hearing aid company to sell hearing aids to an elderly man? Take a guess.

May 1, 2021

Revenge, Fear, Age, and Desire

I’m going to turn 64 years old this month. I hate to admit it, but I’m a paying member of a health club and I struggle to get there once a week to exercise for 30 minutes. Why don’t I get there more often? Because the burning desire to be strong and fit left me years ago.

April 25, 2021

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Do You Suffer Fools Gladly?

When I was growing up, one saying that I would periodically hear was, “He does not suffer fools gladly.” I thought of that phrase last week when I realized that we are wrapping up the month of April, which means that a third of this year is gone. The reason I thought of the phrase was because the month of April is associated with fools because of April Fools’ Day.

April 17, 2021

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I Hate This Word

I hate it when a new word is invented out of thin air and people start using it as though it’s always been a part of their vocabulary. There’s a new word (to me) that I’ve seen in print and heard on numerous broadcasts over the past six months. I’m not sure when the word came into existence. I’ve looked up the definition of the word on three separate occasions, and I still can’t explain in simple terms what it means.

April 10, 2021

True Friendship and Mercy

When my three oldest daughters — Anna, Maria, and Laura — were teenagers, they got involved in community theater. In one of the first plays they participated in, they became good friends with one of the girls in the play. For the purpose of this article, I’m going to call their friend “Julia.”

April 3, 2021

A Plantation Hymn for Catholics

Did you know that there’s an old plantation hymn that Catholics traditionally sing in church on Good Friday? The hymn was composed in the 19th century by African American slaves and was first published in 1899 by William Eleazar Barton in his hymnal, Old Plantation Hymns. Here’s the first verse of the hymn:

March 27, 2021

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The Skilled Assassins Who Murdered Jesus

During the mid-1980s, there was a weekly television series called The Equalizer. The show aired on CBS for five seasons, and was about a former CIA spy who had a mysterious past and used his knowledge and skills to obtain justice for innocent people who had no one else to turn to.