So WestJet is now going to charge $25 to lose, er, transport your bag to your destination.If you're surprised, welcome to modern travel, where the airline industry does everything it can to take the miracle out of flight.You already have to pay for a blanket and a pillow, so the real surprise is that it took so long for the airline to charge for basic baggage....
Viola Athaide has written a poem about the Gospel parable of the workers in the vineyard. That poem is today's posting on Poetry Tuesdays....
Today, in the last of three "summary" articles, IgNation contributor, Kevin Burns, looks through this collection of vivid autobiographical portraits to see if he can identify recurring Ignatian themes and images. This, then, is what he has learned about being a Jesuit from reading the statements of a small group of contemporary Jesuits....
At the beginning of each month I am delighted to receive in the mail a copy of The American Organist. This magazine is the journal of the American Guild of Organists, an organization with wide membership in the United States and throughout the world. Each issue of The American Organist features an article on a recently built pipe organ. During the past six years (2008 to 2014) the journal has featured four new pipe organs in Jesuit churches: Madonna Della Strada Chapel at Loyola Chicago, Fordham University Chapel, St. Francis Xavier Church in New York City, and the Dahlgren Chapel at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C....
Each month, the Pope asks people throughout the world to join him in praying for intentions of global importance. One deals with a universal need; the other with evangelization. The universal intention for November is for lonely people: "That all who suffer loneliness may experience the closeness of God and the support of others." There is a general sense of loneliness in our culture. Although we have the tools to be more interconnected than ever before, we are often alone, and even lonely, in the midst of these opportunities. Many people experience a deep sense of loneliness, a painful longing for love and friendship that is absent from their lives. Mother Teresa described loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted as "the most terrible poverty."...
If there is any compliment worthy of Robin Williams' career as an actor it might be that his death was a reminder of how familiar he felt to us. He portrayed characters we came to love with such authenticity that we began to believe we knew him well. I was saddened by news of his death, but not entirely surprised. Many of us struggle with addiction and depression and I could see a familiar sadness in him. In his performing you got the sense that he was trying very hard. His comedy rushed at the world like a firehose trying to douse the flames of pain. And we lined up to be doused. We threw ourselves again and again into his manic stream of laughter. - The article originally appeared in The Jesuit Post (thejesuitpost.org) on August 26, 2014....
In the past few months IgNation has presented three sets of Jesuit portraits. Jesuits were viewed through the lens of fiction, through the filter of biography, and through the written equivalent of "selfies" – short autobiographical reflections by contemporary Jesuits.Today, in the second of three articles, IgNation contributor, Kevin Burns, looks through this collection of biographical portraits to identify some of the recurring themes and images. This is what he learned about being a Jesuit from a somewhat random and eclectic set of biographies in a search that began at the Ottawa Public Library....
Michael Czerny S.J. was director of the Jesuit Centre for Social Faith and Justice in Toronto when, 25 years ago, the eight men and women at the Central American University (UCA) were assassinated. The then Provincial Bill Addley S.J. accompanied Michael to the funeral and, shortly thereafter, missioned him to El Salvador to help re-build the UCA. This is Michael's prayerful reminiscence....
In late July a meeting of Canadian Jesuits and their non-Jesuit partners took place in Pickering. The purpose was to continue a process of apostolic discernment meant to answer the question: What priorities does God want us to adopt for our apostolic action? With our limited resources, what should we be doing? In our conversations we used the Ignatian tools of communal apostolic discernment. In this form of discernment the group is often invited to give itself a name, a name which helps it express its identity. In our meeting this invitation bore much fruit, because we went beyond names to images....
