Spanning the Globe to Bring You the Constant Variety of Posts

It was the noonday hour, under a man-eating Charleston sun, the air so full of humidity it made me wish for a set of gills beneath my earlobes. - from a Pat Conroy novel

Once upon a time in Texas, men and women did things. Blood feuds were enacted, brooding Gothic novels were written, railroads were built, ranches were fenced off. The men fought, drank, swung hammers, sang. The women bore children, sewed quilts, slaved over hot stoves, and glowed (not sweated). And they did it all without air conditioning. Man, those guys were tough. - Mrs. Darwin of "Darwin Catholic"

Miss Irwin engaged another kind of mystery, The Mystery, which is not a puzzle, for the answer is provided to all those who have faith in divine providence. - Fr. George Rutler

Christ, with his infinite knowledge of the human heart, knew that we tend to be blocked, and then act badly, out of shame and guilt. Kafka's The Trial rings so true because on some level we sense that we are always being judged for an unknown offense that we're not sure we committed. The Misfit, in Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find" voices this same dilemma in a different way: our existential loneliness is so excruciatingly painful that we can't help feeling we're being punished to an extent that goes far beyond our "crimes"--no matter how bad they were. So even after our track record starts to improve, we tend to think the painful things that happen in life are somehow our fault. Over and over again, because it seems to make sense, we upload the old image. I think the function of prayer is to very slowly change that. After a long, and seemingly unrewarded, and more or less unswerving, doggedly persistent effort we get a tiny glimpse of the possibility of starting to upload a new image. We start to see that we actually have some control over the image of ourselves and the world that we carry secretly around, and mull over, and harbor, and base our decisions and lives upon. We start to dare to believe that we are loved, and have been all along, in spite of our brokenness. - Heather King of "Shirt of Flame"

Almost everything about Los Angeles seemed wrong but we came anyway. Maybe it was the birds-of-paradise and Mexican sage and bougainvillea, maybe it was that we both knew there weren’t that many more years in which we might have the energy and impetus to make a major move, maybe in the end it was the light: so seductive, so beckoning, so full of hope. When we first moved, to a rented house in the Culver City neighborhood of Palms, I got a load of the cars shining in the driveways, the shady green lawns, and the first night propped my bike against an angel-pink oleander in the side yard and went to bed. The bike was gone in the morning, of course, a perfect introduction to the trompe l’oeil contradictions with which every Los Angeleno resides, and that even now keep me wondering from second to second whether I am living in heaven or hell. This sense that appearances are deceiving, that a level of reality exists beyond anything my senses could observe, turned out to be a recurring theme. The woman with jungle-red nails and stiletto heels turned out to sing in the church choir, the teenager on the bus bench with a serpent tattooed on her neck was bringing soup to her grandmother, the black guy who looked like a pimp was a hospice nurse, the Vietnamese guy who looked like a hospice nurse was a crack dealer. - - Heather King of "A Shirt of Flame"

I need a new image for contemplation, a new soul transporting, sensory enlivening image that helps me love this life and this mess and all these unlovely people with whom I share this bit of earth a little more. The image would have to be darker than the halogen lights at Wal-mart, more painful than brushing up against my fellow consumers, more odiferous than my van. It might have to have some blood in it, death even, to remind me that I’m not actually hurting. And for location, someplace I’d never want to go, a place so hideous it could only be called The Skull. - Betty Duffy

I chose the Cross. I'd choose it again. And I'm trying to make amends with the fact that by some odd series of historical events (the industrial revolution, the commercialization of farming, capitalism, and my having five children) that means Wal-mart is going to have ME by the balls. - Betty Duffy

She [Mother Theresa] would kiss the hands of the priest who had given her Communion in thanks for having brought Jesus, but she had no illusions: More than once did I hear her say how people wherever she went felt betrayed by priests. Nonetheless she asked them to remember her as the drop of water mingled with the wine in the preparation of the chalice. - Fr. George Rutler