Poetry

Hope Holders: Reflections on Mary

Hope holders: Reflections on Mary                       HOPE HOLDERS                   Do you wonder why these beliefs have taken root in your                        Soul?                Roots which deepen, burrow into the secret places of mind and                        Heart? Year after year, prayer by prayer, tear by tear, doubt by doubt until                        Fixed? Do you wonder why you believe

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Religion Begins with Experience

Religion begins with experience Religion does not start out with the notion of God. It starts with a personal experience, the overwhelming experience of ultimate belonging. Religion of the Heart On the wall of the bathroom off the foyer in our new—to us— Texas home hangs a frame with two pictures side by side. They

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A Little Spark Gives Way to a Great Flame

A little spark gives way to a great flame. I’ve known forever that I should read Dante’s Divine Comedy. After all, it’s one of the most famed of all literary writings. Hence we should all have at least a nodding acquaintance with the Inferno and Purgatoria, perhaps even Paradisio, right? But yet I managed to avoid reading

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The Cities of Sin: the Gates of Hell?

The cities of sin: the gates of Hell? A most peculiar title, isn’t it? It’s language is disquieting, even frightening, more terrfying even than Covid19 and its endless vaccines and most assuredly anti-woke. Sin… Hell… The Christian liturgical reading for last Sunday, October 24th was about the blind beggar Bartimeus. It’s one that always reaches

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Sin Is Not In My Lexicon, Dear Friend

Sin is not in my lexicon, dear friend Modern woman and her psyche Sin is not in my lexicon, dear friend—I do what’s good, defined my way. The end. No sense of sin? Friend, then how do you knowthe right, the wrong, the which-way-to-go? Honey, I simply do what I think right:I never harm, I

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the passion of patience

The Passion of Patience

It’s a peculiar phrase: “the passion of patience.” Almost oxymoronic- in its combining the vigor of the heft-filled word passion with the passivity neutrality of patience, it was coined by Venerable Madeleine Debrel. A former atheist turned Catholic apologist who lived and died during the last century. Her poem The Passion of Patience begins with this searing line: The patiences, these

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