In an attempt to create systemic justice, communists took my family’s land away in post-revolution Russia (in the region that is now Ukraine). My people (Mennonites) had been given the land by Catherine the Great because it was politically convenient for her to have safe, loyal farmers there. This put […]
This summer, I am researching and writing about contemplation and healing. I am also reading, this past week, about rioting across the US. One phrase that has been grounding my thinking about contemplation and healing is that the connection between the two is about our need for a “compassionate consent […]
We tolerate evil because we are afraid there is no alternative; we keep participating in great harm because we aren’t able to imagine any possible ways to stop. An apocalypse is meant to change this. The word “apocalypse” (which has understandably been trotted out a lot lately) means “revealing” or […]
We pretend that we all agree that genocide is wrong, but I don’t think it’s true. If we agreed that genocide was wrong, would we still be teaching it in Sunday Schools? How many children still hear the stories of Joshua “conquering” the promised land as a great, God-given victory? […]
Can a children’s book inspire a new generation and fan the embers of a movement that will change the world? I suppose I could start by acknowledging that it’s a very fine, if ambitious, goal. The kind of inspiration that can re-orient lives and fill people with hope and determination […]
I’ve always had a certain fascination for monastic life. A couple of my favourite movies (Of Gods and Men & The Mission) are all about monks, and I recently visited the monastic home of the inspiring Thomas Merton. So when I had the chance to review Brother John: A Monk, […]
The title for this post might seem naively optimistic, but if that’s true, that’s precisely my point. We no longer seem to expect maturity. A whole generation of millennials are frequently (and unfairly) criticized as immature and not necessarily maturing. We don’t seem to expect maturity from politicians or even […]
I would like to suggest a simple proposal: let’s never give any authority to anyone who dehumanizes others. Recently I was reading a collection of survivor accounts from the residential schools that Canadians forced upon Indigenous children until as late as 1996. Once again, I had to face the hard […]
I have come to hate the word “disruption.” I used to like it, thinking it might point toward some positive social revolution – echoes of Jesus or Gandhi or Marx (depending on one’s leaning) might come to mind – but it seems to me that all that is being disrupted […]
It is not being conservative to honour and respect the traditions and wisdom of the past, it is mature. It is not being liberal to question those traditions and that wisdom, it is mature. It is not being fundamentalist to have deep commitments that you honour, it is mature. It […]