WRITINGS
“HIS SUPERBOWL, OUR STRUGGLE”
Barely South Review
Spring 2017
A story of one family's journey through the darkness of severe mental illness. As the NFL's Seattle Seahawks headed toward a repeat Super Bowl championship, capturing nearly the entire city in their mystique, the author's wife was repeatedly hospitalized for clinical depression. And their young son– keenly aware of his mother's condition but oblivious to the injuries and even suicides of NFL players ravaged by mental illness–begged to play tackle football.
“THE RAT BENEATH THE BED”
St Anthony Messenger Magazine, November 2017
winner of 2 Catholic Press Awards, including prize for Best Essay
“Why should I go do service overseas, with so much need right here at home?”
A fair question. And the wrong question, too, as I found out. As it happened, it took a rat’s persistence, beneath a bed in the Dominican Republic, to wake me up to a deeper calling.
“UNFINISHED HOUSES”
America Magazine, July 2014
“So how many houses are we going to build?” This is often the question students have before embarking on their international service experience. Part of my job has been to let them find out the answer: maybe none. But then watch as they discover the magic of the experience far beyond that achievement impulse.
“GRACIAS”
Young & Catholic in America Anthology
“The first time she said it, it caught me off-guard. And thank God it did. Because if I'd seen it coming—if I had actually known it was grace headed my way—I might not have fought it. And if I hadn't fought it, I might not have (eventually, after many years) heard God speaking to me, deep in that high tropical jungle, offering me forgiveness through this willful widow in the mountains.”
“THE SHADOW OF TRUJILLO”
National Catholic Reporter, May 2006
Forty-five years after his assassination, the legacy of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo emerges and emboldens vigilantes and politicians alike to scapegoat Haitian immigrants… or those who “look like them.”