When one single line makes an entire song unforgettable, it lifts all music to a new level — One well-written line says everything. Certain key lines of songs are so moving that they make the rest unforgettable. A single line smashed into me the other day, turning my gym’s background music into a “wow, that’s great writing moment” as that line leaped out: “She is headed for the…

What is beauty? The face of Madonna and the death of Raquel Welch makes us ask why we do what we do — The real power of beauty? You can’t say “no” to the truly beautiful. Beauty makes you stop, so we lost our breath when Raquel Welch died because she always got the gift that Madonna struggles with. Welch died at 82, universally considered to be as beautiful as ever. Madonna, at…

Joseph Serwach: His mantra is the Story + Identity = Mission (but his wife Lady Serwach calls him the Prince) — “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.” — Mark Twain. My “why” moment came on Paradise Island. I was 18, writing frantically as a young girl asked that all-important question: “Are you a writer?” Her words…

Lisa Marie Presley memorial: I live in the smiles, the moon, stars, and sky — and I feel eternal pride as I watch you all fly — Lisa Marie Presley “always knew she wouldn’t be here too long,” her mother Priscilla said at the singer/songwriter’s moving memorial service. It began in a fog — then the sun broke through, shining on a family whose legacy only seems to grow with time. Lisa Marie’s father, Elvis Presley, the…

Why we stand in line to meet TV legend William Shatner (he’s now 92) one last time — William Shatner is now 92 — so we stood in line to be with him — one last time. He’s not dying — except we’re all dying, and 92 is closer than most. The line of 1,610 people (sold out) stretched in every direction around a big city block holding…

New Adam Gopnik book: The real work is the complete activity, the accumulated practice, and the total summing up of traditions — How do you learn — and master skills? Magicians call it the Real Work — the “accumulated craft, savvy, and technical mastery makes a trick magic.” “Meaning is the face of the Other,” the New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik writes in The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery. “The self…

In his new book, How the Eucharist Can Save Civilization, Jared Staudt shows how Christianity will transform our entire culture — How the Eucharist Can Save Civilization, an essential new book by R. Jared Staudt, makes the case for Revival. “I truly believe that, unless the world ends soon, Christian culture will rise again,” Staudt writes, showing how the Eucharist “changes everything.” “A new civilization will not occur by chance,” Staudt…

His most beautiful moment was with the elderly — his worst involved the new war, the pope said as he finished his first decade in Rome — The Twitter pope? His predecessor had the first papal Tweet, but within weeks, Pope Francis became the first true social media pontiff. “The time is ‘pressurous,’” the pope said (inventing a new word for the pressure of a rapidly moving modern world). “When you want to seize today, it is…

St. Joseph is silent in the Bible — so Paul Thigpen researched everything he revealed to mystics about the Holy Family — God still speaks. The Church doesn’t require anyone to believe private revelations, but the visions of mystics help “fill in the blanks.” In The Life of Saint Joseph, as Seen by the Mystics, Catholic scholar Paul Thigpen artfully researches private revelations about St.Joseph and his life with the Holy Family…