MSI Press Blog

  From the Responsorial Psalm: The Lord, the Most High, has done good things for me. Morning Prayer gives us that line, and on some days it lands beautifully. On other days, it catches in the throat. Because what do we do with the bad things? The losses, the betrayals, the illnesses, the accidents, the consequences of someone else’s free will crashing into our lives? The psalm isn’t denying any of that. It’s naming something else: that God’s character is goodness, even when the world is not. God is responsible for the good because goodness is what He is. But He is not the author of cruelty, negligence, or randomness. Free will is real. Physics is real. Human frailty is real. And they all have consequences. So how do we reconcile the line? For me, it’s this: I praise God for the good because it reveals Him. I bring the bad to God because it needs Him. But I do not pretend the bad is good. The psalm is not asking us to spiritualize harm or baptize suffering. It’s asking us to rememb...

  I stand to get dressed every morning. Not because it’s easy. Not because it’s graceful. But because it keeps me alive in my own body. My left leg is fused to my hip. It doesn’t cooperate. So, the rest of me rises to the challenge. Standing to dress is my daily balance drill. Hopping up and down over curbs is my power training. Moving without holding onto anything is my quiet rebellion against decline. My late husband Carl used to sit to dress. He’d look for the cutout instead of the curb. That was his way — careful, steady, gentle. But it always worried me. I could see him aging faster than I was ready for. His habits were both a cause and a result of that slow “decay,” the kind you notice only when you love someone enough to watch closely. I tried to nudge him toward my ninja ways. He thought I was the crazy ninja lady. He wasn’t wrong. But he also wasn’t going to change. And then he died — sooner than I was ready for. I still think the way he moved through the world and the way...

Language doesn’t just describe reality — it creates it. The words we use for inner life carry the fingerprints of our culture, our climate, and our collective history. So when we ask about the difference between the Russian dusha and the American soul , we’re really asking how two civilizations have imagined what it means to be human. 🇷🇺 Dusha : Warmth, Shared Feeling, and Everyday Spirit In Russian thought, dusha (душа) is not an abstract theological concept. It’s the living warmth inside a person , the emotional and moral center that connects people to one another. Communal resonance: To have dusha is to be capable of empathy, generosity, and heartfelt sincerity. A person “without dusha ” is cold, mechanical, or indifferent — not necessarily evil, but lacking human depth. Everyday usage: Russians speak of dushevny (soulful) songs, dushevny gatherings, dushevny food — the word infuses ordinary life with emotional authenticity. Spiritual undertone: While dusha can refer to...