by Brenda McWilliams | Dec 30, 2022 | Opinion
I was awakened at 4 a.m. Christmas morning, not by “visions of sugar plums” but by the words of Dana Shapiro. “Moments that announce themselves as your subject are rare and there’s magic to them. Ignore them at your own peril,” she wrote in her 2020 book Still...
by Brenda McWilliams | Oct 31, 2022 | Opinion
We pulled our little travel trailer from storage and headed out for a four-week road trip. After 10 months of no travel, we embarked on an approximately 3,000-mile road trip with planned stops throughout the southeast. Preparation required some seemingly minor...
by Brenda McWilliams | Sep 27, 2022 | Opinion
Tears welled up during a recent morning walk when Josh Groban’s song “River” came on the playlist. I was not familiar with the song, yet the powerful lyrics and soothing melody delivered in Groban’s rich, self-described “tenor in training” voice transported me to a...
by Brenda McWilliams | Aug 23, 2022 | Opinion
My thoughts have been pinging on the phrase “your God.” More specifically, Matthew 22:37-39 has been on my mind: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. … Love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus proclaimed these...
by Brenda McWilliams | Jul 18, 2022 | Opinion
Thomas Merton proposed in his 1965 book Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander that a widely accepted U.S. myth was that “America is the earthly paradise.” “When a myth becomes a daydream, it is judged, found wanting, and must be discarded. To cling to it when it has lost...