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Author: Brian Doyle

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Girding Job's loins

    • Brian Doyle
    • 15 November 2011
    4 Comments

    There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job; and he was essentially a blameless dude, and unarrogant, and he was blessed with seven sons, and three daughters, which is a startling number ... 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    My brother ill and illuminated

    • Brian Doyle
    • 05 October 2011
    7 Comments

    One time my brother Kevin and our father had a fistfight. Our sister herded the kids into a back room, made us kneel and pray. We could hear crashing; sometimes I still hear crashing when I pray. In his 50s Kevin, who I loved but sometimes disliked, got sick. It looks like he will die before Christmas.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    To remember is to pray

    • Brian Doyle
    • 09 September 2011
    3 Comments

    To remember the roaring courage of the people who rushed to help, or the people who used their last minutes on earth to call their families and say I love you I love you I will you forever, is to pray for them and us and even the poor silly murderers, themselves just lanky frightened children.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Homeless Grace

    • Brian Doyle
    • 02 August 2011
    7 Comments

    She lived in an alcove outside Saint Brigid's Church. She had been an artist. She drank. She married a man who slept on the avenue, not near the church; he didn't like the church, said it talked to him at night in a stern rumble. He beat her. Her name was Grace.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Fearing America's national debt

    • Brian Doyle
    • 27 July 2011
    8 Comments

    America, my country, is teetering on the edge of a dark future. We cannot continue in this fashion, or we will enslave our children and grandchildren to ruinous debt; we will twist their lives in unimaginable ways, because we would not pay our bills or reduce the luxury with which we lived.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    My morning with Frank Brennan

    • Brian Doyle
    • 22 June 2011
    12 Comments

    Fell into riveting conversation recently. We talked about Australia's and Oregon's history with assisted suicide, the plight of Indigenous Australians, and his views on the personal and public profiles of Cardinal George Pell. Here's how it happened.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Osama bin Laden's wasted life

    • Brian Doyle
    • 17 May 2011
    25 Comments

    Imagine the same man, rather than consumed by hate, alert instead to humour, to the power of mercy, apology, simplicity, conversation, common ground. Imagine what he might have done for the religion he loved, to which he instead did more damage than anyone else in history.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Mothers, soldiers and other entrepreneurs

    • Brian Doyle
    • 04 May 2011
    3 Comments

    To attempt, to begin, is really to dream, to envision, to speculate, and then to work like a burro to implement, to create, to make real. How is it that a word like entrepreneurship, which means vast and amazing things, has become so commonplace and thin?

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Tommy's twin brother Jesus

    • Brian Doyle
    • 18 April 2011
    2 Comments

    Not one soul on that Easter morning long ago cared a whit about theological matters. They did not even care if the thin man once died and rose again. They were there for each other, out of respect and affection, and habit and custom, and because they wanted to give their children a thing they couldn't explain.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Kids circle the holy parts

    • Brian Doyle
    • 17 March 2011
    2 Comments

    They learn to lie, are just not into dental hygiene, skin their knees nine times a day, and do things like smear peanut butter on their abraded knees and shake flour on the dog. Still, best of all, better than every other joy and thrill, are kids.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Mass story

    • Brian Doyle
    • 02 March 2011
    19 Comments

    Not until yesterday had I enjoyed a Mass during which I heard reggae music, washing machines, and an argument about basketball. What could be more beautifully human and holy than sitting over food and telling stories and insisting on miracles, in the company of a child and a dog?

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Australia through American eyes

    • Brian Doyle
    • 18 January 2011
    15 Comments

    Do Australians hate Americans? No, because Americans invented basketball. What do Australians eat? Yeast paste. It tastes like someone ground up a penguin and then left it in the rain for a month before adding rubber and dirt to it.

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