The Divine Hours of Lent

Yesterday was my birthday, and I am full of glee this morning…or at least I think what I feel is nearer to outright, childish glee than to anything else I know of. And the reason is that, for the next 364 days, I can honestly say, “I’ll be 75 on my birthday, God willing.” I…

An editor asked me the other day about whether or not I knew of any ideas or concepts floating around out there in religion that had not yet been developed into book-length treatments, but should be. I think I probably frightened the poor man half to death with the unbridled enthusiasm and vigor of my…

Like most other seasons in the liturgical year, Lent is a time, at least in part, for heroes, for remembering and honoring and trying to emulate those who have preceded us in the faith. Lent is remarkably shy on heroines, though. In fact, for years, I thought there were none, until I discovered Hilda of…

I spend a lot of my life in hotels. That’s not a complaint, just an observation. Truth told, I like hotels. Left to my own devices, I have always said, in fact, that I would live in a hotel permanently, assuming I could find one to my liking and that I could afford. There are…

Gene Roddenberry and the Trekkies had it wrong all along. Space is not the final frontier. It never was. The ancients knew that long before there were telescopes with which to ponder space or flying machines with which to pierce it. Space was, and always has been, no more than a continuation of place as…

Yesterday was massage day. Thank God, and I say that reverently. For someone who never had a massage until she was over seventy years of age, I have become an addict of the first order. My body, if not yet creaky in the usual sense, is at least pleased to let me know quite often…

Supposedly and by tradition, Friday is the day of the week set aside by Christians for thinking sober thoughts and considering holy issues. I’m all for that. Lord knows, we probably need a lot more Fridays, if that is the use to which we put them. A little discipline never hurt anybody pointlessly, though it…

A friend of mine—a bookseller, in fact, and therefore a colleague as well as a friend—told me a story the other day. She was driving me to the airport; and we were just making conversation, when she chanced to say that Lent always forces her to revisit a time many years ago when she spent…

There’s just no accounting for the ways of religion. They wind in and out through the centuries of history like the tracings of drunken snails, though almost all of them are the handiwork of good and godly men and women who meant only to speak the truth and pass it on. Nowhere in Christianity is…

Last week-end, I was in Michigan, that most cordial and beautiful of states, when it happened again. It was Friday, and the luncheon spread for the meeting I was addressing was a buffet of roast beef and thin-sliced, baked ham for sandwiches, with some nice cheese choices as supplements or substitutes. There was the usual,…

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