Category: TRAVEL

  • DEAR MAKER OF THE STARRY SKIES

    DEAR MAKER OF THE STARRY SKIES

    First line of another great old-timey hymn…

    We sang it here at St. Andrew’s Abbey the other day at Mass…

    Blessed Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

    I make my final promises as a Benedicine Oblate at today’s Mass. They give you a piece of “parchment” and you hand-write out the pertinent passage of the oblation–“I offer myself to almighty God, through the Blessed Virgin Mary and our Holy Father Benedict…and I do promise before God and all his saints the reformation of my life, and the service of God and humanity…This I do on the 12th day of December, in the year of our Lord, 2024″…

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  • PERSONAL COST

    PERSONAL COST

    “For it is always true that God never invites us closer to himself unless this invitation comes with a personal cost.”
    –Fr. Donald Haggerty, Contemplative Enigmas

    Just thinking to check in, after twelve or so days in LA, each packed to the gills with people, walking, talking, eating, prayer…

    I will head up to one of my brothers in the high desert up the I-15 tomorrow, and then leave early Thursday for the long drive home badk to Tucson.

    Where do we come from? Where are we going? Where do we belong? How can we best serve?

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  • FUN IN LA

    FUN IN LA

    Continuing with my whirlwind life, I drove from Tucson to LA last Friday and have been nonstop with people, eating, gabbing, exchanging info, walking, planning.

    SCENES FROM MAH FANCY BOOK PARTY!

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  • TRAVELS IN VENICE

    TRAVELS IN VENICE

    Here’s how this week’s arts and culture piece begins:

    Venice is a city founded in A.D. 421 that exists entirely on water, whose streets and alleys have hardly changed in centuries, and is navigated either on foot or by little boats called vaporettos that zip along the canals.

    It’s as if a tiny corner of the world had been dipped in resin around the turn of the 16th century and has been slowly, picturesquely deteriorating ever since.

    Whole libraries have been written about its history, buildings, art, palace intrigues, and near hallucinatory effect on visitors.

    READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.

  • THE VENICE BIEANNALE

    THE VENICE BIEANNALE

    Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins:

    Several months ago, I received a text from an Angelus reader who loves Venice and thought I might, too. The Biennale, the once-every-two-years art extravaganza, was in session. She offered to underwrite the entire trip.

    So of course I went.

    The Biennale’s two main sites are the Giardini (Garden) — a giant garden built by Napoleon at the beginning of the 19th century —and the Arsenale, a huge complex of construction sites dating back to 1104 that symbolize Venice’s economic, political, and military power.

    In addition, myriad exhibits were scattered around the city in churches, galleries, and performance spaces.

    READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.

  • QUEEN OF THE ADRIATIC

    QUEEN OF THE ADRIATIC

    Oy.

    It’s my last day in Venice (have been here a week). Tomorrow I fly back to Dublin, spend a couple of nights, visit the Botanical Garden (which has become a Favorite Place), and then, God willing, fly back to Tucson Monday.

    Three-and-a-half INTENSE weeks. The memoir-writing workshop at Kylemore Abbey; a silent retreat which though wonderful in its way was not “relaxing” or “calming” (for a variety of reasons; one of which was the uncovering during spiritual direction of a possible major area of discernment); and then Venice: a medieval city that exists entirely on water, whose streets and alleys, nooks and crannies have hardly changed in centuries, and that is navigated either on foot or by little boats that zip along the canals called vaporettos.

    I bought a week-long pass and kind of got the hang of the latter, and other than that, I have spent my days walking, peering, visiting museums, churches, and the Venice Biennale (upon which more later).

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  • THE MISUNDERSTOOD HERON: A CONNEMARA FOOD TRUCK

    THE MISUNDERSTOOD HERON: A CONNEMARA FOOD TRUCK

    “Best Weekly Column on Arts, Culture, Food, and Leisure,” said the Catholic Media Association this year of my humble Angelus offering.

    Food! Who knew? Not only had I been derelict in my duty, I realized, but my horizon had considerably widened.

    To that end let me bring you to the Irish village of Leenane, and a food truck with a global following: Misunderstood Heron.

    “Fresh, Local, Never Conventional” are its watchwords.

    A café with wild Atlantic produce and views, the wood-paneled truck sits on a bluff overlooking the Killary Fjord in County Galway’s Connemara coast.

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  • WE SHALL BE RELEASED

    WE SHALL BE RELEASED

    Ha ha I ACCIDENTALLY (on purpose?) posted the draft of a post yesterday with the definition of “immurement” (walling someone, or more to the point yourself, up in a tiny enclosure till you die of starvation or thirst, undertaken I believe by certain anchorite types in the way olden days, though they would have a little window through which people could pass food and water, and seek spiritual advice), then added, That’s how I feel in Tucson!

    I unpublished it right away (I’d meant to make it into something funny down the line), promptly forgot about the whole thing , then received a couple of beautiful messages from friends that made me think, How strange, they are reading my mind about some of the things upon which I’m reflecting here on retreat, and mulling with my director. Then I realized…And now I’ve received a few more emails from commiserating readers, wondering if they missed part of the post…

    Anyway, not to worry.

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  • WHAT IS THE POINT OF LEISURE?

    WHAT IS THE POINT OF LEISURE?

    Last summer I stayed for two months in an Irish village.

    People often pleasantly inquired, “Are you on holiday?” or “So you’re vacationing?”

    “No!” I’d practically shout in reply. “I am not on vacation. I am working.”

    “Oh. Okay,” I could almost hear them thinking, “Because we see you peering into shop windows, eating pastries from the fancy greengrocer, browsing the used bookstore, yakking on your phone, ambling down the Bog Road taking pictures of sheep, incessantly ducking into church… I’m sorry. We thought that signified a holiday.”

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  • NYC TOUR GUIDE

    NYC TOUR GUIDE

    Manhattan, I reflected on a recent trip, is like a giant swaddling cloth, enclosing the Mystical Body.

    Within a block of almost any Mass you can buy a cruller from the coffee-and-donut guy (“There ya go, sweetie”), a box of figs from the fruit guy, a fish gyro from the falafel truck.

    As always when traveling, I walked everywhere I could, leaning toward museums, gardens, and churches.

    I also set aside a day for a subway trip to Washington Heights, way up toward the north tip of the island. Step out of the 190th Street train station and you’ll see a raucous public basketball court and playground, right next to the St. Frances Cabrini Shrine.

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  • OFF TO IRELAND

    OFF TO IRELAND

    Whoa, I have barely had a moment to breathe for the last two-and-a-half weeks. I’m off to Dublin, there to spend a night at an aiport hotel, to meet up with my friend Dee who is renting a car and BRAVELY DRIVING us to Kylemore Abbey on Saturday, to settle in, and to give the first talk of our weeklong memoir retreat on Sunday evening.

    Then we’ll both do a week-long silent retreat at Ards Friary, then we’ll go back to Dublin, again spend a night at the airport, Dee will fly home the next day and I will proceed on to Venice for another week. Then back to Dublin for two nights with my dear friend Muireann.

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  • ONE SLOT OPEN FOR MEMOIR WRITING WORKSHOP IN IRELAND!

    ONE SLOT OPEN FOR MEMOIR WRITING WORKSHOP IN IRELAND!

    Due to a last-minute cancellation, one slot has opened for my week-long Memoir Writing Workshop at Kylemore Abbey in Connemara, Ireland, September 8-13. Details HERE.

    Come join us! There’s a chef. 

  • LORD, HOW I HAVE LOVED THE BEAUTY OF THY HOUSE

    LORD, HOW I HAVE LOVED THE BEAUTY OF THY HOUSE

    I am back from NY as of last night, and what a rich and fruitful trip. Many reflections.

    One is that we carry within us little compartments, mansions, to which the door can remain shut for weeks, months, years–and then a smell, the view down a street, a face, a series of sounds, a landscape, can open the door once again upon a long vista…

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  • FRIED-BRAIN SUMMER

    FRIED-BRAIN SUMMER

    Here is something interesting I noted recently:

    GEORGES BRAQUE, FRENCH PAINTER (1882-1963)

    SEPARATED AT BIRTH?

    BORIS “FRANKENSTEIN” KARLOFF, BRITISH ACTOR (1887-1969)
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