By A house is like a living, sighing, leaking creature, and it always needs a little help somewhere. The house that holds St. Lydia’s has been standing for a century, and received some loving attention this week. We residents inside the house have seen the friendly faces of Georgia and Dennis Bishop popping up in the windows. This couple, our regular building maintenance volunteers, are taking on the long-term improvement project of installing new storm windows. The house’s original windows are still in place but have not always provided the most security from the weather, especially cold winds. We really appreciate
Let them Hear Your Voice
Almost every day there are reports of new ways our elected officials are making the lives of poor women harder as they struggle to find affordable housing, living wage work, childcare, education, and healthcare. Many of us at Lydia’s House have been frequent callers to the state and D.C. offices of our senators and representatives in the last weeks. With the daily calls we are getting increasingly familiar with the answering staffers: “Hey! It’s me again! Just calling back to urge you not to gut healthcare for millions of vulnerable women and children. Also, it’s really important to me that our senator doesn’t
Hope Advent Reflection
By Mary Ellen Mitchell Often when we speak of religious or churchy terms like hope, faith or joy (the kinds of words we use a lot during Advent) we need to remind ourselves that, in some mysterious way, there are two worlds that we live in at the same time. You’re thinking “she’s crazy.” But let me use a metaphor I know my kids are familiar with. In Harry Potter Harry usually lives between the land of muggles and the land of wizards. There are muggle things like telephones that make no sense to wizards and wizard things like Quiddich
Freedom Advent Reflection
By Marykate Glenn Freedom was the topic for our second week of advent reflection. On Sunday afternoon, before our advent dinner, I went downtown to a prayer circle gathering to protest the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline on unceded Native land and through locations that risk the contamination of drinking water, Lake Oahe, and the Missouri River. It was organized by the American Indian Movement chapter of Indiana/Kentucky and supported by Black Lives Matter: Cincinnati and many other groups supporting the activists at Standing Rock. I witnessed leaders and activists with different backgrounds, different issues, from different states, articulating