At 192 Spadina Avenue in downtown Toronto, close to Lake Ontario, stands an industrial heritage building that houses the Centre for Social Innovation. The centre provides hospitable co-working and office space to a variety of creative nonprofits. One of those is the Intercultural Dialogue Institute for the Greater Toronto Area (IDI GTA). A few artisanal…
One of my tasks at the Dutch military chaplaincy, almost two decades ago, involved sitting on a committee to advise on religious celebrations. It is not a task I remember fondly, because it was a loaded topic. Not long before our meetings started, an incident during a Christmas celebration on the island of Curaçao caused…
In a prominent place on my study wall hangs a copy of Andrei Rublev’s 15th-century “Old Testament Trinity” icon, a gift from Henri Nouwen for my ordination. When Henri, a Dutch diocesan priest and prolific author, died unexpectedly of a heart attack at age 64 back in 1996, I lost a spiritual father. In the…
I didn’t know the train would be like that. Seats across a table like something from a movie. But I’d never been on a French train before. I was twenty-one, so everything felt surprising and it was springtime. The winter had been more grey than I expected. I was a student on exchange for the…
“When I was fifteen . . . an angel of God came to me in the night, pinned me to my bed, and demanded that I trust in the Lord.” So begins Christopher Beha’s book Why I am Not an Atheist. The former Harper’s Magazine editor writes of growing up Roman Catholic, turning to atheism…
Pope Leo XIV has ignited debate among church leaders and peace activists by declaring‘just war’ theory “outdated.” Rather than functioning as principles of restraint, ‘just war’ theory has become a tool for justification. “Today, more than ever …. the ‘just war’ theory, which has all too often been used to justify any kind of war,…
The Staal brothers’ road to the NHL started on Henry and Linda Staal’s rink near Thunder Bay, Ont. In their early years, high snowbanks framed the ice. As Eric, Marc, Jordan and Jared grew, so did the rink: real boards, official nets and good lights so the boys and friends could play during Northwest Ontario’s…
A preacher’s daughter, raised in Saskatchewan, Molly Thomas is now the host and senior producer of TVO’s show Big [If True]. Winnipeg journalist John Longhurst interviewed Molly in Toronto at the Canadian Christian Communicators Association conference in May. Big [If True] will be back for a third season this fall. John Longhurst: Tell us a…
Sometimes the issues of the day have a clear scriptural directive. Scripture tells us, for example, to care for God’s world, and thus we should do all we can to address human-induced climate change and its adverse effects. At other times, scripture provides no obvious guidance – how, for example, should we assess the benefits…
Sister Monica Clare’s childhood in the American South was difficult. Her father was a violent addict. The family never lived in one place long enough to hang pictures on walls. On one occasion, out of hunger, Clare distracted a store clerk while her sister nabbed a can of spaghetti. Her father once landed a good…
The news is filled with reports of wars and conflicts, in which modern weapons inflict widespread death and suffering. And those are just the conflicts that reach our feeds. We live in a time when small, local conflicts are increasing. Wars affect millions of civilians, both adults and children. Humans are, unfortunately, experts in the…
Kyla Gillespie’s just-released memoir, TransFormed, tells the story of growing up in Nanaimo, B.C. as a girl who never felt at home in her body. Her story includes playing professional women’s hockey in the early 2000s, alcohol addiction, same-sex attraction and relationship breakdowns. Starting in 2011, Gillespie officially changed her name to Brycen and began…
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