Vol XVII. No. 3
GLOBAL AND ECUMENICAL IN SCOPE
CANADIAN IN PERSPECTIVE
Wayne A. Holst, Editor
My E-Mail Address: waholst@telus.net
This email is sent only to a voluntary subscriber list.
If you no longer wish to receive these weekly columns,
write to me personally at - waholst@telus.net
****
Dear Friends:
I continue to be less productive during these mid-summer months, but hope you find what I have provided this week to be helpful.
Wayne
PLEASE NOTE - If a link below, seems to be dead, cut and paste it into the address bar at the top of your web page and it should work.
*****
SPECIAL ITEM
VIRUS FATIGUE?
During these lazy and hazy summer weeks a bombshell has hit in the province of Alberta. Long-established Covid-19 rules have been abruptly suspended - much to the surprize and chagrin of many in the province and beyond.
It is as though all the hard work to establish and discipline ourselves in light of the virus, has - at this late stage in the fight - being dramatically disbanded.
I think it is too early to jump to conclusions about Chief Medical Officer of Health Deena Henshaw. She has done an admirable job of designing healthy and balanced strategies for such a long time. People like me are inclined to hold back on criticism of her and to blame the premier, Jason Kenney. His record makes him a ready target, but Henshaw supports him.
At this point I am inclined to blame virus fatigue. Yet the decision to lift the rules while the virus is still alive among us is quite unnerving.
It is time for serious assessment, helped by this July 29th Globe and Mail article (see link).
People will be following developments in Alberta closely.
"Alberta's plan to lift Covid-19 rules has many asking how to protect against the virus." (Globe and Mail, July 29th, 2021)
To read this article, cut and paste the title into your address bar, click and scroll down a few articles to find it.
*****
COLLEAGUE CONTRIBUTIONS
Ryan Anderson,
Calgary, AB.
"I Am a Pastor -
In the Face of Genocide,
My Church is Threatened"
Calgary Alliance for the Common Good
July 26th, 2021
--
Isabel Gibson,
Ottawa, ON.
Traditional Iconoclast,
July 18th, 2021
"Awatto and Environments"
--
Jim Taylor,
Okanagan, BC
Personal Web Log,
July 22nd, 2021
"Learning to Live With Smoke"
--
Philip Yancey,
Colorado
Philipyancey.com
July 19th, 2021
"Ocean Summer"
--
Ron Rolheiser,
San Antonio, TX
Personal Website
July 26th, 2021
"Can We Prove that God Exists?"
*****
NET NOTES
THE SORROW OF RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS
American Nun Writes of the Tragedy
Catholic Register, Toronto,
July 14th, 2021
--
GROWING UP BLACK
IN CONFEDERATE CHARLOTTESVILLE
Being Black in the American South
Broadview
July 23rd, 2021
--
PUTTING ASIDE PANDEMIC MISTRUST
Covid Crisis Must Not Crowd Out Mercy
Convivium,
July 13th, 2021
--
BRITISH BOROUGH APOLOGIZES
TO FRANKLIN GRAHAM
It had Removed His Crusade Bus Ads
Religion News Service,
July 16th, 2021
--
DIFFRENT CULTURES
DEFINE HAPPINESS DIFFERENTLY
We Live One of Four Groups
The Atlantic,
July 15th, 2021
--
CULTURAL APPROPRIATION VERSUS
CULTURAL APPRECIATION
Knowing the Difference
Religion News Service,
July 21st, 2021
--
100 REASONS WHY I
DIDN'T GO FOR A Ph.D.
The Revealer,
July 22nd, 2021
--
OLD AGE AS A GIFT
Celebrating Grandparents and the Elderly
Francis Speaks of the Value of the Aged
National Catholic Reporter,
July 23rd, 2021
--
THE DANGERS OF PROVIDING PASTORAL CARE
Woundedness is the Predictable Price We Pay
A Conversation Between Theologians
Wm. Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas
The Christian Century.
July 27th, 2021
--
OLYMPICS MAY BE SIGN OF HOPE DURING PANDEMIC
Pope Francis is Positive About the Summer Games
Catholic Register, Toronto
July 26th, 2021
*****
WISDOM OF THE WEEK
Provided by Sojourners and the Bruderhof online:
Time is how you spend your love.
- Nick Laird
-
Abuse is never divinely sanctioned.
- Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons
-
We need, in every community, a group of angelic troublemakers.
- Bayard Rustin
-
There are a thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them is sufficient.
- Marilynne Robinson
-
True contemplation entails detachment from one of our most basic needs: the need to know, to reason, to have concepts and images.
- Robert E. Kennedy
-
When you are poor every stage has to be thought through. Wealth is the opposite. With wealth you get to be thoughtless.
- Zadie Smith
-
So much has been taken, but not everything. What this moment has taught us is that we have the ability to radically reimagine and reshape the world.
- Marc Lamont Hill
-
Forgiveness. The ability to forgive oneself. Stop here for a few breaths and think about this because it is the key to making art, and very possibly the key to finding any semblance of happiness in life.
- Ann Patchett
-
To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.
= Rainer Maria Rilke
-
God has identified himself with the hungry, the sick, the naked, the homeless; hunger, not only for bread, but for love, for care, to be somebody to someone; nakedness, not of clothing only, but nakedness of that compassion that very few people give to the unknown; homelessness, not only just from a shelter made of stone, but that homelessness that comes from having no one to call your own.
- Mother Teresa
-
Soon we shall die and all memory of those we have known will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.
- Thornton Wilder
--
The prophet Joel once promised: “Your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men will have visions” (3:1). The future of the world depends on this covenant between young and old. Who, if not the young, can take the dreams of the elderly and make them come true? Yet for this to happen, it is necessary that we continue to dream. Our dreams of justice, of peace, of solidarity, can make it possible for our young people to have new visions; in this way, together, we can build the future.
- Pope Francis
*****
CLOSING THOUGHT - Edwidge Danticat
In Haiti, we have a concept called konbit: a gathering with a shared goal. Members of a community come together to accomplish something that benefits the entire community, or a single person in need. Konbits initially began in agriculture. “Today I work your field, tomorrow you work mine,” the Haitian novelist Jacques Roumain wrote of konbits. . . . How do we define community in a time of crisis, which is in many ways what community is for? We don’t need our neighbors as much when we are healthy and wealthy and can pay for all the assistance we require.
(end)
*****
No comments:
Post a Comment