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Thursday, October 8, 2026

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Twenty Something

Twenty Something

One more page: The power of the read-aloud

It’s a blustery Monday morning in September, and the wind is whipping the first patches of red in the maple outside Mary’s window. Inside, Mary is wrapped in a fleece blanket and a story — chapter seven of “Whistler,” Ann Patchett’s latest book, being read by the daughter beside her bed.
Twenty Something

Bake the lemon meringue pie

Amelia Bedelia should have been fired. She botched every single task on her housekeeping list. When instructed to dust the furniture, Amelia Bedelia put dusting powder on the furniture. When told to dress the chicken, she put clothes on it. And her take on “change the towels” involved scissors and a drastic change of appearance.
Twenty Something

Learning to read the map

Before there was a story, there was a map. The map contained the story. Robert Louis Stevenson just had to stare at it long enough.
Twenty Something

Held in the heart: Learning to carry mystery

No television soundtrack is more deeply embedded in my memory than the opening song for “Little House on the Prairie.” It lilts and skips as the Ingalls girls bound down a prairie hill that feels as wide as childhood itself, the youngest tumbling behind them.
Twenty Something

On your honor: Tapping into goodness

It’s Wednesday morning on Lower Grey Cloud Island, a wooded retreat tucked 15 miles down the Mississippi River from St. Paul. The world feels lush and fertile, birdsong rising through a canopy of maples.
Twenty Something

Seagull on the Sistine: The rare gift of shared delight

In the end, after two days of breathless anticipation, the white smoke shared the stage with a seagull. The whole world was abuzz. An American pope! A seagull! With so many eyes trained on the same chimney, the bird had appeared in exactly the right spot at exactly the right moment, amusing spectators across the globe.
Twenty Something

‘Joy as a daily discipline’: leaning into Easter

Easter gets the short end of the stick. That’s what author Laura Kelly Fanucci concluded. Any Catholic can tell you what the 40 days of Lent entail, rattling off the terms: praying, fasting and almsgiving. But ask about the 50 days of Easter, and many get stuck on an egg hunt and “Alleluia.” Then what?
Twenty Something

Second by second, turning toward the sun

The older I get, the more I appreciate the math of meteorology. Something has shifted in me, and now I’m all ears when my retired neighbor rattles off numbers from his rain gauge.
Featured

2 survivors, 1 love story

Zach Zarembinski was 18 when he suffered a massive brain bleed during a high school football game, was rushed to Regions Hospital in St. Paul and placed in a coma. Nine days later, 16-year-old Isabelle Richard arrived at the adjacent children’s hospital on the same campus after a near-fatal car crash left her in a coma.
Twenty Something

Stovetop spirituality: The kitchen as chapel

The older I get, the more I crave a practical spirituality — one tied to dirty dishes not pristine libraries, one that recognizes hungry bellies along with hungry hearts.
Twenty Something

Whispering pines: Listening for the Holy Spirit

The sun was setting by the time we’d reached consensus on our Christmas tree. We’d decided on a cedar that hadn’t been anyone’s first choice — safely neutral, conflict averted.
Twenty Something

Unsinkable faith: Daughter of the Edmund Fitzgerald

It was a Monday afternoon in November when Debbie Champeau got the call. The 17-year-old, a senior at St. Pius XI in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, left school immediately, taking two buses to get home.
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