“This is what I believe to be true. . . You have to do everything you can, you have to work your hardest, and if you do, if you stay positive, you have a shot at a silver lining.” That is the newly formed philosophy of Pat Solatano, the main character in the movie Silver Linings Playbook, which tells the story of a man suffering from bipolar disorder who is struggling to get his impulses and emotions under control. 

WHEN the French hermit and martyr Charles de Foucauld went into the Saharan desert in 1901, he sought to establish a place of “adoration and hospitality”: worship of God and service to the native Tuareg people. That’s one thing about the desert: You don’t go there to be alone.

MARK DOTY’S poem “Messiah: Christmas Portion” begins with an ironic observation. As the speaker enters a church in a small New England coastal town to hear his fellow citizens attempt this masterwork by George Frederic Handel, his eye is caught by a glorious sunset and he can’t help wondering “how could they / compete with sunset’s burnished / oratorio?”

JAMES EARL JONES has one of the most distinctive voices in Hollywood (think Darth Vader in Star Wars, Mufasa in The Lion King, and “This is CNN”). Yet you might be surprised to learn that as a child he stuttered terribly and dreaded public speaking. His career as an actor may have never gotten off the ground if it hadn’t been for his high-school English teacher and mentor, the poet Donald Crouch. 

In what has now become a cult classic, A Knight’s Tale, a 2001 movie starring Heath Ledger, tells the story of a young 14th-century English thatcher’s son who is encouraged by his father to “change his stars” by accepting an apprenticeship to a knight.

Two good friends were preparing to leave the area and move a few hours away from me. There was a sadness knowing that our lives were about to change, yet it prompted us to look at our last few weeks in the same city as a different adventure. We celebrated our friendship with drinks, dinner, and conversations. We reminisced about the times we shared together and created a few more lasting memories. Then I helped them pack up their things, loaded the truck, and off they went down the highway. 

THE WIDOW of one of my best friends calls regularly to tell me how much she misses him, and inevitably she will break down in tears. After more than two years nothing is more important to her than the assurance that she and her husband will one day be together in heaven. She asks if I believe they will be, and I assure her it is so. The tender prayers at the funeral Mass remind us again and again, “We shall be reunited.”

POPE FRANCIS, in his interview with Jesuit Father Antonio Spadaro for America magazine in October 2013, is asked “Who is Jorge Mario Bergoglio?”, and his answer after much thought is: “I am a sinner who the Lord has looked upon. . . .

A customer unhappy with the service she received from an app-based delivery service, emailed customer support to complain. Her complaint made the rounds of the small start-up and eventually landed in the email box of the CEO, who first outlined for his employees how to resolve the customer’s problem, but then added, “Someone also please tell her to f--- off!”

IN THE Gian Carlo Menotti opera The Consul, the character of Magda Sorel is trying to secure a visa so that she may rejoin her husband in another country. Her child has died; she herself is in danger; she is desperate but constantly put off. In the consul’s grim waiting room, she is required to fill out endless forms. In an aria she sings, “To this we’ve come . . . I’m asking for help and all you give me is papers—papers papers papers. . . .”