Thirteen ways of looking at the garden
After the city, the garden /
is quiet, the leaves green /
enough to absorb every cry.
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Hey God, how about a miracle?
Hezekiah said to Isaiah, “What shall be the sign that the Lord will heal me?” (2 Kings 20:8) King Hezekiah was seriously sick when the prophet Isaiah came to tell him to set his house in order because he would soon die. Hezekiah was heartbroken and cried to God for more time. God sent Isaiah…
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Resurrection among the ruins
Can there be resurrection /
among the ruins? /Dare we imagine new life /
rising from these streets of death? -
Trump’s impact on science
As I write this at the end of February, science journals are full of the consequences of the Trump administration’s actions on science in the United States and elsewhere. With the pace of changes and the court cases launched, it is not clear what the situation will be when you read this, but whatever happens,…
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Hearing Elohim
In the age of Google translate, learning a second language might seem like a thing of the past. I hope not! Let me explain why, for humans, translation is not optional. Most of us think of translation in linguistic terms – interpreting an idea in one language and expressing it in another. Understood more broadly,…
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Mirror, mirror, on the wall
It was a cold morning back in January, as the nurse and I bundled up the girls for a trip to McMaster Children’s Hospital for a scheduled visit. When the appointment ended, we wheeled the girls from the clinic to the large accessible washroom that includes an adult-sized change table. The intentional design with the…
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Art | Arts & Culture | Creation | Editorial
Gutenberg’s real invention
I’ve slowly been stocking the fridge with homemade inks. A forestry friend tells me that the berries I picked off a hedge are privet berries – they make a stunning purple. Another friend brings me dogwood fruit from her boyfriend’s yard: we eat a few – they have almost a gritty texture – and then…
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My main winter joys
Winter has arrived. The trees in the little park that I visited frequently and enjoyed all summer long stand naked now, their bare arms stretched out as though they are mourning the colourful leaves that left them. These leaves, after their summer lustre and brilliance of fall, now lie as a soggy mass on the…
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Experiencing God in wildness of nature
On more than one occasion I have remarked to my students, “the hardest part about preaching heaven in Vancouver, is that most people think they are already there!” As we move further into a North American culture where fewer people are born nominally Christian, many are finding their expression of transcendence, beauty and longing in…
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Not your typical chemistry class
Chemistry is much more than balancing equations and examining molecules – just ask Dr. Peter Mahaffy. Students in his classes at The King’s University don’t study isolated science reactions; they use a “systems thinking” approach to look for the intrinsic connections between scientific concepts, the earth, social systems and people. When I took Mahaffy’s Chemistry…
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Three hundred years after a forest burns,
it grows back fully / Six days after the flames / black bears return for berries. / The restoration / of the world leaks /through a broken dam
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Trees that heal
We inherited pear and apricot trees when we moved to 15 Marlowe Drive. I was five years old when we began making our home there. As the years went on, our basement shelves were increasingly populated by jars of pear sauce and apricot preserves. The other tree in the backyard was a catalpa, a towering,…
