11 Years ago today I started posting my reflections on a blog site that is now non-existent. A few years later, I moved over to WordPress, and have been at this address of alivingmonstrance.wordpress.com ever since. To new and longer-term subscribers alike, thanks for reading and following! I can’t believe it’s been 11 years. If…
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On the property where I’ve been staying the last few days here in Lima, there are two fig trees. Fig tree are often included in places like the Bible as symbols of peace and prosperity. After eating some of these sweet green figs, you’ll know why. Like me, you probably would want to then learn…
You are going to thank me after this one. You know why? Because I am going to save you from the most boring Bible passage that you will ever hear at Mass or a church service or a bible study. Yes, the genealogies. You know, the long, so-and-so was the father of so-and-so part of…
Recently, I went to a parish in Peru for the first time. I was being introduced to the parish at each of the Masses, so I was invited to share some words with the people at the end of the Mass. Being my first time in a parish in Peru, I decided to tell a…
The village Chontal in Ecuador is bordered on one whole side by a river, the Guayllabamba River. This starts from near Quito, the capital city, and it travels all the way out into the country, going past Chontal and even further out. The water carries some of the sewage and rain drainage from the Quito…
I was talking to a friend recently about some great news: he was getting married. His relationship was fairly new, but he was confident. Several years ago he had come out of addiction, and was wandering around, in between things. But he was constantly active, constantly growing, even spending time in mission in a foreign…
Some years ago I took an elective class in the seminary about anthropology. It was with a new professor who was engaging and interesting and easy to get along with. The material was very interesting, and I paid close attention in all the classes. I had a lot of ideas from the classes, they got…
Let’s say that I am in among a group of people in Ecuador and I can speak to all of them. If I ask the question, “Who wants to learn English?”, a good 80% of people would raise their hand. But then I would recognize something. They are not hearing learn English, but know English.…
I have an app on my phone called Sky Map. It connects with the GPS and accelerometer of the phone to show you what the sky looks like from every angle imaginable. You can see stars and planets, the sun and the moon, as well as all the constellations labeled, with everything mapped out. It’s…
Keeping kids engaged requires playing. So, when the kids in the religious ed classes gathered, we would play certain games. One of the games that came to me was to take some of the plastic sheep used in the nativity scene and hide them around the property. The kids then went off to find the…
Christmas is a time for eating. Here in Ecuador, kids get bags of candies and cookies. This year, they got for of them in the school. That means they eat candy all day until they’re sick, and that they can get up for three more days in a row and repeat the process. The Christmas…
I worked on ferry boats for a while this past summer, and in the beginning stages, you have to learn 3 basic knots. The only way I can learn something like that is by repeating it over and over again. So, I spent a chunk of the downtime on the boat practicing those basic knots.…
