Roamin' Catholics: Body and Soul

HERS: They say you can never go home again. I think our Roamin' adventure this weekend proved this saying to be true. This weekend we attended the 8:00 am mass at St. Patrick's parish in my hometown, Erie, PA. Yay, no singing at this one! This is the parish I literally grew up in. I have so many memories of St. Patrick's Church, St. Patrick's Grade School and St. Patrick's rectory. So let me give you some history... and not the church kind, but my kind of history with the church. My earliest memories of St. Patrick's is going to the rectory with my mom where she was the cook for the priests for a while and where she helped to clean the rectory with another woman. I remember joining her in the kitchen and playing on the old fashioned elevator that brought us to the different floors. I also have fond memories of accompanying my grandmother (Gram) to the cold basement of the rectory where she was the laundress for many years. She let me iron and use this appara...

HERS: The "Roam" has taken us to many different Catholic and one Protestant church over the past eight months. This week brought us to my favorite of God's homes... nature. I remember asking why we had to go to church when I was a kid. The answer I always received was that, just like visiting a friend, we had to visit God at his "house". Well, let's just say we visited his outdoor home on Sunday. We attended the 10:00-ish nature-inspired gathering at Gravelly Point in Arlington, VA. We propped open our lawn chairs and took in all of God's beauty with a bagel and coffee.  It is said in Matthew 18:20: "For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them." Did you ever just sit outside and take in all of the beauty that nature has to offer? The sky, clouds, trees, grass, fresh air, birds, bugs, flowers, and on and on... It is overwhelming to think that God created all of this for us and it all somehow stays in motion. I am overw...