Phillip Garside Category
Discernment Questions for Parents
Posted on September 7, 2023 Leave a Comment
By Phillip Garside It is the parent’s charism to signify the paternal image of God in this world. The way our children regard us as parents speaks to the way we are sculpting that image. Some simple questions about our parental methodologies that take the Imago Dei into account can help us grow as […]
Instruction Against Schadenfreude*
Posted on August 6, 2023 Leave a Comment
By Phillip Garside “Do not rejoice when your enemies fall, and when they stumble, do not let your heart exult, Lest the Lord see it, be displeased with you” – Proverbs 24:17-18a. When one child has behaviorally missed the mark and another is taking joy in their fall, the parent is now forced to fight […]
Strategic friendship
Posted on July 2, 2023 Leave a Comment
By Phillip Garside Recently, I acquired a piece of art while helping clean my aunt’s house. It is a “memento mori” piece that prominently shows two women fondling a newborn, while the spectator of death looks on. It replaces the picture over our bed, which is more of a macabre Christmas decoration, a magically dark […]
Fortitude in the Face of an Uncaring World
Posted on May 30, 2023 Leave a Comment
By Phillip Garside The Church recently celebrated St. William of Rochester, who may be your best intercessor as a parent who feels underappreciated. William was a pious baker who gave every 10th loaf he baked to the poor and attended daily Mass. One day on the way to Mass, he found an abandoned infant and […]
What are the Rules?
Posted on April 25, 2023 Leave a Comment
By Phillip Garside While setting up playdates or sleepovers, we try to respect any rules that parents impart for our guests. It turns out different parents have different methods of setting rules for their children. In navigating one such situation, we were dealing with a child whose parents had separated. This common situation compounds the […]
Libations for St. Martha
Posted on March 20, 2023 Leave a Comment
By Phillip Garside I have a little ritual that connects me to St. Martha through a cold cup of coffee. Rituals can take place in many formats. When we were first married, my spouse had an extremely long bathing ritual every Sunday afternoon. That ritual faded fairly quickly when children came. We are not Mary, […]
The Parent of the First Parents
Posted on February 14, 2023 Leave a Comment
By Phillip Garside In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve are “new people.” Our word for “new people” is children. Usually, Adam and Eve are artistically depicted as a buff (but, more often than not, beardless) adult man and a voluptuous adult woman. But a healthy meditation for us parents is to picture them […]
Mediating Magic into Awe
Posted on January 8, 2023 Leave a Comment
By Phillip Garside Parents of a young child feel the joy of active magical thinking over the holidays. This type of thinking is one reason children have a more direct relationship with God than adults, to whom God or even God’s very existence can become hidden. As a child matures, magical thinking confronts the hard […]
Christmas Decorating and Mystagogy
Posted on December 6, 2022 Leave a Comment
By Phillip Garside As a Christian parent, one of the stressors of Christmas is helping children distinguish between the cultural holiday and the religious import. For young children, cognitively explaining the distinctions may simply sow confusion.
Parenthood as a Charism
Posted on October 30, 2022 Leave a Comment
By Phillip Garside All of us know the “parent-child relationship” from the child’s end. The target audience of this blog would do well to remember that their charism and gift to the church is to know that relationship from the parent’s end. It is our gift to experience all of the misfires and victories of […]
To Mark the Days and Seasons
Posted on September 22, 2022 Leave a Comment
By Phillip Garside As the school year amps up, having multiple children in multiple schools means that multi-tier schedules are reasserting their dominance over our digital calendars. Society is geared to the individual, not the community. Unchecked, society’s incursion onto our family digital calendar will tear the family in 16 different directions. Our calendars can […]
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