I have found the need this Lent to change things up a bit. I approached Ash Wednesday and the coming weeks with a sense of dread. I usually go off coffee and various other things. This year I just found myself wondering what I was doing and why. I have been particularly busy recently and have…

Children’s Corner   Despite billions of dollars and euro being spent on space travel, building your own rocket doesn’t have to cost a cent. With some household material and a bit of DIY you can spend some quality time with your own team of family scientists building one. All you will need is: – A…

“You’ve got your hands full.”  That phrase is apparently the new “hello”. At least, that is what random strangers typically say to me on the street by way of greeting. I suppose it’s not an altogether inaccurate statement of the obvious. Particularly as I rush down the road – late for school again – with…

I love the idea that our senses are the doorway to the soul. So, it is through our touching and tasting, our listening and seeing, even our smelling and our sense of our own body that we encounter God. The bottom line is, we are people of the Incarnation and it is through being incarnate –…

One of the great contradictions of parenthood is that you, at once, want your children to acquire knowledge, and you want to protect them from knowledge. After all, protecting children’s innocence means deliberately keeping certain types of knowledge from them. Ever since the Garden of Eden, we have equated increased knowledge with paradise lost. We…

A Parent’s Perspective   I was at a very interesting talk recently in St Saviour’s Dominican Priory in Dublin. It was one of a series of lectures and was conducted by Fr Thomas Joseph White, OP, Director of the Thomistic Institute at the Angelicum in Rome. In recent months a lot of my social life seems…

My daughter’s friend describes himself as not having faith. Then a couple of weeks ago my daughter came to me saying, “When we were in that graveyard, he blessed himself at every grave he stopped at.” She asked him why. It would seem that he is not so much an unbeliever as one who believes…

Children’s Corner   Get your children off the couch and away from the TV so they can focus on something much more fun and creative. Making toilet-paper-roll owls is easy and is a great way to make use of something you would otherwise have thrown out. These colourful creations can be kept to decorate anywhere…

News of the death of Fr Daniel O’Leary [pictured] has saddened me. Like many people around the world I am blessed to be able to say that Daniel was my friend. As a woman working within the Church, writing and speaking, involved in theology and spirituality I have often found the Church a difficult place…

My wife and I are like ships in the night –weary ships, that need a long spell in dry dock for repairs. We are incessantly commanded on strange, but urgent, midnight missions by capricious miniature admirals: babies, small children and viruses. From the deepest dream, each night I might awaken to find the bedroom door…