Angels in Shipwrecks: Place, Politic and Spirit in Modern Life
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Posted on Friday, January 31, 2014 6:14 PM
The blog is on hiatus for a while as I work on other projects. Thank you for reading! |
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Posted on Saturday, September 08, 2012 12:04 AM
Two political conventions to elect a president. Microphones and megaphones. Facebook stands and Twitter wit. Speeches and rhetoric. Protesters, pundits.
On the last day I saw this photo. After all the words that have filled the last two weeks, it gave me all I wanted to add.
Freedom of Speech: Messy. Beautiful. Complicated. Necessary.
"Two protesters at left stop to share a kiss Wednesday in uptown Charlotte, N.C., while a man protests against homosexuality. Just steps away, people protest in favor of abortion rights." |
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Kaitlin Murphy: Posted on Monday, July 23, 2012 7:47 PM
On my first day of the second grade, I was the last one to
arrive to class. I was the new kid and there was only one seat left, next
to a girl with a short haircut identical to my own, and a gap between her two front
teeth that braces would close years later.
Almost thirty-two years of friendship with her, I am thinking
about friendships that last. As in most long-standing friendships, this one has
seen its seasons of drift, sending closeness dormant as lives go in different
directions, then suddenly come together again as friendship grows green and alive
from softening, unfrozen ground. |
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Kaitlin Murphy: Posted on Sunday, December 25, 2011 11:19 PM
I never loved the structured, pre-written prayers of my Catholic upbringing. The Our Father, Hail Mary, The Nicene Creed...I resisted words proclaimed in lock-step with a congregation who knew every phrase and inflection by rote but may or may not have felt the words.
As I saw it, prayers that had been pre-written and approved for repeat recitation always rang, well, a little lazy to me. After all, what did it say to God if I couldn’t take a minute to formulate my own words, if I leaned instead on stoic turns of phrase that matched cement pillars, austere arches, and vast church spaces more than they matched me? |
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Kaitlin Murphy: Posted on Saturday, November 26, 2011 4:52 PM
A few weeks ago I visited a friend whose husband had just lost his father. They have a five year-old boy and a girl of seven months. While I was packing for the trip, my friend sent me a text sharing her son’s effort to brighten her husband’s day.
“Daddy,” he said, “I have two surprises for you!”
“Really? What?”
“I got Shrinky Dinks, and Kaitlin is coming!”
My heart warmed to be included with the esteemed Shrinky DinksI remembered from childhood, even more so when I pulled onto their street to see her son standing in the driveway waiting for me. |
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Kaitlin Murphy: Posted on Monday, November 14, 2011 6:11 PM
For Timmy, Georgie, Karen, Scott, B & B
I don’t fall in love with other people’s pets easily. I need to see what they’re made of before they’ll be enjoying my undying affection, and I want to feel connected to another soul before it will cuddle on my lap.
If people gravitate toward pets that are similar to themselves, I was surprised to fall hard for two pitbulls who were not even mine. When a close girlfriend got married ten years ago, dogs Timmy and Georgie came with the husband.
I did not like pitbulls. |
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Kaitlin Murphy: Posted on Tuesday, October 04, 2011 2:31 PM
For two months a spider has been trying to steal my car. Every night it builds, and with a few days of absence from me, it constructs whole cities of webs along the outside: from antenna to side mirror, side mirror to door. I walk into its spun doorways, tricked again by the thin webs and forced to part the strands like beaded string entryways of new-age shops.
What the spider builds by night, I destroy by day. My weapons are stacks of Tim Hortons napkins, which I swipe through the air broadly until I can open all four doors without eating the webs or the bugs caught inside. |
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Kaitlin Murphy: Posted on Saturday, August 27, 2011 5:40 PM
Hail Mary Full of Grace For Margaret, II
The week before last, I held my grandmother’s hand while she died in a quiet room at Mercy Hospital in South Buffalo, New York. Her son and his wife, my uncle and aunt, stood on her other side.
She had seen her mother, she'd said.
“It’s ok to go with her, Mom,” my uncle said. “You did a good job. We love you. We’ll see you again.”
We repeated how much we loved her. |
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Kaitlin Murphy: Posted on Wednesday, August 24, 2011 12:33 PM
Soon after I drafted this, I made the 911 call that would bring my grandmother, Margaret, to the hospital on the last day of her life. I had been living with her since June, sharing primary caregiving for a brief time with my uncle and nearby family members, while she healed from the severe leg injury resulting from congestive heart failure she’d suffered from for decades.
While my gut had been telling me she would go before enduring another Buffalo winter, to protect her privacy I was reluctant to post what I’d written while she lived. |
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Kaitlin Murphy: Posted on Friday, June 24, 2011 6:06 PM
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