ChristKindelesmarkt, Nuremberg, Germany, Circa 1973: awed by a display of beautifully crafted Christmas decorations, my eyes settle on five girl angels, each wearing a white dress with gold polka dots. One is playing the piano; one the flute; one a trombone; one is singing, and another is missing an arm at the moment, and I…
I bought this angel at a church Christmas Bazaar ten years ago when I knew that black lives mattered and that Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and the shepherds were in fact Middle Eastern, not white-skinned Europeans, and yet except for Balthazar, the black king of Ethiopia aka the three wise men, all of the figures in…
I’ve been a regular blogger for PSYCHOLOGY TODAY since 2009, assigned to writing blogs related to Overcoming Child Abuse. But I haven’t written one since June 28, 2019, when I wrote about the inhumane treatment of children at our nation’s border and what we could do about it. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/overcoming-child-abuse/201906/inhumane-treatment-children-our-nations-border?eml After that what more could be…
When I was a child and teenager I had a recurrent nightmare that terrified, I was on a wild merry-go-round with my older brother. He was rather detached and complacent, looking back and forth between me and our father as if to say “what’s the matter with her ?” But I was crying and screaming, begging my…
Dear Barbra, Like you, I was born and raised in Brooklyn. But today I’m thinking about our connections to London – yours, in preparation for the Hyde Park concert this summer; mine, in 2015, when I worked on the judges panel of the UK Child Sexual Abuse People’s Tribunal, where I heard the anguishing stories…
This morning our Bishop was welcomed by the Episcopal Church I attend with a special liturgy which included beautiful music prepared by our Organist and Choirmaster. Our choir sang, the bell choir played, a musician played the cello. It was all quite lovely, and we were in the parish hall today, which has large windows…
Last Sunday, during a pleasant period of an otherwise rough flight home from New Jersey, these happy thoughts and images popped into my awareness so I decided to write them down. My intention was to create an antidote to the anxiety and nausea I’d felt during the turbulence, but as it turned out, it not…
Do you ever wish that you could believe in the Jesus of your childhood imagination, and that what you believed about Him then was and still is the literal truth about who He is and what He does? When I was a kid, a panorama like this one would evoke excitement and fear that at…
I woke up well before dawn today for no particular reason that I could think of. Yes, it is Fathers Day, and because of my personal history of abuse by my father it’s never a particularly easy holiday for me. But I do celebrate my husband, along with the many men I’ve known in my…
Catherine McCall - Telling 