Am I alone in this? Or do you, too, have certain saints you just can’t cotton to? God forgive me and I’m sure she’s praying for me in heaven, but I cannot for the life of me for example get the appeal of St. Faustina and that corny Divine Mercy painting. She’s always telling some […]
THE TRAGICOMEDY OF THE CROSS
FAITH HEALER: A PLAY BY BRIAN FRIEL
Kathryn Kuhlman (1907-1976), a Methodist faith healer and born-again Christian, had a weekly program in the 1960’s and 1970’s that I sorely regret having missed. How can you not love an evangelist who was married (briefly) to a man named Burroughs A. Waltrip of Dallas, and who was sued by her personal administrator for purportedly […]
THE ADVENTURERS’ CLUB OF LA
The Adventurers’ Club of Los Angeles, established in 1921, is a private men’s club that occasionally opens its doors to ladies for an evening that includes dinner and a lecture. I attended on one such recent night and found myself thrust into a delightful warp of time and culture. Located at the juncture of the […]
A MOUTHFUL OF FAILURE
“Would it not be impossible for us to avoid evangelizing if the Gospel is in our skin, our hands, our hearts, and our heads? We are indeed obliged to say why we are trying to be what we want to be, and trying not to be what we don’t want to be…Clearly we have to […]
RICHARD, WE HARDLY KNEW YE
One of our favorite relatives, known to me as Cousin Dickie, died last Friday. Here’s the obit I worked up: Richard G. King, 80, of 1459 Ocean Boulevard died on March 15 after a long illness. Born on July 11, 1938, in Danvers, MA, Richard came as a child to live in Rye Beach [NH] […]
NEVER TOO LATE
I have written at length of Thérèse of Lisieux’s famous Christmas Eve conversion. This year I had a little one of my own! I write about it HERE. Headed up to the Central Coast for the week–wishing you all peace, hope and joy.
FINDING WORDS FOR TODAY’S COURT OF PUBLIC OPINION
I spend so much time alone, pondering and praying, that I sometimes forget much of the world holds very different views than I do. The other day, for example, while talking to a secular friend, I (very unwisely) burst forth with an impassioned description of an essay I was working on. “It’s about womanhood, and […]
LIGHTEN UP, ALREADY
From a piece by Andrew Sullivan from New York Magazine, dated December 7, 2018, entitled “America’s New Religions”: “For many, especially the young, discovering a new meaning in the midst of the fallen world is thrilling. And social-justice ideology does everything a religion should. It offers an account of the whole: that human life and […]
STRIPPED: BACK IN BUSINESS!
I have re-acquired the rights to my beloved cancer memoir, STRIPPED! Here’s a page with an audio excerpt and the opening chapter. This is a really I must say worthy book that I had originally self-published, and that was then bought by Loyola Press. Which was very kind of them, except that they changed the […]
RING OUT, WILD BELLS
RING OUT, WILD BELLS Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,The flying cloud, the frosty light:The year is dying in the night;Ring out, wild bells, and let him die. Ring out the old, ring in the new,Ring, happy bells, across the snow:The year is going, let him go;Ring out the false, ring in the […]
“SWEETHEART, COME!”: ADVENT WAITING
In this season of waiting, I think of Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” the Chinese novelist Ha Jin’s “Waiting,” and T. S. Eliot’s “Wait Without Hope”: “I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope For hope would be hope for the wrong thing”… We wait for the results of the biopsy, the […]
THE OBSCURITY OF BETHLEHEM
“Now he comes to be born in the narrowness of our lives, to be incarnate in us, to give his love to the world through us, through our flesh and blood. That is one meaning of the Incarnation. The reason why we are where we are this Christmas, in this house, family, office, workroom, hospital, […]
THOUGHTS ON SHOPPING
I actually had several people ask me last week if I “observed” Black Friday. Are you kidding me? I don’t even like to shop during the rest of the year. And why on God’s green earth would I need any new “electronics?” Above, for example, is my “sound system,” purchased from (the now defunct) Circuit […]
THE VIRTUE OF LAUGHTER
“If this is how You treat your friends, it is no wonder You have so few!”–St Teresa of Avila, to God, allegedly after falling off her horse into the mud. “In the age of social media, virtue is not defined by how compassionately you act. Virtue is defined by how vehemently you react to that […]