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Join us next week, October 19, to chat about the October issue. We expect the focus to be on the Alberta referendum and several pieces on immigration and hospitality (p. 1, 5 and 16). Contact Neil and Virginia Lettinga, friends of CC at [email protected] to get the zoom link. Conversation kicks off at 6:30 pm PT, 9:30 pm ET.
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Christ-centred. Creative. Canadian.
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Last week, I took several sheets of butcher paper and some oil pastels on a walk. I stopped to take rubbings – of a tree with a nail through it, a garbage can, a traffic cone, a warning sign and an empty information board.
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I’ve been reading Helen Keller’s The World I Live In. Helen Keller was born deaf-blind and she wrote about how the world entered her senses – and mind – through touch, smell and vibration.
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As a poet, I am in awe of the richness of her vocabulary and her close attention through senses our language tends to disregard.
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And so I tried to explore the world through my fingers. There was a tickle of bee when I took the rubbing of the warning sign. The empty information board towered above a fat spider (who I did not touch). On the cold metal bars of the garbage can, there were tiny pine needles somehow stuck to it.
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“In touch is all love and intelligence,” wrote Keller. But she also wrote: “When my hand aches from overtouching, I find relief in the sight of another.”
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Today’s email has the borrowed sight of artists, a pastor, poets, a farmer and a church member. On this Thanksgiving Day, may you find relief in their words and the courage to go out and experience the world again, through someone else’s eyes . . . or hands.
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Did someone forward this newsletter to you?
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CREATION THROUGH THE EYES OF FIVE ARTISTS
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Redeemer University’s art gallery starts a new chapter with the The Book of Nature exhibition.
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Melia Cooper
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Redeemer’s art gallery is reopening after summer renovations with the exhibit The Book of Nature, featuring five artists’ work inspired by God’s creation. The exhibit includes oil paintings, textile art, woodcut prints, cyanotype images and mixed media artwork incorporating found objects.
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DUTCH PASTOR PROVIDES LITURGIES FOR MAID
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‘Walk with them’ is the principle in caring for those who’ve chosen when to die.
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John Longhurst
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A majority of Mennonites in the Netherlands have not only accepted MAID but are looking for ways to incorporate it into pastoral care.
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“Mennonite pastors here believe the church should be there when people choose euthanasia, to give their death meaning and significance,” said Dutch Mennonite pastor and theologian Pieter Post. “A pastor should be there with the person who is dying.”
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BIRDS ON A WIRE
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Shane Schick
Look at this branch they made for us.
So what if they forgot the leaves?
We can always build a nest somewhere else.
You have to love the fact
that it joins one tree to the next,
and that it lies perfectly straight . . .
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PHILOSOPHICAL POETRY THAT CHALLENGES
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H. D. Sandy Ayer
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God shows up often and explicitly in Carnets, 600 aphorisms distributed among 12 chapters: “Once you believe in God everything praises him,” “Christ’s peace breaks us into pieces” and “We pass from likeness to likeness, not from god to God.”
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CC readers will love this.
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DISEMBARKING A DENOMINATION
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R. Van Harmelen
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You could say it all started here in Halifax: the Canadian arm of the Christian Reformed Church, that is. After World War II, most of the Dutch immigrants who founded the CRC in Canada arrived by boat at Pier 21. But if you visit Halifax this fall, you’ll no longer find a CRC. Today, a new sign stands outside All Nations Church with “The Presbyterian Church in Canada” near the bottom.
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I'D RATHER NOT BE IN THE WILDERNESS
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Curt Gesch
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Personally, I am not a wilderness person. I am scared of the big country, can’t hike because of age and inclination, and don’t want to shoot a moose or bear. I try my best to live in my garden, on the land. I don’t want to own a farm but to inhabit a place, a unique place. I want to tend it for people, for wildlife, for water and plant life.
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When it comes to reasons to give thanks, CC readers are always at the top of our list. And we want your input on where to take things in 2027!
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We have a 10-minute reader survey and if you haven't taken it yet, please consider doing it soon. The survey will close on October 20. (Thanks to everyone who jumped on this after our email last Thursday!)
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