In the spring of 2023, the Jesuit Media Lab advertised an eight-week online class for writers of spiritual nonfiction. (Did you even know that was a genre? I didn’t . . . and it’s my genre!) The class would be held in June and July, right smack up against my personally imposed August 1st manuscript deadline. How could I resist?
The teacher was Jonathan Malesic, an award-winning author with a PhD in religious studies; he was the perfect person to lead this (arguably niche) class. Jon is a prolific essayist, writing about the ethical and spiritual challenge of living a good life in America today. He is the author of The End of Burnout: Why Work Drains Us and How to Build Better Lives. In addition to his workshops, he teaches first-year writing at Southern Methodist University.
Jonathan Malesic Photo by Sarah Wall
Each week, he gave us solid content, interesting readings, and short but challenging writing assignments. He critiqued our work but also structured the class so we could shape and encourage one another’s writing. The first chapter of my new book is much tighter and more colorful than it might have been, thanks the workshopping it received there.
At one point, Jon gave me the nicest compliment—and I’ll bet he doesn’t even remember it. We were talking about influences, and I mentioned that I’ve learned to be careful about what I’m reading when writing intensively, because I tend to absorb the tone of whatever I’m taking in. Jon responded, “Well then, you must be reading a lot of poetry.” (Aww. I was reading a lot of Ann Patchett, but I do love rising to the challenge of a word limit!)
One of the unexpected benefits of the spiritual nonfiction class is that it connected me to other writers with similar passions—connections that have continued out in the real world. (You’ll meet one of those people next week.) Several classmates participated in this year’s Ignatian Creators Summit—including Jon himself. What a joy to meet in person!
One of the unexpected benefits of the spiritual nonfiction class is that it connected me to other writers with similar passions—connections that have continued out in the real world.
After learning so much in his class, I was moved by Jon’s endorsement of Finding God Along the Way: Christine Eberle is not only an experienced, funny, and wise spiritual guide. She’s also a great storyteller. In the vivid episodes of this book, she takes readers through stunning Spanish landscapes, hostels, communal meals, and masses and invites us to reflect on our own pilgrimages, including the ones we undertake in our ordinary lives. The rhythm of this book — action, reflection, action, reflection — is the heart of pilgrimage and of Ignatian spirituality itself. Eberle may be sometimes slow of step along the journey she narrates here, but her quick mind and generous heart make her an ideal companion on the Ignatian Camino and the spiritual life it represents.
For the gift of lifelong learning, I am truly grateful.
This morning, I received a WhatsApp message from one of my pilgrim friends, who has returned to Spain with her husband and is spending a few days in Zaragoza. On Bette’s vacation, the city is a beautiful place to explore for a few days between San Sebastian and Barcelona. On my pilgrimage, it was the blessed oasis where Porter and I ground to a halt, nursing our blistered feet and his sudden fever.
A peek at the calendar revealed that I was in Zaragoza exactly two years ago this weekend. What more excuse do I need to share an excerpt of Finding God Along the Way with you? This is from Chapter 25, “Pausing.” It picks up in Tudela, after Fr. José doctored Porter’s and my disastrous feet, shook his head, and gave us directions to the train station.
Sunrise over the Basilica of Nuestra Señora del Pilar in Zaragoza
There’s an old tale in which Himalayan sherpas (or, in another version, African tribesmen) are hired by a group of American trekkers to transport their supplies. After a few days of walking fast and far, the locals sit down and refuse to move for several hours—waiting, it’s explained, for their souls to catch up with their bodies. Although I didn’t have the liberty of such on-the-spot refusal along the Camino, I did come to appreciate the power of the pause.
My longest was the three days I spent in the city of Zaragoza. On a Monday morning, Porter and I caught the train from Tudela, ensconced ourselves in a café so I could write for a while, then walked slowly to the Hotel Sauce. Doing our best to approach this wide-open day with wide-open spirits, we lingered wherever we saw something interesting. We stopped in a hardware store for a carabiner to secure the straps of Porter’s old suitcase and visited a department store—El Corte Inglés—to invest in new hiking socks. That brief stroll recalled us to ourselves, reminding us how much we enjoy exploring a new city. It also helped us see beyond our transitory struggles, anchoring us in the surpassing goodness of our life together.
Despite our having a free day on Tuesday, by Wednesday morning my feet were still awful, and Porter was feverish—felled by the slow-moving stomach virus that had been making its way through the group. We would have to linger in Zaragoza for one more day. Our hotel room had a bathtub with a broad ledge at one end, allowing me to indulge in two refreshing pastimes while Porter slept: soaking my feet and perusing the New Yorker magazine I’d optimistically chucked in my suitcase.
Late [the next] afternoon, I made a long, solo visit to the Basilica of Nuestra Señora del Pilar—Our Lady of the Pillar—whose origins were the stuff of legend. When St. James began evangelizing the Iberian peninsula in the first century, the story goes (preaching the Gospel “to the ends of the earth”), he almost despaired of bringing the Christian faith to that pagan land. One day, while he was deep in prayer along the banks of the Ebro River, the Blessed Mother appeared to him atop a rosy pillar, encouraging him not to forsake his mission.
Despite COVID restrictions, visitors still can touch a bit of the titular pillar.
Today, the cavernous interior of the Basilica houses an intimate chapel where a tiny Mary statue sits atop a pillar of pink jasper. Even though the Basilica felt cold and empty, the chapel was warm with the devotion of many visitors; I was lucky to witness a weekly ceremony where children receive a special blessing and get their picture taken with the statue. Pausing in prayer, I felt something shift in me; heading back to the hotel, I realized that I was walking much more easily. Like the apostle James in that same place almost two millennia ago, I felt a renewed hopefulness and a readiness to rejoin my friends on the road the next morning.
Though the three-day break in Zaragoza was a great blessing, pauses did not need to be long to be restorative. On our steepest climbs, when the grade was fierce, I allowed myself to stop for a few deep breaths every ten steps. Count to ten; stop and breathe. Count to ten; stop and breathe. In addition to getting much-needed oxygen to my lungs and leg muscles, this strategy kept hope in view. I knew that in seven . . . five . . . three more steps, I could take a brief, blissful pause, until the terrain grew merciful, and I could press on without stopping.
The most delightful pauses arrived unexpectedly. Occasionally, as we walked through the woods, a clearing would open and—voilà—a café where we could grab a quick cortado and use real restrooms. Fr. José never told us they were coming. This was consistent with his desire to keep us in the present moment, though I suspect he also relished being able offer us a pleasant surprise. Those periodic oases of rest lasted just long enough to refill my well of gratitude before starting out again.
Perhaps my insight here seems obvious. Take a break; do you really need me to tell you this? But maybe you do; maybe, like me, you tend to soldier on. Maybe you never take a sick day (or didn’t, until COVID made bringing your germs to work seem less heroic). Maybe you wouldn’t dream of closing your eyes for five minutes after lunch. Maybe you stare at the Sunday crossword puzzle long after your brain has stopped generating solutions, or routinely accept diminishing returns for your labor in exchange for the ego boost you get from thinking of yourself as a person who “never quits.”
So, in case you do need to hear it, I’ll say it again: There is power in the pause. Whether for a moment or an hour, a day or a week, a well-timed pause can reconnect us to ourselves, giving us fresh energy and perspective. More importantly, the pause can reconnect us to God—inventor of the Sabbath, after all—for whom accomplishment is never everything.
You know who knew this? Jesus. He routinely slipped away from a life of preaching and miracle-working to pause, pray, and recharge. “Come to me, all who labor and find life burdensome, and I will give you rest,” he said—not “and I’ll give you more to do!” Holy pausing is not about taking the easy way out or shirking our share of life’s burdens. It’s about acknowledging our utter dependence on God, who alone provides strength for the journey.
“Wait, you knowPaula D’Arcy?” I’ve loved Paula’s writing for decades; my Camino buddy Jane Lafave might as well have told me she’d been hanging out in Ann Patchett’s kitchen! Jane explained that she’d known the author for many years, since going on a pilgrimage she led to Notre Dame (Paris) as part of her grief ministry.
Paula D’Arcy
The ability to write or speak authentically about loss is hard earned, and Paula D’Arcy paid a terrible entrance price to the world of grief ministers. When she was a young mother, pregnant with her second child, her family was struck by a drunk driver. She awoke in the hospital, alone except for the child in her womb. Her beloved husband and twenty-one-month-old daughter were gone.
That she built a beautiful life in the wake of such tragedy is a testimony to the power of resurrection. I first encountered the story in her 2004 book Sacred Threshold: Crossing the Inner Barrier to a Deeper Love. When my mother died a few years later, I clung to D’Arcy’s next book, When People Grieve. It is full of sanity-saving wisdom and practical advice about the physical, mental, and emotional aftermath of a profound loss. I owe much of my patience with the slow course of grief to her gentle guidance.
D’Arcy’s devastating accident was almost fifty years ago. What defines her life now is not the tragedy, but her consequent commitment to helping others keep the doors of their hearts propped open, even in the midst of grief. She is the founder of the Red Bird Foundation, whose mission is to assist others in the transformation of pain and the restoration of hope.
What defines her life is not the tragedy, but her consequent commitment to helping others keep the doors of their hearts propped open . . .”
I am thrilled to announce that Paula soon will be offering a retreat via Zoom through the SSJ Center for Spirituality in Ocean Grove, NJ. Mark your calendars for Thursday, February 13 from 6-8 p.m. for “Beauty Beyond Loss: Finding Your Way Through the Mystery of Grief and Gratitude.” I just signed up; you can learn more and register here.
Knowing that pilgrimage has been a meaningful part of Paula D’Arcy’s life, I asked my friend Jane if she could reach out to her on my behalf. Paula read my manuscript, then swiftly responded with these lovely words: Finding God Along the Way is equal parts adventure and strong spiritual experience; I felt like I was being given a private retreat as I read along. In this beautifully written book, Eberle encourages readers to risk what it means to step into the unknown each day, putting the Camino experience within every person’s reach.
According to the Talmud, every blade of grass has an angel bending over it, whispering “Grow, grow, grow!” For every angel on earth who whispers hope into the hearts of grieving people, I am truly grateful.
This is the longest lead-time I’ve ever had on an assignment.
At the August 2023 Ignatian Creators Summit, participants volunteered to write imaginative encounters with Gospel texts for the coming liturgical year; the 28th Sunday of Ordinary Time (October 13) fell to me. I began thinking about it immediately, and even posted a mid-point “work in progress” blog (including a homemade sonnet) when Mark 10:17-30 popped up as a daily Mass reading in May.
Here at last is the “final” product. (Scare quotes only because no wrestling with this challenging reading is ever the last word.)
Today marks a big anniversary: On October 5, 2022, at a retreat house in Azpeitia, Spain, my band of pilgrims gathered for our first group meeting with Fr. José Iriberri, the Director of the Ignatian Camino. We had no idea what the next twenty-seven days (or three hundred miles) would hold. In honor of that anniversary, here’s a little excerpt from the beginning of Finding God Along the Way, coming in January from Paraclete Press. Enjoy!
On an October evening in 2022, fifteen pilgrims still trying to remember each other’s names shifted anxiously in a circle of hard plastic chairs, eyes trained on our fearless Jesuit guide. The fluorescent-lit conference room’s unadorned walls gave no hint that we were in the shadow of the tower house of Loyola—the long-envisioned starting point of our grand adventure.
The youngest of us was fifty-five, the oldest seventy-nine. We were ten women and five men, hailing from across the United States as well as Canada, Australia, and Malaysia. The group included couples, widows, singles, and married folks traveling solo. Some were old friends; others knew no one. Although many were part of the Ignatian Volunteer Corps, the rest were drawn simply by their love of Ignatian spirituality. Seventeen days and some two hundred miles later, ten more people would be joining us for the final hundred miles of our journey.
“Introduce yourself briefly and tell us why you’re here,” Fr. José began, “then name your biggest fear about the Camino.” The man knew how to get to a point. A less skilled facilitator might have started with an easier icebreaker, but Fr. José didn’t want us to skim the surface. He wanted us to practice going deep.
Our fears were surprisingly similar. Most of us were worried that we’d packed the wrong things, that our bodies were going to fail us, or that somehow we would fail ourselves by not engaging the experience properly. Betsy—a petite woman with an endearing Southern accent and perfect comic timing—put it best when she confessed to fearing “pilgrim envy.” Her husband, Charlie, was the Ignatian volunteer; what if she turned out to be a remedial pilgrim, not “holy” enough for the Camino to be effective? When more than one head nodded in recognition, Fr. José encouraged us to resist the temptation to compare ourselves to one another, assuring us that, while each person’s experience would be different, God would not be stingy with the divine gifts.
While each person’s experience would be different, God would not be stingy with the divine gifts.
As the meeting drew to a close, Fr. José paused and looked around the circle slowly, letting the anticipation grow, then leaned in and offered one more bit of inspiration. “Pilgrimage can change the world,” he said. “I really believe this. Now, let’s get ready for tomorrow.”
I met Cameron in the summer of 2023 at my first Ignatian Creators Summit (a truly cool undertaking of the Jesuit Media Lab). I was a nervous newcomer, but she quickly put me at ease with her welcoming spirit, quirky sense of humor, and undergraduate major even less practical than my own: Russian Literature!
Cameron Bellm: Attention and Astonishment
In classic Ignatian fashion, Cameron describes herself as a contemplative in action. She’s a writer and speaker based in Seattle, where she and her husband are raising two cutie-pie little boys. In 2020, she had the internet version of fifteen-minutes-of-fame when her Prayer for a Pandemic went viral. (Just for fun, Google that and see how many places it was shared!) Here’s the beautiful original and a 2022 follow-up, which contains my favorite line: “Above all, as we gaze upon our frayed social fabric / may we who have spare threads set to weaving.”
As we gaze upon our frayed social fabric, may we who have spare threads set to weaving.”
Formed by both Ignatian spirituality and Catholic Social Teaching, Cameron has written several devotionals over the years. She is now hard at work wrapping up the manuscript of a book that will be published by Eerdmans in 2025: The Sacrament of Paying Attention: Contemplative Practices for Restoring Sacred Human Communion. She publishes a short weekly missive on Substack called “Attention and Astonishment,” which always includes thought-provoking nuggets. (The title is a shout-out to a line from “Sometimes” by Mary Oliver):
Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.
Indeed, Cameron’s attention to—and ability to be astonished by—both the big and little things in life is one of her many endearing / enduring qualities.
Here’s what she said about Finding God Along the Way: “What a delight it is to journey along the Ignatian Camino with Christine Eberle as our wise and thoughtful guide! Scripture, story, and Ignatian principles are woven together in a meditative and inspiring guide not only for those making a literal pilgrimage, but for all of us who lace up our shoes each morning to walk through the holy and challenging terrain of our own lives.”
For people you can see once a year for forty-eight hours yet still rejoice like Elizabeth greeting Mary the next time you meet, I am truly grateful!
You may remember that I made a month-long pilgrimage in the fall of 2022 in the company of twenty-four remarkable souls inspired by the life of St. Ignatius Loyola. Finding God Along the Way: Wisdom from the Ignatian Camino for Life at Home traces our spiritual adventure from its pre-pandemic conception to the lasting transformations we experienced on the far side. Although the book might inspire future pilgrims, I wrote it for those who will make the journey only in their imagination, as the fruit of this experience should not be reserved for those with the freedom to walk away from their life for a month.
I am so grateful to the good people at Paraclete Press for their enthusiastic embrace of my book and their prayerful approach to every aspect of its production and marketing. By mid-May, I’ll have a cover image; stay tuned.
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Pub Date!
Note: We’d originally thought that the book would launch on February 25, and were excited about its being the feast day of Blessed Sebastian de Aparicio, patron saint of travelers and road builders. But we want to have it firmly in people’s hands in time for Lent, so January 14 it is. I can’ wait! (But I shall.)
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Pictured here: one of the countless orange arrows marking the Ignatian Way!
Today’s Gospel has a title problem. Matthew 25:1-13 is called “The Parable of the Ten Virgins,” but it’s often referred to as the parable of “The Wise and Foolish Virgins” or sometimes, simply, “The Foolish Virgins.” Setting aside the fact that the noun in the title (virgins) makes most of us think Jesus is talking about someone else, I believe the real difficulty lies with the adjectives (wise, foolish). What can I say? Once an English major, always an English major.
Permit me a quick recap. In Matthew, this chapter is the last one in which Jesus tells any stories. (The next one begins, “When Jesus finished all these words. . .” at which point the events leading up to the crucifixion begin to unfold.) So basically this is Matthew’s version of Jesus making sure he’s said everything that most needs saying.
So, what does he say?
Jesus tells three parables, starting with today’s, in which “the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish and five were wise.” The wise packed extra oil for their lamps; the foolish did not. The bridegroom, the parable continues, was “long delayed.”
Okay, we think, with our post-resurrection brains. The bridegroom is obviously Jesus, and we know he’s coming again, but we don’t know when. This must be a parable about preparedness; obviously, the Foolish Virgins had never been Girl Scouts.
Sure enough, when the women are awakened by the cry “Behold, the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!” the foolish virgins with their flickering lamps try to bum a little oil off the wise ones, only to be told “No, for there may not be enough for us and you. Go instead to the merchants and buy some for yourselves.”
Now, stop right there. Do we really think “wise” is the right adjective for these gals? Sure, they were prepared, but they also sound like Mean Girls. Maybe this should be called “The Parable of the Stingy Virgins” or even “The Parable of the Manipulative Virgins,” because what lamp oil merchant is open in the middle of the night?
But sure enough, the foolish ones heed the advice of the wise / mean / stingy / manipulative ones; they scamper off in search of a 24-hour convenience store while the bridegroom is in shouting distance. They come back to find the door barred and themselves unrecognized and thus unadmitted, and Jesus concludes the parable with his customary instruction to “Stay awake, for you know neither the day nor the hour.”
But notice this: he doesn’t say “Be sure to pack enough oil, for you know neither the day nor the hour.” Now, that’s interesting. Wasn’t that the whole point of the parable? Wasn’t that the one thing that distinguished the wise from the foolish? Maybe not.
“Be sure to store up enough fuel for an indefinite wait” doesn’t really sound like Jesus, does it? This is the Jesus, after all, who taught us to pray for our daily bread—a clear reference to the manna in the desert that rotted when hoarded—and who elsewhere told a parable actually titled “The Rich Fool” about a man who tore down his grain barns to build bigger ones for his plentiful harvest on what turned out to be the last night of his life. Jesus was pretty clear: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth . . . for where your treasure lies, there your heart will be” (Mt 6:19-21).
I believe that the real foolishness of the Underprepared Virgins was revealed the moment they stopped watching for the bridegroom and ran off to make themselves look better when he arrived.
Of course, this might be where the analogy falls apart, as every analogy does at some point. I don’t know enough about first-century Jewish marriage customs to know what would have happened if half the welcoming committee had unlit lamps. But we’re talking about the kingdom of heaven here, so it’s not some imaginary bridegroom coming; it’s Jesus. He’s not coming in rage or scorn or condescension, unhinged by our frailties. He’s coming as himself: tender, compassionate, loving.
Put yourself in the scene. Imagine for a moment this Jesus approaching as you stand there, wide awake, useless lamp discarded. Imagine how much your desire to be in his presence outshines your desire to hide your ineptitude. Imagine his face as he spots you, approaches you, embraces you.
Something humbling happened at Trader Joe’s yesterday.
When I got in the checkout line, there was no one in front of me—just the customer being rung up. Only when it was my turn did I realize that I was standing on the wrong side of the checkout stand; instead of taking my place behind the customer, I was standing next to the cashier.
I shook my head and relocated myself, puzzled that I would make such a weird mistake. Then I realized something. The cashier was white. The customer was Black. Is that why I mindlessly got in line behind the white lady—because I assumed she was the one being waited on?
Here’s the thing: I don’t know.
My good friends will tell you that I am a dramatically unobservant person. (Odd for someone with an eagle eye for typos, yet true; I joke that my attention is focused on deeper realities.) In this case, however, I ignored a stunning array of visual data, starting with the fact that I was basically standing behind the cash register instead of in front of it. The cashier was wearing a TJ’s vest and nametag, for pity’s sake. And the customer’s grown daughter joined her, called her mom, and struck up a conversation, leading me to muse only that it was unusual for someone to visit her mother at work in this job. (Years ago, at a rest stop on a road trip, I walked into the men’s room and mused only that it was unusual for the ladies’ room to have urinals. I’m telling you—I can be dense!)
I say all this neither to excuse nor condemn myself. It is possible that I was just distracted and clueless. But it is also possible that my implicit bias was showing—that, glancing at two women in a suburban grocery store, I assumed that the white one was being served and the Black one doing the serving. If that’s what was happening in my brain, it saddens me. Profoundly.
We are in the home stretch of the Lenten season, when I always encourage people to be on the lookout for God’s daily invitations to prayer, sacrifice, and generosity. I think I need to add one more invitation to the list: repentance. (This is where the Ignatian daily Examen can be helpful.)
Noticing the negative movements in our hearts is humbling (from the Latin root humus, meaning “earth”). Being humbled recalls us to our earthy origins, our limitations, and our need for one another and for God. In this season of repentance, I pray that God will continue to open my eyes and—like a good gardener—help me uproot implicit bias from my being, one weed at a time.
I just checked the date of my last entry and realized I’ve gone a quarter of a year without blogging, and even longer without posting anything on social media. What’s up with that? Have I been hibernating?
Actually, I’ve been writing, which feels just as delightfully restorative. When I returned from the Ignatian Camino in November, I took some time to ease back into “regular” life. Knowing that my speaking schedule would pick up in February with the beginning of Lent, after the holidays I made a decision: devote January to working on my next book, Finding God Along the Way: Wisdom from the Ignatian Camino for Life at Home.
What a luxury! I spent much of the last month slipping out of bed at 5:30 a.m. to write, giving myself permission to ignore all other tasks until the last of my creative energy was spent. This was particularly satisfying during the five days I dog-sat at my brother’s house; there’s nothing like snuggling up with an eighty-pound basset hound to keep you in one place. (Pictured here: Hank overseeing my progress from the back of the sofa.)
Originally, the subtitle of this new book was going to be “Lessons from the Ignatian Camino for Life at Home.” While I like the pairing of “lessons” and “life” (adoring alliteration as I do), the more I wrote, the less appropriate the subtitle felt. The effects of the Camino are dynamic, continuing to unfold. The word Lessons feels too pat—like I should be tying an instructive bow at the end of every chapter. So I’ve shifted to Wisdom, which feels more open-ended. Here’s how I describe it in the introduction:
The wisdom of the Ignatian Camino is not just for those with the resources to fly to Spain, lace up their boots, and hit the road. It is everyday wisdom, useful whether or not your life is marked by good health, financial freedom, or job flexibility. Like all wisdom, it needs to be savored, so I would encourage you not to race through this book to find out “what happened.”
I’m trying not to race through the book, either. After drafting a few chapters that belong somewhere in the middle (starting there because they were fun to write), I’ve gone back to the beginning, paging through my notes, photos, and reflections to stir my memories. Sometimes I get lost down an internet rabbit hole, looking at maps of the terrain we crossed, or trying to figure out the name of that church / park / village we visited. And yet, this is not a travelogue; despite veering away from the word “lessons,” with every chapter I ask myself what I learned, and how that wisdom is bearing fruit back at home. If it’s not, it’s not worth sharing.
My January hibernation got me almost to the midpoint of Finding God Along the Way, making me optimistic about my (self-imposed) June deadline for a finished first draft. Now that February is here, I still take most mornings to write, but after that I turn my attention to the Lenten programs on my horizon. Allow me to highlight the newest here:
On the weekend of March 10-12, at the Loyola House of Retreats in Morristown NJ, I’ll be co-leading a retreat called “Brother and Sister and Mother to Me: God’s Holy Family is Wider Than We Know.” The idea for this retreat came when Loyola invited presenters to design retreats for the 2023 season around the theme of “family.” My mind immediately went to how many people feel omitted or excluded—for a variety of reasons—when the Church starts using that word, and I knew I wanted to do something for them. For us.
Here’s how my friend and co-presenter Linda Baratte and I are describing the retreat:
A treasured insight in our Catholic tradition is the idea of family as the domestic Church—an honored place where, like the Holy Family, we first learn to love. But what if our family bears little resemblance to that sacred threesome? We can often feel on the fringe of Church and parish life. Whatever our family configuration, what would it mean to embrace the radical, wider vision of family that Jesus is inviting us to—with faith, not blood nor history, as our DNA? In our retreat weekend together, we will explore and celebrate the richness of all the ways God has called us to be family to one another.
Now, that feels worth coming out of hibernation for! If it piques your interest–for yourself or someone you love–check out Loyola’s website for details. And be sure to visit my Speaker page for other Lenten offerings; Ash Wednesday is two weeks from today!
Now, back to Spain (if only in my brain) I go . . .
Christine Marie Eberle 