SINNERS MAKE THE BEST SAINTS:A VIDEO TRIBUTE TO JOHNNY CASH Read more

GOD TALK: ANNE LAMOTT AND GOD GIRL One of the most daunting and perpetually frustrating things about writing for a newspaper is that invariably I end up having far more information that I desperately want to communicate than I have space. Every week it’s like trying to wrestle a buffalo into a bento box. Not surprisingly, last week that was precisely the predicament I found myself in after having a really lovely interview/chat with the author Anne Lamott for my... Read more

THE MIRACLE WORKER: BONO REFLECTS ON 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE TREATY OF ROME (Photo: Signing of the Treaty of Rome, March 25, 1957) A Time for MiraclesBy Bono Fifty years ago this week, the idea of Europe was set to paper, on a continent unsettled but past the worst of the postwar period. The air was clear of sulfur if not spleen. Ireland was a small rock in the North Atlantic made relevant only by its cultural totems and ever... Read more

GODSTUFF: THE BAD GIRL OF CHRISTIANITY RIDES AGAIN: ANNE LAMOTT Anne Lamott is the kind of Christian who makes a lot of other Christians nervous. I think it’s because she’s really honest. She’s honest about her sins, her foibles and her faith, and she makes no excuses for any of them. She’s wide open about her less-than-perfect faith walk, about being a single mother, a recovering addict, a bleeding-heart liberal, neurotic, insecure and wickedly funny. Lamott has chronicled her wacky... Read more

TODAY IN GOD:RELIGION NEWS BITES FOR YOUR SNACKING PLEASURE ____________________________________________________________________________________Whaddyaknow? Not enough. You? The Dallas Morning News has posted online a great religious literacy quiz taken from Stephen Prothero’s nifty new book, Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know – and Doesn’t In its review of Prothero’s book, Publisher’s Weekly had this to say: Prothero (American Jesus), chair of the religion department at Boston University, begins this valuable primer by noting that religious illiteracy is rampant in the United... Read more

TODAY IN GOD:RELIGION NEWS BITES FOR YOUR SNACKING PLEASURE____________________________________________________________________________________ ‘Bleeding’ Jesus portrait draws crowds of worshipers, curious PORT BLAIR, India — Thousands of people are flocking to a policeman’s house in India’s remote Andaman Islands to pray in front of two portraits of Jesus Christ, which are said to have been “bleeding” for the past two weeks, police and witnesses said. Eric Nathaniel, a police radio operator, found red fluid trickling down a portrait of Jesus in his house two... Read more

FIRST DAY OF SPRING: OHMMMMMMMMMMMMM Have you heard about the Daily Om? It’s a free daily spiritual thought thingy that is sent each morning to your email inbox. While it leans toward the tree huggery, or, as one of my favorite Irish writers, Marian Keyes, might describe it — “feathery-strokery” — sometimes it’s profound or just plain lovely. Today, in its ode on the vernal equinox, is one of those days. An Astounding AffirmationSpringtime Spring comes when the earth, coaxed... Read more

GERVAIS AND GELDOF AND BONO — OH MY! Brazziliant! Ricky Gervais is a comic God and the rest of the lads are hilarious as well. This is from the annual Red Nose Comic Relief event in Britain. I laughed so hard I snorted. More than once. Best line: (from the voice of disembodied The Edge) “Oh, I could murrrrder a Guinness.” Read more

A LITTLE NOSH AND SHMOOZ: IF YOU’RE IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD … If you’re not busy for lunch this Wednesday and are in the vacinity of Chicago’s North Shore, swing by the Hadassah luncheon where my brilliant and ridiculously handsome husband, Maurice Possley, will be joining me for a chat about our books — The God Factor (mine) and Everybody Pays and The Brown’s Chicken Massacre (his), as well as our respective journo jobs. Here’s the official info: Hadassah North Shore,... Read more

GODSTUFF: PATRICK: SNAKE WRANGLER OR JUST A SAINT? MALIN HEAD, County Donegal — Standing here at the northernmost point in all of Ireland, with a gale-force wind whipping my hair across my face in penitent lashes, I couldn’t help thinking of my second-favorite place on Earth. Malin Head, for some odd reason — perhaps because it is such a broody, dramatic place, or maybe it’s got something to do with ancestry, or both — is the place I love most.... Read more