Word: sackclothed
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...coarse sackcloth robe worn over a hairshirt, she sits alone in her stone-floored cell. Her food is bread, water, an occasional cooked vegetable. Through a small grilled window she may look into a chapel, and down a narrow passageway there is another barred window where she takes her daily communion. In the cell is a straight chair, a table, a board that serves as her bed and a small washroom with a cold shower. Not since she closed the door behind her 16 years ago has she ever left this confined area...
...free world looks to you for leadership, not a demonstration on how to make a public confession. Away with the sackcloth and ashes. You have much for which to be thankful...
Author Koestler, born a Jew but now a "seeker after truth" without religious affiliation, reports: "I started my journey in sackcloth and ashes, and came back rather proud of being a European." He descended from his plane into the fetid air of Bombay-"I had the sensation that a wet, smelly diaper was being wrapped around my head"-and picked his way through a series of visits with what he calls "contemporary saints." There was white-bearded Vinoba Bhave, marching through India in tennis shoes, seven days a week, year after year, persuading the rich to give their land...
...fellow intellectuals for their consistently conformist view of free world, and especially American, "failure." James Reston, the Times's Washington bureau chief, could contain his pent-up disdain for President Eisenhower no longer and dashed off a classic column of political satire. And Syndicated Columnist Joseph Alsop donned sackcloth in public and did penance for the venial sin of optimism...
...ashes were "dispersed in the gentle winds of a Florentine May"; the city might have donned sackcloth to go with them, but instead, it quickly reverted to its old ways. Today, a simple plaque marks the place where Savonarola was burned; few tourists ever notice it in the pavement, are drawn instead to a spot only a short distance away, where an array of nude marble statues seem to look ironically down at the inconspicuous marker. Dominicans have made several attempts-the last only five years ago-to have their hero canonized. But sainthood is unlikely, say Vatican spokesmen, because...