Catholicism for me is van Gogh saying, “I love my studio in the same way that a sailor loves his ship.” It’s Maria Callas saying, “I prepare myself for rehearsals the way I would for marriage”…
DIVINE INTOXICATION
USE ME
Robert Macfarlane, author of “Mountains of the Mind,” observes that continued agitation excites the climber, the huntsman, the gambler, the warrior. I’d like to add the writer to that list.
INCLINE THE EAR OF THY HEART
Join the Portsmouth Institute’s Virtual Summer Conference on Saturday, June 20. The Conference takes as its theme “Incline the Ear of Thy Heart: Rediscovering the Virtues and Practices of the Christian Life.” I’ll be speaking on the subject of “Pilgrimage.”
AN OPERA SINGER’S JOURNEY
Every artist has mentors, benefactors, guides. Opera singer Julia Rolwing, whose specialty is Wagner, talks about some of hers who helped along the way.
BACK TO THE BUSINESS OF LIFE: RESURRECTION CEMETERY
As the world emerges slowly from lockdown, the first public place I visited was a cemetery. Ah–people!
G.K. CHESTERTON ON THE COLOR WHITE
wrote G.K. Chesterton: “God paints in many colours; but he never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white.”
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.
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 […]
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 […]
MY NEW WRITING WORKSHOP
Hope you can make it! Email me at hdking719@gmail.com. Flyer designed by my uber talented downstairs neighbor Erika Verik. She’s a very reasonably priced photographer and graphic designer and would be glad to take on your project, too!
RENEW THE FACE OF THE EARTH
We hear a lot lately about renewing the Church, about change, about starting over. If we’re serious, I would submit that the very first thing we can do is stop watching the news. The media inevitably paint things in the direst possible light, with generally zero correlation to–I can only speak for myself here–what is […]