Tuesday, May 6

For your consideration:

My review of Paul Elie's The Life You Save May Be Your Own, a book which looks at the lives of Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, Flannery O'Connor, and Thomas Merton in the context of a particular kind of pilgrimage:

“In their different ways, the four writers this book is about sought the truth personally – in charity, in prayer, in art, in philosophy. Their writing was the most personal way of all, for in the act of reading and writing one stranger and another go forth to meet in an encounter of the profoundest sort..They saw religious experience out before them. They read their way toward it. They believed it. They lived it. They made it their own. With us in mind, they put it in writing.”

Comment here on the review, or on any of these figures.

Here's a column about getting ticked off during Mass.

Not an unfamiliar theme in the blogs. Comment here on the content of the column if you like.

A bit more blogging later..

I have a column and a book review I want to post, and I also want to share links to some of the more interesting relic resources I turned up in preparation for the talk, and I want to tell you what I've decided, after four months of dithering, to do with this blog...

Thank you Kalamazoo!

We tooled up to Kalamazoo last night, where I gave a talk on "Saints, Relics and the Incarnation" as part of a diocesan lecture series. It was a very nice evening, met lots of nice people, including a couple of internet acquaintances: Fr. Rob Johansen of the Thrown Back blog and Fr. Brian Stanley, who has been a frequent commentor here and on other blogs. It was the first time I've met any of a citizen of the blogosphere in real life, and it was a treat.

Michael took Joseph out to dinner while I was talking, and then returned in time for refreshments and the question and answer session, my favorite moment of which was an elderly Sister of St. Joseph recounting how she came to possess a whisker of Venerable Solanus Casey.

I wasn't there to see it, but Michael said that when Joseph saw the large representation of a Pieta at the back of the chapel, he announced, "Jee-Jee, tummy hurt!"