By Michael Patrick O’Brien– I have a strange and nostalgic affection for Quonset huts.  My odd architectural ardor for the prefab semi-circular metal structures that housed World War II airplanes…

 By Michael Patrick O’Brien– As a kid, Daniel Shanahan loved to visit his uncle, a Trappist monk at New Melleray Abbey in Iowa. Shanahan considered joining a monastery too, but…

By Gary Topping– Vladimir Nabokov’s memoir, Speak, Memory, is a loving recollection of life during the last years of Czarist Russia and the first twenty years of his exile in…

By Jathan Janove (guest contributor)– At a Hanukkah party in Salt Lake City in December 2000, Bert Spiegel (see If Jews had saints…) approached me and said he wanted to…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– On a recent warm summer evening, a lovely young nun dressed in pink and wearing a simple white veil visited our church and told us some…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– When it comes to appreciating church art, I’ve always been more of a paintings/sculpture kind of guy than a fan of mosaics. The imaginative cut stone…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– During a recent trip to New England to visit family and friends, my wife Vicki and I decided to search for some of the famous Trappist…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– I’ve never attended the prestigious Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference held each summer in the Green Mountains near Middlebury, Vermont. So, this year I sent myself a…

By Gary Topping– We’ve all seen the bumper sticker that advises something like “Commit Random Acts of Kindness.”  It’s good advice, but my experience with it has been ambiguous. Some…

By Michael Patrick O’Brien– A few years ago, I watched a kind old man, dressed in a simple white shirt and black pants, lean over and speak softly with his…