I have finally been given the chance to say in print that “The Seventh Seal” is a giant bore. Give me Joan Crawford, Richard Widmark, and Constance Towers!
DARK WOOD TO WHITE ROSE
Helen M. Luke’s “Dark Wood to White Rose” is a Jungian-Christian take on Dante’s “Divine Comedy.”
POPE JOHN XXIII’S DAILY DECALOGUE
You may know it as the Al-Anon” Just for Today” bookmark. Turns out Pope John XXIII was thinking along the same lines…
BRIAN DOYLE: ONE LONG RIVER OF SONG
Why do the good die young? A tribute to one of the best editors and writers we had in the Catholic world–and in the world, period.
VANITY FAIR: HOLLYWOOD CALLING
Here’s how this week’s arts and culture piece begins: Remember the carefree days when we could leave our homes, gather in public places maskless, and take in a museum exhibit of a Sunday afternoon? I did that, way back on February 23. It was right after the Annenberg Space for Photography mounted a presentation, now […]
A DAY LATE AND A DOLLAR SHORT
“But I through the greatness of your love have access to your house. I bow down before your holy temple, filled with awe.” Psalm 5:7. “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.” John 14: 23. Last Friday […]
SPREADING THE GOSPEL FROM MY DESK!
Christ told us to spread the Gospels to the end of the earth. How lockdown has actually helped!
DISCUSSING MY BOOK RAVISHED
Michael John Cusick, self-described wounded healer and an all-around standup human being, operates a ministry out of Colorado and has a wonderful podcast called Restoring the Soul. Recently he had me on to discuss my newest book, RAVISHED: Notes on Womanhood. You can listen to the podcast HERE.
WERNER HERZOG’S “ECSTATIC TRUTH”
“Our grandchildren will blame us for not having tossed hand grenades into TV stations because of commercials. Television kills our imagination.”
GET UP! PRESS ON!
One of my all-time favorite Gospel passages is the healing of the paralytic by the pool in Bethaisda.
LONELINESS AND COMMUNITY
“[B]eing a member of a community isn’t about…how I feel about any place I have lived, nor about my fear of isolation in a new city. It is about the neighbor I choose to be in the community I wind up calling my home.”–Arthur C. Brooks, from a 2018 NYT article entitled “How Loneliness is […]
MARY GANDSEY, RESTORER OF WOOD
Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins: Native Angelena Mary Gandsey was born in Long Beach and moved to Altadena in 1984. She earned a BA in Psychology from UCLA in 1968, did a few odd jobs, had a child, and needed to go back to work shortly afterward. “As a kid, I […]