Happy New Year! Here are your weekend must reads. An NCR columnist writes about how to live a more grounded life in 2021 by letting go and giving it all to God. Via Negativa is a funny novel about the journey of Father Dan, an aloof, artsy, left-leaning oddball.
2020 was a year we'd probably like to bury deep under the sea, writes Pauline Hovey in the latest Soul Seeing column.
"And yet, surprisingly, this tempestuous time taught me how to live a more grounded life in 2021," she writes. "The key is to release my grip on the helm and trust in the providence of God."
Hovey practices a "welcoming prayer," a body prayer in which she identifies and feels the sensations in her body, welcoming and embracing God's presence and action in her life.
"Acceptance, it turns out, is freedom," Hovey writes. "It's not defeatist. It's not about giving up. On the contrary, far from being passive, it's an active choice to freely let go and give until there's nothing left to be attached to."
You can read the rest of the column here.
In Via Negativa, Daniel Hornsby's funny debut novel about guilt, we meet our protagonist, Father Dan, as he's driving west through Kansas.
He finds an injured coyote, who we come to know as Bede, on the side of the road. He nurses Bede back to health and keeps him sedated with painkillers for much of the journey west. It's an act of goodwill, but more importantly, it's a way for Father Dan to prove to himself what a good Franciscan he still is. He's 70 and newly homeless, expelled from his Indiana diocese and on his way to meet some old friends.
"The circumstances of his expulsion are eventually explained but aren't very important, since it's as much a figurative excommunication as it is a literal one," writes Connor Turque in the review of the book. "Father Dan is an anachronism, and a little bit of a liar. An aloof, artsy, left-leaning oddball, he could so easily have been a caricature, but his voice is what draws you in and wins you over. It's the heart and the motor of the book."
You can read the rest of the book review here.
More headlines
- Pauline Sr. Rose Pacatte reviews "Hillbilly Elegy," based on the inspiring 2016 memoir of Yale educated lawyer and venture capitalist J. D. Vance.
- This Christmas, the first solar energy generating plant on a U.S. Catholic college campus and the first in the Chicago Archdiocese went into commercial operation at University of St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary.
- Scripture reflections from St. Joseph Sr. Mary M. McGlone on The Epiphany of the Lord.
Weekend wrap-up
We made it! The last day of 2020. Thank you for your readership and dedication to our publications, National Catholic Reporter, Global Sisters Report and EarthBeat. In 2021, please consider becoming an NCR Forward member. Members get access to a ton of interesting events and content and we have a lot planned for 2021 already.
See you next weekend,
Stephanie Yeagle
NCR Production/Online Editor
[email protected]
Twitter: @ncrSLY
