Another annual tradition, which I sometimes think I ought to retire, is this post in which I highlight my readers’ five favorite posts of the prior year (measured by clicks), followed by my own five favorites. The reason wonder if I should retire it is that the readers’ favorites are so often the same year after year, and it gets harder and harder for me to find favorites because I don’t write as much as I used to. But more on that later.
YOUR FAVORITES
This is from a series I wrote years ago. It was more mean-spirited than I would probably be if I wrote it today. I think people run across this one when they are doing searches on hymns they remember (fondly or not) from childhood.
Mary My Mother: Quotations and Images
I really used to enjoy making images like these so I am glad people continue to look at them.
Southern Grammar: It’s Got Rules, Y’all
I hope all the people who click on this learn something from it, is all I can say.
Poetry Blogging: To a Fat Lady Seen from a Train
I used to do quite a bit of poetry blogging. Years ago one of my middle school kids came home talking about this poem. Who would have thought that conversation would lead to a perennially popular post (who knows why).
More Southern Grammar: Double Modals
This is making its first appearance! I would love to do more posts about how folks talk in East Tennessee. I studied linguistics in college and graduate school and I love this kind of thing.
MY FAVORITES
This is the hard part, because looking back over last year I see 12 posts about the books I read, 11 posts pointing to the reflections I wrote for Inspire Daily, three “best of” posts reviewing 2022, and one post pointing to an article I wrote for Celebrate Life Magazine. So rather than telling you my favorite blog posts here, I will be highlighting my favorite writing. And I hope that the energy I will no longer be using to write those reflections might be redirected this year toward blogging. We’ll see.
Celebrate Life: Charlie Fien-Emlen
I asked Charlie what she would say to a woman who finds that she is expecting a baby with Down syndrome and what advice she would offer to parents who are raising a child with Down syndrome. She responded, “I would say first of all, ‘Congratulations! You are going to join an amazing community!’ . . . She then concluded, “Don’t put limits on what your child can do. No limits. Society puts plenty of limits on us, don’t do that.”
In the stories of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah, Abraham, Esau and Jacob, Moses and others, God was always talking to His people. Right out loud! I was fascinated. Why did God talk to them? I wondered. When did He stop talking to people? And especially, why couldn’t He talk to me like that? I imagined that if I prayed hard and if I was good enough, maybe, I too, would hear God’s voice.
When charged with evangelizing, as Catholics we usually think first of the eloquence of Paul or the martyrdom of Peter and we say to ourselves, “I could never do that!” But today remember that there are many ways to evangelize, and not every bringer of the Good News is called to die a martyr’s death.
“By their fruits you will know them,” we read in the Gospel. “[E]very good tree bears good fruit, and a rotten tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a rotten tree bear good fruit.” Is faith nurtured primarily by the media slanted in one direction or the other likely to bear good fruit, like humility and love, or rotten fruit, like pride and hatred?
Because even if we are not all called to be martyrs, we are all called to be saints. We may hope we never have to die for God, but we are supposed to live for him.
For more posts like this one, see below:
2022
2021
2020
2019
2018
2017
2016
2015
2014
