This ‘sacred space’ nourishes body and soul For two days now, since I read about a new Chicago travel book set to hit the market later this year, I’ve had a Grateful Dead song stuck in my head. No, not “Truckin’.” It’s “Scarlet Begonias.” Specifically, the line where Jerry sings, “Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right.” The book that inspired my consciousness to play the darn... Read more

Finding happiness is easier than you might think It’s four. Degrees. Farenheit. One, two, three, four. That’s enough to make even the sunniest of dispositions a little frosty. So if you’re anything like me — by nature a little more salty than sweet — the ungodly deep freeze has elevated every day surly to a whole different existential plane. Lately, I’ve put the grrrr in grumpy. Just ask my colleagues and my husband as they dive to get out of... Read more

More answers from Cardinal George on ‘Da Vinci Code’ Well, that struck a nerve. As the e-mails poured in from far and wide in response to last week’s column about Dan Brown’s novel The DaVinci Code (fact, fiction or both?), I started to wonder if I might hear from all of the readers of the 4.5 million copies in print. I didn’t. But those who wrote me missives and hit the “send” button sure felt passionately about the novel and... Read more

Cardinal takes a crack at ‘The Da Vinci Code’ Let’s corner Dan Brown and noogie him until he tells us the truth about his book The Da Vinci Code. Who’s with me? I think I might have at least one joiner, if my conversation the other day with Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George was any indication. “I resent the book, because it does undermine people’s faith,” the cardinal was telling me the other day while we were kvetching about Da Vinci.... Read more

The skinny behind those cheeseburgers in paradise FARGO, N.D.– A 1,600-mile road trip is not exactly the most conducive atmosphere for beginning or keeping a New Year’s resolution. Particularly if said resolution involves not eating something that comes wrapped in metallic paper and delivered via a drive-through window. It is, however, quite conducive to obsessively scanning the FM dial for a National Public Radio station, listening to audio books that you normally wouldn’t read, and fighting with the spouse over... Read more

A Christmas present that kept shrinking BIG SKY, Montana — Blaise Pascal, the 17th century French philosopher whose deep thoughts were collected in the work Pensees, once said that the “greatest perceptible mark of God’s omnipotence” can be found in nature. Sitting in a cabin a few feet from the snow-covered banks of the Gallatin River with Lone Peak towering 11,000 feet above me in the distance and moose tracks leading into the forest right over there, it seems easy... Read more

Miracles are everywhere if you know where to look As I write this, I’m sitting next to a Christmas tree in a hospital reception area waiting for a miracle. Not a parting-of-the-Red-Sea kind of miracle. Not a Virgin Mary on a tree trunk, nor a weeping icon. It’s more of a Hanukkah kind of a miracle. According to scripture, the miracle that Hanukkah commemorates wasn’t particularly flashy. There was no burning bush, no plague of darkness. As the story goes,... Read more

GODSTUFF IS SOMEBODY UP THERE KEEPING AN EYE ON THE CUBS? (First printed in the Sun-Times October 3, 2003) Is God a Cubs fan? Arnold Kanter certainly seems to think so. Every Yom Kippur for the last 20 years, Kanter, a 60-year-old, self-described “recovering lawyer” and Cubs season ticket holder, has stepped up to the microphone at the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation in Evanston between services to plead his case. In 1999, he published his collected Yom Kippur musings in a... Read more

CONSIDER OTHER THINGS $75 BILLION CAN DO (March 28, 2003) President Bush has asked Congress to approve a $75 billion supplemental funding request to finance the war in Iraq. Seventy-five. Billion. With a “buh.” Billion. The troops are on the ground, the bombs have begun to fall, millions of artillery shells already have been spent, so I suppose we have to pay for it. I’m not suggesting that we don’t. We have to. We’re in this deep. The president says... Read more

WHEN YOUR BABY BROTHER GOES OFF TO WAR: He’s putting himself in danger, and he says it’s his decision(March 21, 2003) I remember the day he was born–my baby brother, all red hair and squawking. I remember his first birthday, him covered head to toe in chocolate cake. I remember when he learned to swim, ride a bike, tie his shoes. I remember the neighborhood bullies picking on him, and me bolting out of the house waving two kitchen pots... Read more