This week-long memoir writing workshop with award-winning author Heather King offers a unique opportunity to reflect, write, and grow. Designed for writers at any stage, the workshop emphasizes the value of the creative process, while the peaceful rhythms of St. Andrew’s Abbey will afford space for silence, self-inquiry, and honest expression.
In this week’s Angelus News column, I give my take on a recent visit to Philadelphia’s Barnes Foundation, a world-class collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Modernist paintings.
So overwhelming was the bounty that I ended up collapsed on a bench, gazing mutely for several minutes at a tiny Cézanne of a white plate, a bunch of grapes, and a single peach.
In other news, I am reading The Intellectual Life by Fr. Antonin Sertillanges, OP, first published in 1921–who says I’m out of step with contemporary culture?–boning up on Rembrandt and van Gogh for my Jan. trip to Amsterdam, ascertained from my airbnb host there that I can do a laundry at her place and put it on a drying rack, booked a shuttle bus from Tucson to Phoenix’s Sky Harbor Airport for Dec 22 when I fly to NYC for Christmas, made a Walmart Superstore run for the Thanksgiving cookies and snacks I’ll bring to my friends in Santa Maria, CA, that week, watered the oleander out back, vacuumed the car, filled the birdfeeder for the finches, and on the advice of a friend from Maine just my age have started doing this Japanese exercise routine, only takes 3 or 4 minutes, called Radio Taiso.
According to an article I read, the whole country performs these exercises every morning in synch and then they are all cheerful and limber and live to be 120.
If you’ve enjoyed my work for the last year or two, or 10, or 15, plase think about supporting it with a free or paid ($5/month) subscription at DESIRE LINES: BOOKS, CULTURE, ART.
Emil Kapaun (1916-1951), a Catholic priest and U.S. Army Chaplain from Kansas, exhibited heroic virtue as a POW during the Korean War. “Just for a moment,” one of his soldiers said, “he could turn a mud hut into a cathedral.”
Head over to Substack for a piece called Pilgrim Feet and a reflection on my love of walking.
Autumn fever is upon me and I am headed near the end of the month to Philadelphia, there to spend a week with a friend and EXPLORE.
“When Jesus takes you into himself to give you to souls, wherever you go means a life of isolation. We find that apparent contradiction in Christ, a hidden, contemplative soul who ended up in giving himself to men, allowing himself to be consumed by them.”
God’s will, says Guardini, is what “by his decree should be accomplished in the world” — and that depends, absolutely, on our cooperation and consent to his grace. Read all about it in this week’s Angelus News.
Next Thursday I fly out to Dublin. Why? To host a MEMOIR WRITING WORKSHOP at Kylemore Abbey!
We’ve already calendared out next year for September 6-12, 2026, so put that in the hopper.
We had a death in the family this week, my 23-year-old grand-niece back in New Hampshire: car accident. Then–the chlldren in Minneapolis.
This week’s Angelus News column is about a chance encounter with a fellow random, gloriously joyful loner, in a rose garden, on the 4th of July. It’s also a paean to LA, and a tribute to the child-like heart.
Public shaming, scolding, and snitching aren’t punishable by law, but everyone knows betraying a friend is a dastardly moral crime.
Or everyone used to.
In this culture where calling out “friends” is actually lauded, in this week’s Angelus column I ponder the nobility of the martyrs who went the other way and died under torture.
The truly brutal summer heat hasn’t yet quite kicked in here in the Sonoran Desert…though my front yard is overgrown with trees and agaves and is actually cooler than outside the “enclosure” as I’ve come to think of it, leading my monastic little life as I do.
I’ve taken to having my morning prayer outside, on the glider, with my candle and incense, accompanied by the dawn chorus of my beloved birds. There are a pair of resident cardinals, tons of mourning doves, house finches, goldfinches, and white-throated sparrows, I spotted a vermilion flycatcher in the back yard last week–oh, hummingbirds, of course–and a Gila woodpecker (these also abound, very comforting to hear them hammering away at the telephone pole) recently performed his ablutions in the birdbath…
Anyway, this, to me, is the “abundance” and “prosperity” people natter on about.
Haptic & Hue explores the way in which cloth speaks to us and the impact it has on our lives. It looks at how fabric traditions have grown up and the innovations that underpin its creation. It thinks about the skills that go into constructing it and what it means to the people who use it. It looks at the different light textiles cast on the story of humanity.
All of humanity, not only women. This is a quality offering, and the people who make it do the world a great service.
Other news: The entire month of May in Tucson has been heaven. Temps haven’t yet soared to the uncomfortable 100-degree plus range. I spend each early monring on my front patio enjoying my aviary. A pesky ground squiirrel has teken up residence under an adcaent shed and keeps trying to dig a burrow in the back yard which I just know would extend underneath the house. Let’s just say I am an a first-name basis with several of the personnel at Termagon.
This week’s Angelus News column is about the (my) unfortunate tendency to want the people I help to have PROMISE! Ha ha, good luck with that! Just ask Jesus…
On other fronts, I am having fun over at Substack and invite you to join me there.
I’m working up a column on four or five California food writers, which will make for some juicy reading.
I’m looking forward to my upcoming visit to LA, followed by a retreat at St. Andrew’s Abbey.
I have subscribed for a month to MAX in order to watch ROLAND GARROS aka the French Open. It took me months to recover from Garbine Muguruza’s retirement, but now my gal is Peyton Stearns.
And I am deep in silence, solitude, gratitude, and prayer.
“Listen to him,” says the Father at Christ’s Transfiguration, mirroring Mary’s injunction to the wedding guests at Cana.
Boy, do I like to do the opposite, endlessly nattering on, sharing my projects and plans, presenting my well-reasoned Pharisaical defenses of the faith to Christ–Christ!
This morning I was reflecting that Jesus suffered on the cross, and continues to suffer, so that the gate may remain open a crack–the narrow gate that few will enter because I, for one, so mightily resist dying to myself, taking the last place, surrendering completely…
Anyway, here’s a video I worked up yesterday in a burst of enthusiasm…
Flannery O’Connor’s stories, like the parables of Christ, open up many more questions than tney answer.
This is a reflection on one of my all-time favorites: “Good Country People.”
