Sister Peggy Cummins, age 67, runs a safe house for survivors of sex trafficking. Honoring her vow to chastity for 48 years, she had no experience with either sex or trafficking when she began this work in 2011. Yet the horror and debasement did not shock her. Instead she was jolted by a different realization. […]
When Mike Foley was a child and lost something, his mother would say, “It’s just stuff.” However, when he lost a marriage, a job, and three generations’ worth of family heirlooms, it’s not easy. Yet at age 69, the former lieutenant with the Boston Fire Department is not bitter. “I’m not in charge, I leave […]
Easter. As a kid, I imagined a wooden cross and golden sunlight piercing through purple clouds. I grew up jaded on words like “resurrection” and “redemption,” which felt as distant as lavender skies. Now I feel differently. The good news of Christianity is that nothing is impossible with God. For Christians, Jesus Christ’s resurrection is […]
This month a deluge of holiday gifts are returned to stores. It’s hard to give the perfect gift, and almost as hard to remember getting one. Yet Patricia Kachinsky of Milton still talks about what she received years ago. Back then she told her four young daughters, “I want a memory of something your father […]
I had my first Christmas in prison. No, not as an inmate. In 1998 I was a Bible study volunteer at Webster Correctional Institution, a low security prison for men in Cheshire, CT (since closed). That year we threw a Christmas party for the 9 inmates in our group. However, word got around and 50 […]