The church is my home because my home was a domestic church.

There are three things you need to orient yourself in times of crisis and change, a monk told me: divine inspiration, the facts of your life and a wise witness to certify that you’re living in reality.

No joke.

This week, we talk with Sister Theresa Aletheia, the founder of the Memento Mori Project.

“The American narrative of a hard-luck individual working hard, doing the right thing, and finding success for it is so deep in me, my life story so tempting as potential evidence for that narrative’s validity,” Sarah Smarsh writes of her own upwardly mobile economic and intellectual trajectory, “that I probably sometimes err on the side of conveying a story in which I’m an individual beating the odds with her own determination.”

For the past 10 years, I have been able to share my journey of encountering God’s healing love and mercy at conferences and retreats with audiences of all ages and backgrounds across the nation.