Therese DesCamp Longlisted for the 2023 CBC Nonfiction Prize
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 …
Keep within, And when they say, “Look here,” or “Look, there is Christ.” Go not forth; for Christ is within you. –George Fox, Quaker mystic Everywhere we look, there are signs and reminders that the best thing we can do for each other is to physically separate ourselves—to keep within our homes when we …
If you’re a hockey fan, you’ll know the famous Sidney Crosby—one of the greatest players ever. And if you are a hockey player looking to improve your game, you can watch Sidney demonstrate skating drills using the outside edges of his skates on YouTube. In hockey skates, a small, hollow trough runs the length of …
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 …
If we are part of a shrinking church membership, at some point we will get booted out into the world. So, from one point of view, why wait for the doors to hit you on the way out? Why not reinvent the church in the very centres of our communities? At least we will get …
When I began full time ministry in 1992, my call was to help churches facing difficulty to become again a vital and transforming presence in people’s lives. My frame of reference was the church as the indispensable container for experiencing, nurturing and sharing God’s love. We just needed healthy churches and everything would be fine. …
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 …