There are times, even in polite company, when a believer can feel like the last duck left in hunting season, flapping past the blind in a bulls-eye patterned sweater. In such circumstances, I will occasionally describe myself as a liturgical agnostic. Despite the apparent cheek, it’s not a joke. The phrase means something important to me … More DOUBT AND THE CREED
I WAS IN NEW YORK THAT DAY – watched the Towers from my apartment. I could go on, but given where these 14 years have led me, I’d like to say something about what happened a few days later. 9/11/2001 was a Tuesday, and by week’s end I was in Montreal, traveling there by train. … More Balm in Canada-9/11
It is the greatest story ever told. And you are there – not as a spectator, but a player at its very heart. Good Friday. An occasion in the Western Catholic Church when the Passion according to St John is proclaimed interactively. As a congregant, you’re cast in multiple roles – including member of the crowd, … More GIVE ME BARABBAS!
It is a rare person who hasn’t experienced the mystic bond between memory and the senses. How, for example, a certain smell can, like a time machine, transport us instantly to a place, and moment, in our past. Five senses are what we’re meant to have. New York, as it happens, is a city of five … More Memories of a Staten Island Childhood
Years ago, my mother and father, brother and I spent our summer vacations at the Downingtown Motor Inn in Pennsylvania. To me it was Shangri-la; a place of enchantment and matrix to many happy memories. One night, the hotel held a Jeopardy-type contest for kids that I wound up winning. From the several prizes available, … More LUNCH WITH MR. SORENSEN
Joni Mitchell is a wonder of the world. In my reckoning anyway. And not because I found a home in Canada. She long ago decamped to a canyon in California, apparently without looking back. In any event, a song of hers, “Woodstock,” got me thinking recently. In its most quoted stanza, she distills stark mystery … More A Divided Society Is Already Conquered
On October 2, Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi national, and Washington Post contributor, walked into his country’s consulate in Istanbul. He was never seen again. Mr Khashoggi was executed, brutally and swiftly it seems. We can’t be sure, of course, because what happened took place in secret, deep within the precincts of a fortified … More Jamal Khashoggi and Vincent Lambert Were Executed
GRIEF Grief hollows excavates with sparking picks and groans of spent marl turned tear-made mud heaped heavy on blistering spades – 3/24/19
‘Cross windy-wicked, slate-sewn fields the Gaelic minstrel plies fingers blistering on the lyre his cry soars high and clear remembering the Wanderer’s oath, missing most, the sea. – tjk
What are you doing tomorrow? This tailwind turning the page of each done day to the ribboned gift of the next tomorrow may not come, we know, but do not know as they do the old, the ill, those struck still, whose pillows hold, not promise but guarantee, what hope tucks them in when, should … More WHAT ARE YOU DOING TOMORROW?
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