A Generation ago, JD Salinger wrote a novel, The Catcher in the Rye, which became immensely popular, as well as becoming required reading in most undergraduate literature programmes. It deserved both. It’s a great piece of literature.Here’s the image: A man is watching children playing in a rye field with an exuberance and delight that…
Elizabeth Poreba ends a poem, No Good Company, with these words: I’ve got no banter, I’m all judgement and edges, an edgy white lady Wondering what to do, what to do next As in Jesus is coming, look busy. At the wedding feast in Cana, Mary tells Jesus, they have no wine, asking him to…
Although not too many people might recognise this, the #MeToo movement is, in essence, a strong advocate for chastity. If chastity can be defined as standing before another with reverence, respect, and patience, then most everything about the #MeToo movement speaks explicitly of the non-negotiable importance of chastity and implicitly for what our sexuality is…
In a poem entitled, Is/Not, Margaret Atwood suggests that when a love grows numb, this is where we find ourselves: We’re stuck here on this side of the border in this country of thumbed streets and stale buildings where there is nothing spectacular to see and the weather is ordinary where love…
There are four distinct kinds of Christian prayer: There is incarnational prayer, mystical prayer, affective prayer, and priestly prayer. What are these? How are they different from each other? Incarnational prayer St Paul invites us to “pray always”. How is this possible? We can’t always be praying – or can we? What Paul is inviting…
In much of the secularised world, we live in a climate that is somewhat anti-ecclesial and anti-clerical. It’s quite fashionable today to bash the Churches, be they Roman Catholic, Protestant, or Evangelical. This is often done in the name of being open-minded and enlightened, and it’s the one bias that’s intellectually sanctioned. Say something derogatory…
Christian discipleship calls all of us to be prophetic, to be advocates for justice, to help give voice to the poor and to defend truth. But not all of us, by temperament or by particular vocation, are called to civil disobedience, public demonstrations, and the picket lines, as were Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Daniel…
Inside the rite for Christian Baptism there’s a little ritual that is at once both touching and unrealistic. At one point in the baptismal rite the child is clothed in a white garment symbolising innocence and purity. The priest or minister officiating says these words: “Receive this baptismal garment and bring it unstained to the…
There’s a saying attributed to Attila the Hun, a fifth Century ruler infamous for his cruelty, which reads this way: For me to be happy, it’s not just important that I succeed; it’s also important that everyone else fails. I suspect that Atilla the Hun was not the author of that, but, no matter, there’s…
In the musical Les Miserables, there’s a particularly haunting song, sung by a dying woman (Fontine) who has been crushed by virtually every unfairness that life can deal a person. Abandoned by her husband, sexually harassed by her employer, caught in abject poverty, physically ill and dying, even as her main anxiety is about what…