192 posts
A pastoral issue that has come up again here at Holy Family Parish in Caldwell, a suburb of Monrovia, is witchcraft. Yesterday a person told me that she was depressed and felt rejected because several members of her immediate family have told people she is a witch....
Hello! Our names are Justice, Nathan and Daniel. We are from St Patrick's Elementary School in Maple Ridge, B.C. Grade 5. We are learning about religious brothers, Sisters and monks in our Religion class. Here are some questions we want to ask about you.:...
I confess that I have not really suffered in my life, not yet. I have not lived 24 hours in Dr. Donald Low's cancerous body and do not personally know the physical pain that accompanies a brain tumour. Must that lack of physical experience silence me and declare me ignorant about suffering? Doctor Low was a generous and valiant physician who gave himself fully to protecting the world from SARS, from much suffering and death. His record speaks to an unselfish dedication to life, and so he is a credible voice. But could he be missing a whole dimension of what life is and can be?...
All of us have a relationship with food. We need to in order to sustain ourselves, let alone to preserve a measure of longevity. Nothing is more basic than that. It is true that once a child is born his first stage of growing starts with water, liquid milk, later with mashed veggies and fruit, and gradually solid food. It is interesting though that this relationship, like any other, develops in different stages of life. Watching a teen ager hammering his burger or a young lady galloping her dessert while mid-age people prefers a more balanced diet and the elderly takes only what their body can take. But age is not the only factor; sick people versus the healthy active ones relate to food in different strides and reasons. However, let me add another factor – inculturation....
On Thursday, September 19, 17 Jesuit magazines around the world simultaneously published an in depth interview with Pope Francis. Main stream media has been abuzz with analysis of this interview. Today igNation reprints an excellent article from The Jesuit Post about the interview and the media's reaction....
Our band of 80 pilgrims had walked 189 kilometres together on country roads, railway allowances and hiking paths from Guelph up to Midland. When we arrived at the Shrine, we were not surprised by the greeting our volunteers provided for us. We had heard the Hallé, Hallé, Hallé, lu-u-yas upon completing each lap of the journey. We heard them on the very first night after completing 27 kilometres to our first camping spot. With muscles unaccustomed to so much exertion tired and sore, this chant invited us to a circle of white plastic foot basins filled with cool refreshing water and Epsom salts. It felt so very comforting....
Acting is doing. It is not talking about, thinking about or feeling about. Acting is doing, and listening is a doing. In an earlier entry I described the profound and challenging experience I had in a two week True Acting Institute based on the Meisner Approach under the direction of Larry Silverberg. In this entry I want to provide just a few specific examples from the vast array of insights/experiences about true acting that I received. If you wish to have a complete account of the content of the Institute, I encourage you to read Larry's own books on the Meisner Approach. Like the little book of St. Ignatius Loyola on the "Spiritual Exercises", Larry's books are primarily a series of exercises designed to produce an experience. And while reading is helpful in both cases, it is only the doing that can transform....
Acting is living truthfully under imaginary circumstances. So taught Sanford Meisner (1905-1997), usually known as Sandy. Sandy was one of the major creative adaptors of Stanislavski method acting to American stage and screen in the last century. He developed his own "Meisner Technique". To be a true actor one has to be profoundly rooted in being a true human being. Both involve "living truthfully" - the former involves living truthfully under imaginary circumstances; the latter involves living truthfully under real circumstances....
In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue. A rhyme most of us old folks heard often as children. But I have a new one for this occasion: "In 1491 Ignatius became a native son." A son of Spain that this, a Basque though he be. (That mysterious people whose roots are said to be non Indo-European) That same year the Spanish completed the reconquista (the reconquest ) of their home and native land after centuries of off and on warfare with the Muslim rulers. The battle hardened Spanish would then go on to build an Empire of their own in Americas and beyond destroying the Aztec and Incan Empires along the way....
We had the luxury of seeing Dialogues des Carmelites at the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto, a few weeks ago. In the heart of one of the more secular cities in North America a dramatic and theological portrayal of prison discipleship and martyrdom was being rendered. What was strikingly ironic was that the content, the vicarious sacrifice of the lives of these Carmelites nuns, was front and centre for a 21st century Western audience....
