devote oneself

McBath, Raskin’s friend and his colleague on the House Judiciary Committee, knows the horror of losing a child; she knows the urge to devote oneself to public service as a way to forge meaning from that loss; she knows how consuming the work of serving as a member of Congress can be.

Is that too young to devote oneself to elite sport, and the mental and physical strains that come with it, asks Kristen Doerer.

From then on “Marvin’s Room” concerns itself with the deeper questions of caretaking: Is it selfless or — as Hank, Lee’s troubled 17-year-old, maintains — just another kind of selfishness to devote oneself to others?

In the case of Christianity, she said, the church has historically gone through significant changes about every 500 years with major events like the birth of Jesus, the Crusades and the evolution of monasticism, a religious way of life in which worldly pursuits are renounced to devote oneself fully to spiritual work.

To read a book is to devote oneself to the book.