Truthish

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty -- that is allYe know on earth, and all ye need to know. That’s what Keats said in his poem Ode on a Grecian Urn but these days it’s not so simple to know anything about truth. Under the bombardment of social media and polarized politics the notion of truth …

April Fools

The other day my friend Pat and I drove down to the Conference Centre where Pierre Poilievre was holding his April Fools rally against the carbon tax. We wanted to join the group of climate activists who had their own signs in support of carbon pricing. When we arrived we found a busy situation with …

Spring again

I haven’t posted anything on my blog for several weeks now because I’ve been preoccupied with other things. Life. Death. Springtime. The camelia outside my window is in bloom, crocuses and daffodils are flowering everywhere and streets are lined with blossoming cherry trees. Not long ago. my brother Rod and I were talking about A.E.Housman‘s …

Valentine Reflections

Last week we had Valentine’s Day. “Happy day of love,” a dear great-niece wrote to me on that day, and it got me thinking about love and the ways in which we express it on this one day each year. The origins of Valentine’s Day are quite dark and a bit unclear. The observance is …

A World of Wonders

I’ve been trying to spend ten minutes every day sitting on my patio, looking closely at the trees, listening to the birds, and watching the clouds. This practice has been inspired by my reading Karen Armstrong’s latest book Sacred Nature: Restoring our Ancient Bond with the Natural World. Armstrong, a former nun and award-winning author …

2024

In my last post of 2023, I referred to Amanda Gorman’s words ‘If we are brave enough to see’ and ‘If we are brave enough to be.’ I wonder if we also need to ask if we are brave enough to say. To say things that may be difficult. To speak up. We are sometimes …

Light

I’m writing this post three days early, not just because I like the number 3 but also because I don’t think people will be at their computers Christmas morning. We’ve just observed our Winter Solstice and in three days it will be Christmas, and twelve days after that it will be Epiphany, all of which …

Angels everywhere

The universe is vast, and angels are innumerable.  According to the Bible there are myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands of them. That’s a lot of angels! And some sources claim that they continue to accumulate and multiply and will always outnumber us. Since we’ve no idea what’s going on in the 95% of …

Shelter

There were strong winds and record-breaking snowfalls this past October, and many people I know had snowy driveways and power outages. I was spared, but I felt for others. Winter has arrived. I’m thinking of shelter. I love spring and summer and fall but, although I like the idea of winter and the seasonal cycles, …

Three Again

A few weeks ago – exactly three, in fact – I wrote a post about the number three, and I received many responses to it. A few people suggested that I might have mentioned the witches in Macbeth: “When shall we three meet again? In thunder lightening or in rain?” I was reminded that magic …