Sarah Babbs is a married mother of a toddler girl, writing from Indiana where she moved for love after growing up on the east coast. Sarah and her husband, a lawyer, lead marriage prep classes for their parish in addition to daydreaming about becoming lunatic farmers. During stolen moments when the toddler sleeps and the laundry multiplies itself, Sarah writes about motherhood, Catholic social thought, and ponders the meaning of being a woman "made in the image of God". Her website is Fumbling Toward Grace.
“The English language lacks the words ‘to mourn an absence.’ For the loss of a parent, grandparent, spouse, child or friend we have all manner of words and phrases, some helpful, some not. Still, we are conditioned to say something, even if it is only ‘I am sorry for your loss.’ But for an absence, [...]
Alleluia! He is risen! In attempting to put together some spiritual insight after one of the hardest lents I have experienced in quite a while, I realized that I’ll have to get back to you. Still procesing what God was trying to accomplish in me. With that said, I wanted to share one of my [...]
Imagine my surprise when a friend who works with the parish youth group asked me to give a chastity talk to the middle and high school aged girls. “Who, me?” I said, raising an eyebrow suspiciously. I thought, Why not someone who has actually lived chastely her whole life? Me? I did it all wrong. [...]
My Sisters The Saints: A Powerful Journey I found My Sisters The Saints, Colleen Carroll Campbell’s new book, in my stocking on the morning of St. Nicholas Day, opened it, and could not put it down. Where Campbell’s first book, The New Faithful, was based on interviews and chronicled the tendency toward orthodoxy among the [...]
We are soaked in blood. I am soaked in blood. There is so much blood everywhere we look, that we’ve stopped recognizing it. I’ve stopped recognizing it. I have not noticed its slow drip, drip, drip into my soul, choking out the love of God and neighbor that should be growing. Sowing instead seeds of [...]
I had the interesting experience of going to both confession and the dentist back to back this week. On Thursday I had my semi-annual tooth cleaning, and on Friday I went to confession before the vigil Mass for the feast of the Immaculate Conception. There’s nothing quite like being scrubbed and scraped clean, both physically [...]
November is, for me, a month associated with death and dying. On November 1, we celebrate the feast of the all the Saints. In addition to celebration, I remember the due date of the baby we lost. He would have turned three on November 1, 2012. How fitting that the 2nd is a day of [...]
“There’s nothing harder than learning how to receive.” -Over the Rhine When we started out as newly marrieds, learning NFP, we didn’t know anyone else who was married with children. Nearly all of my friends were single, and none of Atticus’ married friends lived nearby. We were basically on our own. It was both good [...]
Saturday was the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows. The celebration of Mary standing at the foot of the cross. The suffering mother of the suffering Servant. It also happened to be the date of the South Bend-Fort Wayne Diocese women’s conference that I attended with some friends, where Scott and Kimberly Hahn were the [...]
Human beings are essentially social in nature. The second theme of Catholic social teaching is the importance of social relationships and participation in society for human flourishing. Because of the importance of the family, community, and participation, I will break this principle into two posts: the family first, and community and participation second. The Family [...]
Any treatment of Catholic social teaching has to begin and end with the dignity of the human person. The first principle and foundation of all social justice and Catholic social teaching is a recognition of the inherent dignity due to human beings by virtue of their being made in the image and likeness of God. [...]
“We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words – to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves.” – CS Lewis We were sitting in his parents’ basement. [...]
“The greatest challenge of the day is how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us.” “I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least.” “Don’t worry about being effective. Just concentrate on being faithful to the [...]
I hadn’t thought much about Catholic education as a young adult. I attended a public school for K-12 and then chose my small, liberal arts college (which happened to be Catholic) not because it was Catholic, but because they gave me an excellent academic scholarship. Then I fell head over heels in love with God [...]
**WARNING: This post contains photos of war, which should be disturbing for many.** “In Flander’s Field the poppies grow….” is a poem I immediately assosciate with hot, summer sunshine, sweat pooling on my back, when as a child, year after year, we attended the Memorial Day service in my small town. Some years I marched [...]
When Stacy announced this symposium on Mercy and Killing, two words sprang immediately to mind: Capital Punishment. Perhaps it’s the years I spent as an anti-death penalty activist, or time talking with families of victims and condemned alike, but these two words, Mercy and Killing, are to my mind, inexorably linked to capital punishment. I [...]
She leaned back into the soapy water, and we heard “whack!” as her head hit the side of the tub. Screaming ensued. Daddy swooped in, towel in hand, to scoop her up and carry her to her room. Her face, beet red, was still contorted with the ‘cry face’. Crying due to equal parts head [...]
Sex and money. In our abysmal Pre-cana class before getting married, we were told that sex and money are the top two things that newly-weds fight about. They then proceeded to skip over all the virtues and talk about the “love languages” and how those would help us avoid all the sex and money fighting [...]
I had been overweight for as long as I can remember. The pictures tell the story. By fourth grade I had chipmunk cheeks and extra padding. By sixth grade I was plain old fat. In fact, when I started middle school, I weighed more then I do now, as a 28 year old woman. There’s [...]
On my personal blog, Fumbling Toward Grace, I’ve taken an Advent blogging break in order to focus more on adequate spiritual preparation for Christmas, and to devote more time to the physical tasks I have to accomplish to make sure everyone has a peaceful, relaxing holiday. To keep with the spirit of the blogging break [...]
“O let all who thirst, Let them come to the water And let all who have nothing, Let them come to the Lord.” Today’s post is part two in a six part series on the works of mercy. I could talk about spiritual thirst, which is something we all have in common. We all thirst [...]
“Then the King will say to those on His right, ‘Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat…” -Matthew 25:34 In my post last week, “Lord, When?”, I challenged myself and all [...]
I sat down to read the newspaper, baby napping, hot coffee in hand. The headline – 1 in 15 Americans Now Part of Poorest Poor – caught my attention and my heart. At least 20 million Americans, or nearly 7 percent of the population, are “poorest poor”. As if “poor” isn’t a hard enough pill [...]
Still I notice You when change begins, and I’m braced for colder winds I’ll offer thanks for what has been & what’s to come, You are autumn. – Nichole Nordeman It was early. Too early. Driving north with the sun rising slowly over the harvested fields. Fields that stood tall in the hot, July sun [...]
Q. How do you pronounce “ignitum”? A. Well, you have some options. The Romans would have said ig-NEE-toom. In church, we’d say “in-YEE-toom.”
Why?
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