Today, I am reposting my friend Deacon Walter Johnson’s eulogy that I had the honor of writing and delivering at his Requiem Mass two years ago. This is in honor of his passing and also of his birthday, which was yesterday. Walter was a good friend of mine through St. Thomas the Apostle, and I…
Tag: faith
Remembering Leonard Cohen
When Leonard Cohen died back in 2016, I felt as if I’d lost a lifelong friend. He was eighty-two then—still spry the last time I saw him perform, first in Las Vegas and then in Los Angeles. Ray and I even flew to Denver to hear him again, though that concert was rained out. We…
What My Brother Taught Me About Grace
I was thinking today about how my brother George faced one of the greatest adversities of his life shortly after he got sober. His life changed abruptly after a small, non-healing sore in his mouth was diagnosed as cancer, and two weeks later he was at M.D. Anderson preparing to have his jaw and the…
From History to Fiction: The Priest Who Inspired Father Briggs in Hope in a Time of Dying
Father Briggs, the priest in Hope in a Time of Dying, draws inspiration from the life and ministry of the Rev. Carroll Barbour, longtime rector of St. Thomas the Apostle Church in Hollywood. In the 1980s and 1990s, when fear and stigma around HIV and AIDS ran high, Father Barbour opened the doors of St….
We’re More Than Labels
Today, I did something a little unusual. I was tired and while resting I started mentally listing all the people I knew growing up. I’m from a little Texas town of 7,000, and there were 125 people in my graduating class. Most of those people started with me in first grade and went all the…
The View From Here: On Family, Writing, Faith, and the Peace of Enough
When I was younger, I imagined that by the time I reached this stage of life, I’d have quite the list of accomplishments. Surely, I’d be well-traveled, widely read, impressively fit, financially successful, and the proud author of at least three books—all while raising a wonderful family and enjoying a happy marriage. The reality looks…
A Meditation on Joy
Joy is a visceral reaction that is for me less frequent than happiness and also less easily obtained. There is no product to buy that will automatically produce joy – at least to my knowledge – and there is no advertising campaign that aims to sell joy (except, ironically, for a dishwashing liquid). Every consumer…
On Forgiveness For Our Misdoings
If you look back far enough, you can see that we’ve all been scoundrels a few times in our lives. We’ve fibbed to cover up something we weren’t proud we did or downright lied when confronted but were afraid of the consequences. We’ve omitted information that could evoke a negative response or gotten too angry…
The Things We Carry: My Friend Walter’s Rosary
I have been carrying a wooden rosary around for several months now. It’s in my computer bag, and I haven’t used it once—so far—to say the rosary. It was one of the objects gathered from the apartment of the late Deacon Walter Johnson, who, in his mid-80s, died unexpectedly last year. Everyone who knew him…
Christmas Morning at St. Thomas the Apostle, Hollywood
We began our Christmas morning at Rachael and Andrew’s house in Covina, where we’d spent the night after an all-day Christmas Eve celebration with our family, most of Andrew’s immediate family, and our son-in-law Ron’s mother, Cindy. We had coffee and Thai food leftovers from Christmas Eve, then drove 30 miles to Hollywood to celebrate…
20 Minutes a Day 