It’s become a yearly tradition for me to highlight the year’s most-read posts (according to WordPress stats), and also to share my favorite posts from the year. Many of the most-read posts are oldies-but-goodies, and I choose to celebrate their staying power rather than worrying that perhaps I’ve lost my touch.
But I’ll let y’all decide. Let me know your favorites in the comments.
YOUR FAVORITES
This post is from 2010 (yes, I have been blogging that long!), and has made this list almost every year. It also inspired my first viral video!
If during Easter Mass some cranky submarine Catholic turns around and tells you that your babbling toddler is “ruining it for everyone else,” (and yes, this once happened to me) I want you to know that if he thinks that he doesn’t know what “it” is and he is the one who is ruining things.
How to Celebrate Advent When Everyone Thinks It’s Already Christmas
I love writing about Advent. This 2016 post, which was originally part of the Catholic Women’s Blogging Network monthly blog hop, contains links to many other posts on the topic.
We could shut ourselves away from the world and refuse to participate, but that’s not much fun, is it? The Christmas concerts and television specials, the tree lightings, the pageants and parades–they will all be over after Christmas Day.
So how to reconcile what the world teaches with what the Church teaches? How do we keep Advent when the world says it’s already Christmas?
Southern Grammar: It’s Got Rules, Y’all!
Newsflash: I’m a Southerner. 🙂 And I am also a grammar fanatic and lover of language in general. This 2012 post is dear to me and I am glad it was popular this year.
If you aren’t a Southerner, you may laugh at “y’all,” but you probably say “you guys” yourself. There are other regional variations–you’uns, youse, you people. What it comes down to is we NEED a plural form of you and y’all fills the bill nicely.
Mary, My Mother: Quotations and Images
A 2017 post of inspirational Marian quotations paired with photos of statues and portraits of the Blessed Mother.
A couple of years ago I started creating quotation images of the Blessed Mother to share on my blog’s Facebook page during the month of May. I’ve been meaning to gather them into one post, and this month’s CWBN blog hop, with a theme of Mary, My Mother, is the perfect occasion for that. All the photographs are mine, taken with my iPhone.
This is another post from way back in 2010, making its second appearance in an end-of-year list.
And as I look back and can see that the songs from the 70s weren’t particularly good songs, while it may be fun to be snarky, it’s important to remember that people were doing the best they could without much guidance to come up with new songs for the new liturgy. And as for me, even if the songs were “bad” I loved singing them and remember them fondly.
MY FAVORITES
Thirty Years: A Marriage in Pictures
This year my husband and I celebrated 30 years of marriage, and I commemorated the occasion with one picture for each year.
On August 12, 1989, we emerged from Immaculate Conception Church in downtown Knoxville, immediately after the ceremony. Like any newly married couple, we were starting a journey that we couldn’t have imagined or predicted.
Illegal or Unthinkable: One Pro-life Catholic’s Perspective on How to End Abortion
I was really scared when I published this one, expecting it to be controversial. But it seemed to fly under everyone’s radar. Perhaps I will regret including it in this list.
I know that most pro-life people really do care about babies, but I also understand why many Americans don’t believe that. When we vote to end abortion but for caging migrant children, against health care reform, for removing welfare funds, and against family leave, we don’t seem pro-life. We don’t look consistent. We really make it look like “controlling women’s bodies” is all that we care about. If we can demonstrate through common-sense, compassionate legislation that we really love them both and that our opposition to abortion is rooted in our respect for ALL life, I believe that’s when we will start to change hearts and minds.
The Fall Break in this post was in 2018, but I didn’t manage to write it up until almost exactly a year later.
Y’all, I may have gone a little crazy taking pictures of the Statue, but you know what? I don’t care. I could have stayed there with her all day. This was by far the most meaningful part of our whole vacation to me.
When to Say Yes and When to Say No: Respecting Your Spiritual Gifts
Short, sweet, and important!
Every ministry in a parish is important. Every baptized Catholic is gifted in some way for ministry. Every parishioner should be offering time and talent in service to the Church. But heed this PSA: There is nothing wrong with saying NO if you are asked to participate in a ministry that does not align with your God-given gifts.
Five Steps to a Catholic Social Justice Newsfeed
Since I now do most of my reading on Facebook, it is important to me that I curate what I see there. I have learned a lot by following the steps I write about in this post.
I need more from my Facebook feed than pictures of artistically arranged food and smiling babies and adorable kittens (not that I don’t love those things). I rely on Facebook for information and spiritual enrichment too. Because as a faithful Catholic I am passionate about social justice, I purposely create a Facebook feed that forms and informs me regarding what I care about most.
If you’d like to read highlights from previous years, see below:
It’s so fun to look back on great and favorite posts! I especially appreciate the post about saying “no” when something isn’t your gift; It’s a lesson I keep learning!
I love that you have to keep learning it. Isn’t that the truth!!