Author: Kara

You’ve likely heard the phrase, memento mori. Or you’ve seen those 17th century paintings with the skulls in them. The Latin, “remember you must die,” refers to such visual reminders of death. Some saints are depicted with human skulls—constant reminders of their mortality. And you thought Ash Wednesday services were morbid. The remembrance of death…

My first spiritual director was Sister Catherine. I’d read about direction, and the only way I knew to find someone was to call the local Catholic center. Also, I figured a woman whose life is devoted to prayer has to be good one to learn from. Whatever your feelings about religious orders, they do a…

After we watched the helicopter depart with its black body-sized package hanging below, watched the new widow follow a ranger down the trail, retrieved the backpack that had flown into a ravine from the circulating air, we contemplated what to do next. “Well, shall we finish?” We were half a mile from the peak and…

When a person nears the final days of their life, their organs slowly shutting down, their sleep stretching around the clock, they usually lose the ability to drink water. Sometimes they become too sleepy and disoriented, sometimes they simply aren’t thirsty anymore, and sometimes they begin to choke when they swallow. In hospice, when this…

The first time I saw a luna moth, Max was letting it flutter around the room, retrieving it when it landed on a table leg, the arm of a couch. He’d caught it, somehow, in the Arkansas night and had brought it in to show me. I thought bugs that size only existed in the…

Lisa was seated on the edge of her bed, back hunched with Parkinson’s, blue eyes teary and looking at me questioningly. Her voice was weak and she was struggling to communicate, but her eyes were sharp. “I’m Kara, the chaplain with hospice,” I introduced myself, trying to understand what she needed. When I couldn’t, she…

I embarked on my contemplative journey on accident, on an airplane somewhere over Senegal. I was returning from the U.S. to complete my second year of teaching in Mozambique, on the southeast coast of Africa. Randy Harris was giving a lecture via my tiny mp3 player. Dr. Harris was a professor at Abilene Christian University…