“Our grandchildren will blame us for not having tossed hand grenades into TV stations because of commercials. Television kills our imagination.”
THE CREATIVE LIFE
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 […]
POUSTINIA
A poustinia is a small sparsely furnished cabin or room where one goes to pray and fast alone in the presence of God. The word poustinia has its origin in the Russian word for desert. One called to live permanently in a poustinia is called a poustinik. I first became familiar with the concept through […]
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 […]
THE RESURRECTION: MY URBAN GARDEN
“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”—Cicero, 1st century B.C. Isak Dinesen had a farm in Africa at the foot of the Ngong Hills. I have a native plant garden in Pasadena. Unlike Dinesen (“Out of Africa”), however, I don’t “own” my garden. It’s behind the Craftsman where I […]
RISKING REALITY
Okay, folks, here we go! NOTE: THE MEETING WILL REQUIRE A PASSWORD. EMAIL ME AT HDKING719@GMAIL.COM AND I’LL GET IT TO YOU. HEATHER KING is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting. Topic: HEATHER KING’s HOLY WEEK Zoom Meeting Time: Apr 6, 2020 01:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada) Join Zoom Meeting https://us04web.zoom.us/j/573428264 Meeting […]
LET’S ZOOM
Speaking of echoing that yes, here’s a thought: would anyone be interested in a zoom gathering? Just a kind of get-together and check-in during these challenging quarantine times. I myself have historically been VEHEMENTLY opposed to all forms of online video communication and until two weeks ago had never once in my life Skyped or […]
“POOR CLARE”: A PLAY BY CHIARA ATIK
Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins: I was scheduled to attend the performance of the play described below on Sunday, March 13. But like just about everything else in these uncertain times the opening has been postponed and the show was cancelled. Nonetheless, the theater says the set is up and everything’s […]
EVEN THE DARK: POEMS BY LESLIE WILLIAMS
Award-winning poet Leslie Williams grew up in North Carolina, lived and worked in Washington D.C., Seattle, and Charlottesville (where she earned a grad degree in English), got married, moved to Chicago, had a son, moved back to DC, had another son, and moved to Boston area where she and her family have been for fifteen […]
ECHO THAT YES
“Our Lady said yes. She said yes for us all. It was as if the human race were a little dark house, without light or air, locked and latched. The wind of the Spirit had beaten on the door, rattled the windows, tapped on the dark glass with the tiny hands of flowers, flung golden […]