I look out my window through a haze of choking smoke. Over 33 million acres have burned in Canada and we’re just halfway through the forest fire season. It’s not an unreasonable question to ask where (the hell) G*d is in all this mess. There’s been a Destroyer lurking in every pantheon since the dawn …
In the kitchen of love, only the beautiful are killed. Death does not frighten a true lover for those not dying for love are already corpses. –Rumi Translation by Maryam Mafi and Azima Melita Kolin I knew it was her as soon as I pulled the bag out of the freezer. I knew because she looked …
“Are we all going through a dark night of the soul?” he said. “That’s what one of my teachers said last week.” I have pondered that question for a month and have decided that I disagree. I do believe that we are all suffering, whether conscious of this fact or not. But we are not …
As I took the dog out for our early morning walk on Friday, I spotted her best friend down the street. Dolly, whose head rises a little over 18 inches off the ground, could see only the driveway rising in front of her. I, being four feet taller, could see over the rise of the …
We had never met although we had friends in common, interests in common, were about the same age and lived in villages just down the road from each other. Now I was never going to know her. So I thought. +++ +++ +++ I got the text from a mutual friend, who knew I might …
Note to the Reader: This theological paper was written three years ago. For many of you, communion isn’t an important issue, and the length of the paper will be daunting (21 pages). But if you, like me, struggle with the meaning and practice of the sacrament of communion, this may be of interest. Part One: …
A teacher of mine once defined attention as the most genuine form of love. He taught me this using a rock, which I was to observe for 15 minutes without composing metaphors, rehearsing geological history, or discerning the face of Jesus in the markings on its side. I was simply to see it, stripped of …
Note: This appeared in the September 2012 edition of The United Church Observer, but I forgot to post it here! I fell in love with Slocan Lake in southern B.C. the same way I fell in love as a teenager: head over heels, infatuated, besotted, enamoured. I couldn’t stop sneaking peeks: green mountain …
AN IMPORTANT NOTE: Each year, the Slocan Lake Stewardship Society—which I currently serve as president of the board—hosts a “Lake Lies and Tall Tales” event where community members tell stories and compete for prizes. This year, the “most fishy” tale was awarded a gallon of fish fertilizer, and the best story won a photo of …
January, 2009 The nun Sister John of the Cross, the central character in the novel Lying Awake, has spent long, dry decades in a Carmelite cloister outside Los Angeles, praying and waiting for a tangible sign of God. As the book opens, she has finally begun living the contemplative’s dream: daily ecstatic union with the …
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