Pleasant Places
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Pleasant Places

A colourful five-by-three-foot map graces my office wall – an impulse buy on a recent shopping trip. For less than $20 I can see all the nations of the world anytime I want. Some are tiny, others vast. There are Far East countries with names hard to pronounce; African countries with new names and old…

The Faith of France
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The Faith of France

The world watched in horror as the Cathedral of Notre-Dame went up in smoke in Paris and my thoughts drifted back to my visit to the City of Lights at age 20. The student tour that I was on visited eight countries in the space of eight weeks, with tiny Liechtenstein possibly making for a ninth.

Rights at Risk
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Rights at Risk

It wasn’t too long ago that the government of Pauline Marois introduced the Charter of Values in the legislature (Bill 60), which would have prevented public employees from wearing conspicuous religious symbols.

The Waters of Gratitude
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The Waters of Gratitude

I’m still stuck on this poem by Mary Jo Leddy that I shared here several months ago. Somehow this Catholic nun/neighbourhood builder/writer/refugee advocate has packed all the lessons God’s trying to teach me right now into two lyrical stanzas.

Tainted Legends
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Tainted Legends

I’ve been hemming and hawing for the past couple of weeks about whether I should spend four hours on the couch watching Leaving Neverland, the HBO documentary about Michael Jackson’s alleged sexual abuse of two boys in the mid-80s.

Our Shared Humanity
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Our Shared Humanity

Over the March Break, my 15-year-old son Cameron and I spent a good deal of time in downtown Toronto, visiting the Royal Ontario Museum and the Art Gallery of Ontario. We also ate in various ethnic restaurants that serve up the kind of food we can’t get back in our small town.

Life Classes for Christians
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Life Classes for Christians

Wouldn’t you like to take Peter Schuurman’s World Religions class? (Read about the class in the article “Hopping the River Bank” from March 25.) I would!

Mouthwatering faith
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Mouthwatering faith

I wonder whether we Protestants are especially susceptible to forgetting the embodied dimension of our faith – that God is someone for whom we hunger and thirst. The Christian life ought to be a mouthwatering affair, yet we so often content ourselves with chintzy simulacra, thinking that the right idea is what matters.

Stories from the ‘Wall’
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Stories from the ‘Wall’

Posters on the Separation Wall in Bethlehem tell the stories of lives affected. The place where Jesus was born is a place of oppression, occupation and injustice.

Centre for Public Dialogue building community of social activists, artists and musicians
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Centre for Public Dialogue building community of social activists, artists and musicians

“We need community to continue and grow justice work,” says Hogeterp. “The work of justice is enhanced when we connect with people of faith, lean into worship and grow spiritual discipline.”

Suzanne takes you down to the 100th Meridian

Suzanne takes you down to the 100th Meridian

One is Canada’s Springsteen. The other is Canada’s Dylan.

And both will soon be gone.

Cultural conditioning

Cultural conditioning

The goal of an ambassador is to communicate between nations and cultures. As a Biblical ambassador, I seek to understand what the Bible said in its culture in order to speak to our culture, recognizing we are multicultural. God likes variety.