Category: TRAVEL

  • BACK FROM RETREAT

    BACK FROM RETREAT

    “Perhaps the saints became holy because they never made peace with the impossibility of seeing God in this life. Among the poor, or in the midst of hostile or indifferent souls, they went in search of his face, only to return again to the silence of prayer where God once more hid himself. These souls lived as though always on the verge of finding a treasure and never succeeding. Blind and groping, cast back into darkness after refusing every partial vision–this was always preferable to taking comfort in a brilliant shadow.”
    –Fr. Donald Haggerty, from Contemplative Provocations

    “It is yearning that makes the heart deep.”
    –St. Augustine

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  • SEDUCED

    SEDUCED

    “Thus says the Lord: I will allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak to her heart” (Hosea 2:13).

    Dateline: July 8, 2024: Quality Inn and Suites I-10, Indio, California

    They don’t say what KIND of quality…and when they say I-10, turns out they don’t mean near the freeway, they mean ON the freeway…

    Some people this time of year go to a refreshing beach, or a lake where they can fish and listen to the loons, or to a cabin in the piney mountains. I chose the Coachella Valley, which promises to top out each day this week at over 110 degrees. Yesterday the high was 115 and the low, which means around 4 a.m., 82.

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  • MY WAY

    MY WAY

    Every once in a while I see the things people post on Instagram or Facebook while they travel.

    Almost always they’re selfies, with the traveler (usu. female) in a fetching frock, sunhat, and groovy tote. Strolling along a sunlit tropical beach. Eating bouillibaisse in a striped sailor’s jersey in Marseille. Chatting gaily with colorful local characters in Greece, Australia, Thailand. Packing smartly, effortlessly hailing cabs, whisked to whatever airport in air-conditioned limos.

    My own travel is an entirely different affair. I look upon travel as sacred obligation, pilgrimage, and mosty penance. Taking a picture of myself is the absolute last thing I want to do or post, and when anyone asks to take a photo with me I have to restrain myself from snarling and make a grim, heroic effort to smile and comply. Not that I hate the way I look. Nor is it that especially whilst traveling I am far from my best. It’s just….why?

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  • COURAGE

    COURAGE

    From Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, of The Little Prince fame:

    “What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it” (quoting his friend Henri Guillaumet, who flew the mail between Chile and Argentina and on Friday 13 June 1930, while crossing the Andes for the 92nd time, crashed his plane due to bad weather and walked for a week over three mountain passes before being rescued).

    “Guillaumet was one among those bold and generous men who had taken upon themselves the task of spreading their foliage over bold and generous horizons. To be a man is, precisely, to be responsible. It is to feel shame at the sight of what seems to be unmerited misery. It is to take pride in a victory won by one’s comrades. It is to feel, when setting one’s stone, that one is contributing to the building of the world.

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  • BRIDESHEAD REVISITED AND OTHER TRAVELS

    BRIDESHEAD REVISITED AND OTHER TRAVELS

    I am safe home from my trip to LA and other points California, and very glad to be here. The cacti are beginning their glorious spring bloom.

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  • I AM ON A LONELY ROAD

    I AM ON A LONELY ROAD

    And for all you Joni Mitchell fans, I am traveling…

    Here’s a video, dateline West Hollywood.

    For my readers are never far from my mind and heart!

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  • THE OCTAVE OF EASTER

    I am off to LA and environs tomorrow to celebrate the Resurrection.

    Many books in tow.

    Here’s a little video I worked up. Wishing one and all a beautiful week.

  • JOIN ME FOR A JUNE CATHOLIC ART INSTITUTE RETREAT IN DC

    JOIN ME FOR A JUNE CATHOLIC ART INSTITUTE RETREAT IN DC

    Yep, I am ON THE MOVE.

    The Catholic Art Institute is headed up by Barb Nicolosi, force-of-nature professor, screenwriter, speaker, passionate promoter of the arts, general mover-and-shaker, and Red Sox fan.

    Also my friend.

    Here’s the link to what promises to be a fantastic weekend.

    We will be housed at the Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land. I mean come on.

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  • JOIN ME THIS SUMMER FOR A MEMOIR-WRITING WORKSHOP IN IRELAND!

    JOIN ME THIS SUMMER FOR A MEMOIR-WRITING WORKSHOP IN IRELAND!

    Capture Your Life’s Fire: A Memoir Writing Workshop September 8-13, 2024.

    MARCH PROMO FOR $100 OFF: EARLYBIRD100.

    Here’s your big chance! To kick-start your memoir, travel to Ireland, hang out in Kylemore’s walled Victorian Garden.

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  • BACK FROM GUATEMALA

    BACK FROM GUATEMALA

    I have returned from my Guatamalan triathlon.

    Josué, my “sponsored child,” was an unalloyed delight, as were his parents. Lovely, lovely people. We had an interpreter and a social worker, both of whom could not have been kinder or more helpful. We ate snacks, did a jigsaw puzzle together, the whole bunch of us, finishing literally as lunch was being put down on the table, and in general had a grand old time.

    They (who have so so much less than me) bought gifts: a hand-woven mat, several little hand-woven baskets, a green tapestry and a beautiful embroidered red runner, now hanging on my wall, that reads: “Para Heather: Con carino [Love, fondness, tenderness, affection, kindness, concern] de Josue Su Ahijado [Godson].”

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  • SURRENDER, ON VARIOUS FRONTS

    SURRENDER, ON VARIOUS FRONTS

    I have now got me a whole stack of Fr. Walter Ciszek prayer cards which I obtained by filling out a form and sending it through the mail with a check, old-school, to the Father Walter Ciszek Prayer League.

    There were a few to choose from. I went from the image on the front which kind of doesn’t even look like the one in the photo but no matter. The surrender prayer on the back, especially considering what he went through, both broke and spoke deeply to my own heart. Even after they let him come home from Russia, Father wrote about how he felt a stranger.

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  • ALWAYS MERCY: A KENYAN HOSPICE

    ALWAYS MERCY: A KENYAN HOSPICE

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

    Always Mercy, a nonprofit, Christ-centered organization dedicated to helping the poor and needy of Kenya, was founded in 2022 by Pamela Boehle-Silva, an RN and a Lutheran deaconess from Rocklin, California.

    Rehema Open Door Hospice and Palliative Care Center: the first and only such facility serving 5 million people in the area of Kenya’s Homa Bay, is its main focus.

    You can learn more, as well as about the organization’s history, mission, and other projects, at alwaysmercy.org.

    It all started in 2006, when Pamela was invited to Africa by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Kenya. At the time, the continent was in the grip of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

    READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.

  • OUR VOCATION IS LOVE

    OUR VOCATION IS LOVE

    Last summer I gave a retreat entitled “The Vocation of the Artist” at Kylemore Abbey in Connemara, Ireland.

    The retreatants varied in age, nationality, demographic, and religious orientation.

    Some but not all were working artists.

    One young American woman was painting a series of Irish holy wells. Another, from Dublin, had designed stamps for An Post, the Irish postal service. One man, a Joycean scholar, wrote for The Irish Times. A 36-year-old woman taught at an inner-city Dublin school.

    Our credo was a quote from Russian playwright and short-story writer Anton Chekhov: “If you want to work on your art, work on your life.”

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  • BECOMING A BENEDICTINE OBLATE

    BECOMING A BENEDICTINE OBLATE

    I spent the first week of Advent at St. Andrew’s Abbey, the Benedictine monastery in the unincorporated community of Valyermo (Spanish: “Barren Valley”) located an hour and half northeast of LA in the Mojave Desert.

    My history with St. Andrew’s goes way back. In 2000, four years after I came into the Church, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Who to turn to? How to face my mortality? Where to pray?

    At the time I was barely acquainted with the “retreat” concept, but to get away by myself in silence and solitude proved to be a tremendous balm.

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