“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.”
CULTURE
I CHOOSE ALL!
A well-known anecdote about St. Thérèse of Lisieux has it that, when offered a basket of lace and other trimmings as a girl and told she could choose one, exclaimed, “I CHOOSE ALL!” As an adult, she extrapolated on the concept and observed, “My God, I choose all! I don’t want to be a saint […]
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 […]
THE DESIRE LINES HALF-DAY WORKSHOP HAS ARRIVED!
THE FIRST DESIRE LINES HALF-DAY WORKSHOP HAS ARRIVED: SAT. DEC 5, 2020, 8:45 AM-1 PM PST!
ARCOSANTI
Here’s how this week’s arts and culture piece begins: Arcosanti has been called an “experimental city,” ” an “urban laboratory,” a “caravanserai.” Seventy miles north of Phoenix, the 25-acre compound, built on a 4,060-acre land preserve, rises from the desert like a mirage. The project was the brainchild of “visionary” Paolo Soleri (1919-2013). Arcology—a concept combining […]
G.K.CHESTERTON: I AM
Legend has it that around 1910, The Times posed the question to a selection of eminent writers and thinkers: “What’s Wong with the World?” “Dear Sirs,” G.K. Chesterton replied: “I am.”
BLESSED ARE THE POOR IN SPIRIT
Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins: During COVID, I’ve been trying to spend more time in prayer. In particular, I’ve tried to devote fifteen minutes, each day for a week, to meditating on a particular Gospel passage. The first week the Parable of the Rich Young Man [Matthew 19:16-22] bubbled up from […]
TWO FAVORS
One: Is someone out there conversant with Adobe InDesign who would be willing to change the date on two flyers? I am balking at paying up to 100 bucks–though maybe I’m just being cheap. Or maybe I’m just asking in the hopes I will receive! Two: A reminder about my newest book: HARROWED: Life Lessons […]
A VOCATION OF WATER: HOW ONE MAN IS BRINGING NEW LIFE TO EL SALVADOR
“El Salvador is an amazing country. Its nickname is ‘the little flea of Latin America’ because it’s so small. But the microcosm of the cosmos is here in this little country.”
“This is home now for my family, for me. Water extrapolated to conflict resolution extrapolated to the Kingdom of God.”
WHOEVER I AM
“I am a question-asker and a truth-seeker. I do not have much in the way of status in life, nor security. I have been on quest, as it were, from the beginning. For a long time I thought there was something wrong with me: no ambition, no interest in tenure, always on the march, changing […]
LOTUSLAND
Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins: Madame Ganna Walska (1887-1984) was the type of Southern Californian eccentric over whom people from back East love to roll their eyes, muttering “land of the fruits and the nuts.” Born Hanna Puacz in Brest-Litovsk, Poland, she was an opera singer who was married six times. […]
THE CELLIST: GREGOR PIATIGORSKY
Violinist Isaac Stern recalls watching Piatigorsky maneuver a cello through a narrow corridor of orchestral musicians. “He would hold it at shoulder height, straight ahead, as he walked—a magnificent gesture and a lesson to me in the need to establish a certain character of one’s own when coming onstage.”
THE FOUR QUADRANTS OF CONFORMISM
Graham’s thesis is that passively conventionally-minded are the largest group and the aggressively independent-minded (among whom he clearly counts himself) are the smallest.
We would probably all like to count ourselves among the independent-minded. But how deeply have the purportedly independent-minded in our culture truly thought?
KIMSOOJA
Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins: A little of “performance art” can often go a very long way. So when a friend sent me an Art21 video by a Korean-born female artist named Kimsooja, I steeled myself. The adoption of a single name—Michelangelo! Madonna! Prince!—I did not take as a good sign. […]