BREATHE!
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BREATHE!

Not long ago the Canadian Lung Association ran an ad campaign with the slogan, “when you can’t breathe nothing else matters.” That ad invoked empathy and requested support for people who had lung disease or some condition that made breathing difficult.  Those billboards always caught my attention. I used to try and hold my breath…

An Exercise In Hope For All
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An Exercise In Hope For All

Rev. Dr. Esau McCaulley is an assistant professor of New Testament at Wheaton College, a priest in the Anglican Church of North America, and a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. He has served in a number of professional and cultural contexts throughout his academic and ministerial careers. Rev. McCaulley’s ecclesiastical experiences include…

The politics of space
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The politics of space

Though COVID-19 dominated headlines for most of 2020, prominent monuments were in the news a few times throughout the year as the statues of historical figures all over the world were vandalized. Both Christopher Columbus and Sir John A. MacDonald were beheaded, as Roland DeVries wrote about for CC in September. Perpetrators protested Columbus’ connection…

Listen. Learn. Relinquish Power.
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Listen. Learn. Relinquish Power.

Where can a congregation go if they’re looking for resources to learn how to centre people from minority groups and go beyond merely including them? What if you’re wanting to listen to the voices of the LGBTQ+ community in your congregation? Or people with disabilities? People affected by poverty or homelessness? People with mental illnesses?…

Beyond Stewardship
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Beyond Stewardship

Waste reduction motivated two major initiatives in my early social justice work. Both became national success stories; over time, however, both enabled more waste and had other unintended consequences. Reflecting on that, I wonder if more than stewardship is needed to ground our approach to care for God’s creation. Edmonton’s Blue Box program was cutting-edge…

Persist and Persevere
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Persist and Persevere

About a year ago a friend asked me, “What is the difference between doing and being?” The question stumped me because each time I thought of the act of being, it was associated with an equivalent act of doing: if I am this, I do that. The two seemed inseparable. It took me a few weeks of contemplation to express that while being is indeed often associated with doing, there has to be more to it than that.

When Friends Die
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When Friends Die

Between 2016 and 2019, 15,393 people died from drug overdoses in Canada. This year, we’re breaking the records set in those years.  “Canadians should be seized with this particular crisis,” says Canada’s Chief public health officer Dr. Teresa Tam. The closed Canada-U.S. border, increased social isolation and reduced access to safe supply are all factors…

Two Montreal Statues
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Two Montreal Statues

When a bronze statue of Sir John A. MacDonald was pulled down by anti-racism protestors on August 29, it wasn’t the first time Canada’s first Prime Minister lost his head. Erected in downtown Montreal in 1895, the statue has long been a target of vandalism. In 1992 it was decapitated on the anniversary of the hanging of Louis Riel. Since then it has been defaced with paint and graffiti many times.