There are only a few shopping weeks left until Christmas.

I'm keenly aware of this primarily because of those overcaffeinated Glee-show-choir-in-red-white-and-blue-alpine-sweaters-and-ear-flaps-making-high school-cheerleading-pyramids Gap ads that started running about a week ago.

You know, the ones where they chant a little ditty titled, annoyingly, "Happy Dowhateveryouwannukah." "Go Christmas! Go Hannukah!...

Earlier this week, I had a bad day. Epically bad.

I ran out of cash.

I lost my credit card.

I missed my flight.

And then, standing outside...

(A scene from "Home for Purim" from the mockumentary, "For Your Consideration.")

When is it appropriate -- and even encouraged, both socially and spiritually -- to show up...

Without a line on the horizon, we may feel like there is no limit...

Aha!

In the Christian calendar, today is the Feast of the Epiphany, or, as I like to think of it, the feast of Aha!

It's the 12th Day of...

Set on Christmas Eve in a seaside village north of Dublin in a home populated by hard-drinking, down-on-their-luck Irishmen, Conor McPherson's play The Seafarer is not what you'd call light holiday...

This week, I sat in a Chicago screening room with white knuckles and sweaty palms, a knot in my stomach, heart racing and an urge to jump out of my seat.

"Merton is, in a sense, the lost soul of the 20th century, looking for redemption, looking for recovery, looking for God."

-- Sister Kathleen Deignan

A couple of nights ago, I was channel-surfing, trying to find something mindless to watch after a difficult day. Something like "Liar Liar" or "Uncle Buck." But there was nothing on --...

It probably wasn't the last Thursday in November, and there was no pumpkin pie.

The "turkey" was more likely a goose, duck or even a crane. And there were no potatoes -- sweet, mashed or candied -- on the menu for the first Thanksgiving...

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God."
-- Jesus, according to the Gospel of St. Matthew

"If you want peace, work...

'Wanna own your own slave?" Jason asked over coffee in his California kitchen one morning last week.

I stared blankly and took another sip.

"Here," Jason said, sliding a stack of what looked a bit like ''Star Wars'' trading cards at me across the...

Shortly after sunrise one Tuesday last month, tragedy visited my back yard. A yelp and a crash broke the early-morning silence and led my husband to discover our upstairs neighbor unconscious in the garden.

She'd...

Just after the clock struck 10 p.m. Tuesday in Chicago's Grant Park, and Wolf Blitzer's voice boomed across the Obama election night rally announcing that the junior senator from Illinois would, indeed,...

Rarely are we able to glimpse the big picture from our vantage point, mired in the details of the here-and-now.

But now, on the cusp of the...

Last week, a judge in Nebraska threw out a 2007 lawsuit filed against God by state Sen. Ernie Chambers, who had sought a permanent injunction against the Almighty for bringing "acts of terrorism" against the Cornhusker State.

The salad days these surely are not.

Lately, it's hard to have a sunny outlook...

ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA

Shortly after 1 a.m., the taxi came to a stop in the Pentagon parking lot. We climbed out and walked solemnly toward the otherworldly glow in the distance.

Two of my dear friends and fellow religion journalists, Jason and Michael, and I made the short journey from downtown...

They called her the "barefoot Madonna."

Nearly 50 years ago, when an 18-year-old Joan Baez lit up the stage at the Newport Folk Festival, she was an ethereal, earthy chanteuse who launched a revival of...

Summertime is the slow season for most churches. Pastors are faced with the perennial phenomenon of watching their congregants disappear from the pews, taking a vacation from church as well as from work and school....