03 Jun

From time to time, over the next few months, as part of the "Our Culture" section,, igNation will post poetry written by Jesuits. Poems from Gerard Manley Hopkins and St. Robert Southwell will appear as well as poems by contemporary Jesuits. An English Jesuit priest, Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 – 1889) was not widely known as a poet until after he died; his collected poems were first published in 1918 at the instigation of his friend Robert Bridges, who was at the time the Poet Laureate of England. Hopkins was both an observant lover of natural beauty and a deeply faithful man who suffered from depression, themes that reoccur in many of his poems. As a poet, he was also an experimenter, relying on alliteration, innovative meter, and created words, as well as on traditional forms such as the sonnet....

02 Jun

What do we want for those we love? I don't think we have to look too deeply into our hearts to discover the answer: we want those whom we love to be alive and well and with us forever. But our love is not strong enough to bring that about. Those whom we love get sick, and if the sickness is serious enough there is little we can do about it. Those whom we love die, and we can do nothing about that. We ourselves get sick and die, and those who love us can do nothing about that. So it would seem that love is not stronger than death....

30 May

May 26. One year ago, to the day, I began my remote preparations for walking the Camino de Santiago. Now, after a couple of thousand kilometres of walking, several hundred hours of exercising in the gym, careful gathering of materials, clothing, and equipment, it's time to go. On May 30, I will go to Madrid, then on to Roncesvalles the next day, to begin the walk on Saturday, June 1....

29 May

I arrived in Santiago de Compostella yesterday, May 21, around 11am, on day 29 of my 750km journey. I made short work of the final 20km because I wanted to make sure I arrived in plenty of time for the daily Pilgrim's Mass at noon. In spite if the quickened pace, gone was the sense of physical fatigue that often accompanied the moments of arrival. First, I was elated to be done and second the body and spirit were definitely tuned differently than they had been a short month ago. The sense of elation of the moment was augmented by an atmosphere of solidarity with the many, many familiar faces of fellow pilgrims with whom I had shared the journey. Some had walked a shorter distance, for a week or less. Others had begun the walk long before I had and from much farther away than my 750km. No matter, the common sentiment was that this was not a group of tourists come to visit a beautiful old city....

28 May

Based on Yuan era (1271-1368) play, The Orphan of Zhao, Sacrifice is story of epic revenge. A power hungry general wipes out his rival along with his entire family, save for one newborn. The infant is protected by the doctor who delivered him and raises him as his own, hoping to mold him into an instrument of revenge....

27 May

This spring and summer gives me a chance to celebrate four anniversaries. I entered the Jesuits 35 years ago, in late August 1978. Ten years later, I was ordained to the priesthood. That's 25 years on May 28. My final vows were professed 20 years ago, on May 31, 1993. And, in late August, I celebrate the 10th anniversary of successful surgery for a brain tumour....

26 May

Terrence Malick's recent beautiful and downright frustrating film "To the Wonder" offers us deeper insight that goes beyond the typical notion that regulates the Spirit to either the cognitive or emotive dimension. Though Malick does not explicitly deal with the Spirit, its anonymous presence exudes in the film. Yet, a word of caution, this is a film that I do not recommend for people seeking easy answers, because the film is painfully slow and does not give concrete resolutions. It seduces you with gorgeous sceneries, an amazing score, and the question of love....

23 May

Twenty years ago, a Jesuit psychiatrist, W.W. Meissner, produced an enlightening psychobiography of our founder (The Psychology of a Saint: Ignatius of Loyola - Yale University Press, 1992). Now in Engaging with Climate Change: Psychoanalytic and Interdisciplinary Perspectives, (Edited by Sally Weintrobe, Rutledge, London, 2013) twenty-three psychiatrists, psychologists, historians and others have brought their expertise to bear on the growing ecological crisis in a way that helps break the current climate deadlock by producing a kind of psycho-ecology or eco-psychology....

22 May

When I was a young altar server at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish in Toronto (OLPH-- Old Ladies playing hockey) I remember how pitiful the Easter Vigil had become. (This was in the 1950's) It was held not after dark, as now, but Saturday morning. Very few people attended. Besides myself and the presiding priest there were only a handful of participants....

21 May

In Canada, a writer visits the Indian storyteller Pi Patel and asks him to tell his life story. Pi tells the story of his childhood in Pondicherry, India, and the origin of his nickname. One day, his father, a zoo owner, explains that the municipality is no longer supporting the zoo and he has hence decided to move to Canada, where the animals the family owns would also be sold. They board on a Japanese cargo ship with the animals and out of the blue, there is a storm, followed by a shipwrecking. Pi survives in a lifeboat with a zebra, an orangutan, a hyena and a male Bengal tiger nicknamed Richard Parker. This is just one version of Pi's experiences. There is another. And this raises the question of the nature of memory and of the facts of memory. Are they literal or symbolic? But more importantly: what is the value and affect we attach to the "incidents" of memory....

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