Quick PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT re our Holy Week gathering today at 1 PST. As of yesterday, zoom is strongly suggesting a password for each meeting to discourage hackers. I already emailed all the people who commented on my post of last week, indicating that they’d like to join. Anyone who didn’t comment and would like […]
LOCKED DOWN IN ASSISI
Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins: Lori King, Professor of Theology, is a U.S. citizen living in Assisi, Italy. She’s been confined to her home home since Sunday, March 8, at 9 pm. We connected recently via phone. “Even before the lockdown, Mass had been suspended. I’d gone to 6 pm Mass […]
RISKING REALITY
Okay, folks, here we go! NOTE: THE MEETING WILL REQUIRE A PASSWORD. EMAIL ME AT HDKING719@GMAIL.COM AND I’LL GET IT TO YOU. HEATHER KING is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting. Topic: HEATHER KING’s HOLY WEEK Zoom Meeting Time: Apr 6, 2020 01:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada) Join Zoom Meeting https://us04web.zoom.us/j/573428264 Meeting […]
LET’S ZOOM
Speaking of echoing that yes, here’s a thought: would anyone be interested in a zoom gathering? Just a kind of get-together and check-in during these challenging quarantine times. I myself have historically been VEHEMENTLY opposed to all forms of online video communication and until two weeks ago had never once in my life Skyped or […]
“POOR CLARE”: A PLAY BY CHIARA ATIK
Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins: I was scheduled to attend the performance of the play described below on Sunday, March 13. But like just about everything else in these uncertain times the opening has been postponed and the show was cancelled. Nonetheless, the theater says the set is up and everything’s […]
EVEN THE DARK: POEMS BY LESLIE WILLIAMS
Award-winning poet Leslie Williams grew up in North Carolina, lived and worked in Washington D.C., Seattle, and Charlottesville (where she earned a grad degree in English), got married, moved to Chicago, had a son, moved back to DC, had another son, and moved to Boston area where she and her family have been for fifteen […]
ECHO THAT YES
“Our Lady said yes. She said yes for us all. It was as if the human race were a little dark house, without light or air, locked and latched. The wind of the Spirit had beaten on the door, rattled the windows, tapped on the dark glass with the tiny hands of flowers, flung golden […]
AWAKE O YE SLEEPERS
In shaky economic times I must say, I feel right at home. Right away I descend into bunker mentality mode. In fact, having grown up one of eight in a blue-collar home–our father was a bricklayer–I’m more or less always ready for a disaster. I have enough semolina, bulgur, wheat berries, polenta, brown rice, pearl […]
CLOISTERED
Last night we Californians got word that the whole state is in “lockdown”– allowed to leave our homes only for “essential” activities: food, supplies, medicine, doctor, work. All “non-essential” businesses ordered closed. I must say I am peculiarly well-formed for the cloister and in fact have lived like this for months at a time over […]
NOWHERE TO RUN, NOWHERE TO HIDE
I mean that of course in the best possible way. Yesterday morning I went to Mass at the Church of the Assumption in Pasadena, then stayed for a Lenten mission talk by Fr. Francis Benedict of St. Andrew’s Abbey in Valyermo, CA. That afternoon I got word that my gym had closed “till further notice” […]
ANGELA HEWITT PLAYS BACH
Here’s how this week’s arts and culture piece begins. Clearly the event took place pre-quarantine. Amazing how quickly things change! People think Angelenos are “laid back,” but the fact is a simple trip to a music concert requires nerves of steel, an encyclopedic memory for geographical layout, and a longing for transcendence that needs to […]
LOVE IN THE TIME OF COVID-19
Fun times! Have you noticed that suddenly, overnight, everyone is an epidemiologist? People you’ve known for decades suddenly have a brother-in-law, a very good friend, or a sister (always unnamed, and whom you’ve never once heard mentioned before) who just happens to be an infectious disease specialist and THEY say… Suddenly everyone’s an oligarch: People […]
OUR POOR DISTRACTED HEARTS
“God alone knows what is in man. No one knows what really to make of himself in his poor distracted heart; whether his real self lives in his longing for a greater love of God, or in his unacknowledged and unrepentant grumbling at the immeasurable demands of his love.” –Father Karl Rahner
BREAD FOR THE ALWAYS UNCERTAIN JOURNEY
I was supposed to be out in the desert today, ostensibly attending the women’s qualifying matches at the annual Indian Wells Tennis Tournament. The two-week tournament, just one step down from a Grand Slam, is a very big deal in the tennis world, and always begins the second week of March. Many years ago I […]