Perhaps it was inevitable that these two self-mythologizing figures would meet. Their paths intersected, not always at the same time, at many points throughout their respective travels.
ANGELUS NEWS
THE PROBLEM WITH CONTRIVING TO BE CONTROVERSIAL
That doesn’t mean you never say things with which people disagree. It means you don’t make a career, in or out of the Church, out of being a provocateur and a hater.
COCKTAIL HOUR AT THE FRICK, COVID-STYLE
“Why these vegetables together? This is the artist, sending someone to the market and presenting everyday objects in a new light.” What’s wonderful is on the one hand “the simplicity of the depiction combined with the incredible beauty, the sort of poetic feeling. You can feel the texture, the surface of the porcelain, the fabric, the wood, the glass.”
FALLOUT: THE EVIL OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS
When journalist John Hersey arrived in Japan, over a year after the dropping of the bombs, he was staggered by what he found. A mother who’d clung to her dead infant daughter until the body started to decompose. Human beings who had been vaporized, leaving only shadows on the ground or walls. Residents, desperate to rebuild, who were still coming across severed limbs and charred corpses.
ON THE EXECUTION OF LISA MONTGOMERY
Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins: The world revolves; the Cross stands still. I don’t know Latin, but that’s the rough translation of the motto of the Carthusian order (Stat crux dum volvitur orbis). I’ve thought of it often these past weeks. Things are happening in our world, nation, state and city […]
HOBO FOR CHRIST
At first she stayed mostly with friends and, along the way, experienced unexpected healing. “My core wound is the belief that I have to earn love. But everywhere I went, people would say, ‘Don’t leave. Just move in.’ ‘You don’t have to earn love,’ the Lord was telling me. ‘You already are enough.’ ”
ROBERT MACFARLANE’S LOST WORDS
His capacity to conjure landscape is alone astounding. Add to that an astonishingly wide-ranging grasp of geography, geology, natural history, cartography, and literature. Throw in the fact that he’s no mere scholar or armchair philosopher: every book is grounded in his willingness to take on the physical hardship of mountain climbing, hiking, camping, sailing, and tramping. But what makes Macfarlane sublime is the aching longing for a lost Eden that sounds like a bass note beneath all his work.
RELIGION AROUND BILLIE HOLIDAY
Holiday was no poster child for political correctness. She frequently chose—in fact, sought out—men who abused her physically and emotionally. She was notoriously profligate with money, food, and space, sharing her apartment at times with pimps, prostitutes, addicts. Her fondest wish was to have kids, open a home for orphaned children, and have her own little supper club, maybe 200 seats, where she could feed people and sing.
Instead, she was “existentially correct”….
HAPPY NEW YEAR: BIRDS, SPIRITUAL COMPANIONS, NEW LIFE
Santa Barbara’s Coal Oil Point Reserve, a mute swan, and saving lives for the New Year…
THE MIRACLE OF THE LOAVES AND FISHES
“You can picture the stage set: Christ, the Messiah, seated on top of the mountain: the crowds so far below they are literally at his feet. They have to crane their necks to see his face.”
THE FEMININE GENIUS OF OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE
Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins: A few weeks ago, I attempted to make an appointment for an intake session with a therapist. My co-pay would be zero, I’ve never availed myself of such help, and especially after this past year of COVID, wildfires, political unrest, I thought—Why not? I had to […]
TURN OVER A NEW LEAF WITH MY JAN-FEB 2021 WRITING WORKSHOP!
Come on, you know you’ve been dying to!!
GRIEVANCE VS GRATITUDE
“We are userers whenever we make demands upon others as a return for our actions or gifts; whenever we say or subtly feel that we are owed something or by life itself.”
SAINTS ALIVE!
Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins: Pasadena native Mary Lea Carroll has written two engaging books on saints. The first, Saint Everywhere: Travels in Search of the Lady Saints, came out in 2019. In it, she travels among other places to Siena (St. Catherine), Prague (Infant Jesus) and Medjugorje (Our Lady of […]