Virginia Herbers

Horizons - The Scripture of Advent is rich, colorful and arresting: lambs and lions, floods and calamities, feasts with good wine, exhortations to repent. What are we to make of these paradoxes, particularly in these tumultuous times?

Horizons: As I write about apathy, a memory from my teenage years rises to the surface. Though an unremarkable event overall, I've never looked at an acorn pile the same way since.

Horizons - A global pandemic has demanded that we let go of so much — cherished experiences, annual encounters, anticipated plans, employment and financial certainties, even loved ones.

Horizons - The Sacred Heart is probably my favorite topic of all to write about. Life. And love. Responding to violation and violence with love and new life in no way condones, trivializes, or eliminates the horror of the perpetrations. Every piece of Sacred Heart artistry reveals a heart that is both on fire and still wounded.

Horizons - I know exactly what I want, and I try my best to communicate that to God. When God "hands me back" something else, I feel like cwying like my 3-year-old niece and saying, "Why do you not unduhstand me?!"

Horizons - No one belongs on a pedestal. It is both lonely and dangerous. We are meant to live on the earth, grounded in reality and feet firmly planted. This could easily turn cynical, I realize. To fail to admire good qualities in another is no virtue.

Horizons - Lately I've been wondering a bit about kairos, this sense of God's time. Ever since Dec. 28, to be precise. That was the feast of the Holy Innocents last month.

We have been created for love, for life and for eternity. So when temporality reminds us that we can't have the fullness of any of it yet, something in our human nature rebels with either a sob or a whimper.

Horizons - From a family of six in church, we might just learn what it means to live together, to watch out for each other and care for each other's well-being, to form a family.

Horizons - We ask for gifts from God, but we know exactly how we want them to come to us. Nicely. Neatly. Without any pain or suffering or difficulty or effort. Just a heavenly infusion, please. But that's not at all the way it works, is it?