Monday, July 10, 2000 [Christianity Today, July 10, 2000]
I've been thinking lately about Mary Hartman's husband's hat.
You might remember the late-70's TV show, "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman." This Norman Lear satire of a soap opera showcased the strange citizens of the mythical town of Ferndale. Mary's husband Tom
Monday, May 22, 2000 [Christianity Today, May 22, 2000]
So one day this guy hears his doorbell ring and he goes to answer the door. He doesn't see anybody there, but looking down he sees a snail creeping along the welcome mat. He picks it up and tosses it far across the lawn.
Thursday, May 18, 2000 [Beliefnet, May 18, 2000]
Way back in 1969, my husband was one of the hundreds of thousands who went to Woodstock --the original one. He says all he remembers is "lying on the ground a lot."
I didn't go; I was too young. But I listened diligently to the three-record set, and wished I had been there. It all sounded so heroic: Joan Baez's talk about draft resistance, Arlo Guthrie's celebration of drug smuggling, references to "the pigs" that conjured an Establishment bent on oppression.
The Culture Saturday, May 13, 2000 [Los Angeles Times, May 13, 2000]
"The Book of Heaven," by Carol Zaleski and Philip Zaleski, Oxford University Press, 448 pages, $35.
Imagine there's a heaven. At the word, a pop-up tableau instantly unfolds and feathers from moulting wings drift into the air. Before a plywood set spray-painted gold, choir voices sing with determined cheer, like a power drill going through steel.
Monday, January 24, 2000 [Crosswalk, January 24, 2000]
A few weeks after Christmas the mega-vast-o-giant-super-warehouse-store is nearly empty. A few shoppers linger in the dog food and vacuum cleaner aisles, looking diminutive as fairies. Whole acres of luggage and appliances are deserted, and the vacant cement floors are smooth and clean. I expect to see a tumbleweed roll by.
The Culture Monday, January 11, 1999 [Christianity Today, January 11, 1999]
When I was first approached about becoming a member of the Spice Girls, I was a little taken aback. My impression was that this troupe of British singers was salacious and provocative, one more example of the debasing of our culture.
"I'm embarassed to admit it, Mom," my 21-year-old daughter confessed, "but I actually liked the movie. It's harmless--a teenybopper thing, like for preteen girls. It's singing Barbies, and there's nothing dirty about it. It has that nutty English humor, kind of like the Beatles' Help!, so I actually ended up really enjoying it--I even watched it twice."
Monday, September 7, 1998 [Christianity Today, September 7, 1998]
I flipped back the corners of the rugs, one after another. It was a clammy, rainy day, and these hand-knotted wool specimens from Iran, Pakistan, India, and China were giving off a fresh-from-the-sheep smell. I didn't know what I was doing; I'd never shopped for a rug before. But the one thing that struck me as I gazed at one gorgeous carpet after another was that they looked too perfect.
Then I peeled back one more layer and saw a rug that won my heart.
Friday, August 14, 1998 [Utne Reader, August 1998]
One of the best pieces of spiritual advice I ever received was one I fortunately gained early, while still in college. It was that I should give up the project of assembling my own private faith out of the greatest hits of the ages. I encountered this idea while reading Ramakrishna, the nineteenth century Hindu mystic. He taught that it was important to respect the integrity of each great path, and said that, for example, when he wanted to explore Christianity he would take down his images of the Great Mother and substitute images of Jesus and Mary.
Monday, July 13, 1998 [Christianity Today, July 13, 1998]
Pundits and commentators, who normally consider themselves more open-minded than the plodding masses, have been rocked by a discovery in the last six months: when it comes to a president's indiscretions, most people just don't care. "But you're supposed to be outraged,"
The Culture Monday, May 18, 1998 [Christianity Today, May 18, 1998]
Twenty-four years ago this month I learned something specific. The specificity of what I learned is what makes it, to many, offensive.
Twenty-four years ago a hitchiking jaunt around Europe brought me one afternoon to a church in Dublin.
