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Book List: Connecting Culture + Nature

The threads connecting nature and culture are sewn deeply into my life experience. My childhood summer vacations to the Philippines often coincided with the rainy season. Instead of considering it a hardship, we’d treasure the rain that refreshed us and gave us relief...

Library Love

Every night I read my son Cristian a set of bedtime stories. Even at one year old, he loves books and can pick his favorites. One book that always makes the stack is Lola at the Library by Anna McQuinn & Rosalind Beardshaw. It is a short and sweet book about a...

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seeing and listening

I believe that books come into my life when I am supposed to read them. Some months ago I found myself going down a rabbit hole after listening to a podcast. I researched the guest and her contemporaries jumping from website to Instagram profile to the library app to...

faith of our mothers

Abuelita Faith came into my life after hearing the author, Kat Armas, on the Next Right Thing podcast. As she spoke, I could hardly believe how much of what she said aligned with my experiences related to the formation of my faith and beliefs about the church. Similar...

a story of migrations/una historia de migraciones

One evening in 2017, a Polish woman named Anna came to dinner at our house. A few days after, upon her return to Poland, she was able to do research and give my husband, Mario, insights into his family’s history that seem eerily connected to the news today. Mario is...

one home to another

I feel a sense of responsibility and urgency to write about the immigrant and refugee experience, especially with all that we are seeing in the news. For some of you, this may mean a continued exploration of knowing yourselves and living authentically (as discussed in...

being real and connecting

“Be yourself so that people that are looking for you can find you.” - Arlan Hamilton I chose It's About Damn Time for the Peacemaker’s Book Club because when I read it this summer I was taken by Arlan's humble confidence. Through her stories, she manifested a genuine...

recognizing your culture

I often tell the story that I didn’t realize that I was a minority until I won an award for it in high school. My father was a white American and my mother is a Filipina. I was born and raised in a small city in Indiana where my local family, friends, neighbors,...

you be you

A step beyond knowing ourselves is acting on and living in that knowing. How often do we hide or ignore our true selves so that we can get along? We mistakenly think that building relationships is easier if we act as we are expected to and do what the world tells us...

knowing yourself

It is hard to build a relationship, especially with someone with a different background or beliefs, if you are not being true to who you really are. Think about the relationships in your own life. Who can you have deep and authentic conversations with? Who do you...

seeing things differently

I chose Last Stop on Market Street* to kick off the Peacemaker’s Book Club because as a mother I have learned (or re-learned) that children’s books can be as meaningful and insightful for adults as they are for children. Reading with my kids at bedtime is something I...

“We do not write in order to be understood;
we write in order to understand.”

– C.S. Lewis