John McCarthy, SJ, is Socius to the Provincial, director of formation, and doing research and writing in ecology.
48 posts
As I get older, I realize that I know less and less about God. God - a simple three letter word. I can pronounce the word "God" with the same energy and breath as I pronounce the words "cat", "dog" or "mouse." But, that's the heart of the problem. Given our ability to speak of "God" in the same way we speak of any other "thing", we fall into the trap of thinking of God as simply another "thing" or "person." God become a category just like any other category,...
Maybe that is why I like hiking in the mountains north of Vancouver - it lets my cares drop like autumn leaves. This past week, a hiking buddy and I managed to ascend (and descend) the mountains for a 10 hour hike. It took us up an old logging road, in behind the Lions, where snow from last winter still lingers in the cold, drafty, north-facing slopes, along the meandering Howe Sound Crest Trail, around this and that mountain, and back down again to our starting point....
As I waited in the early morning chapel for the beginning of Mass, the stained glass caught the first rays of the morning sun. The darkness now gleamed with the warmed filtered light. The rectangular and angular slices of glass transformed the incoming sun into a kaleidoscope of colour. My gaze rested on the soft warm glow streaming in from outside....
At 54 years of age, I still bring wildflowers home to my Mom. It's a strange admission, something not normally shared in print. Most men my age are busy building the world or building their career, or as is increasingly common, enjoying retirement....
I came across Taxacerum offinciale for the first time the other day. You may know it as "piss-the-bed." At least that's what we called them in Newfoundland. Our Francophone neighbours on the islands of St. Pierre et Miquelon used the French colloquial "pissenlit." The term "dandelion" is probably most familiar. Dandelion is a corruption of the French "dent de lion," referring to the angular, tooth-shaped leaves growing as a basal whorl at the base of the flowering stem....
I like beginnings. Maybe it's my inability to follow through on things! I hope not. I remember with delight some of the first days of elementary school. The fall goldenrods and thistles of home always elicited the time to think ahead to the school year. Change was imminent and I had better get ready. Even the air, with the warmth of summer on the wane, spoke of a new season about to set in....
When it comes to the Christian notion of the "end times" we can often think in this way. Why worry about the Earth, when we're all trying to get into heaven? Why worry about nature when it is the salvation of the person that we seek? Or more explicitly, why worry about the salvation of the body, when it is the soul that is all important?...
just finished an 8-day retreat with other Jesuits and some colleagues at the Manresa Jesuit Spiritual Renewal Centre in Pickering, Ontario. It was a silent retreat, as are all such retreats. Silence is a strange thing. It's something that we both resist and crave....
Leafing through some recent issues of Science and Nature underline the truth of such awareness. All Greek to me are such titles as Antidiabetic actions of a non-agonist PPAR ligand blocking Cdk5-mediated phosphorylation or On-demand single-electron transfer between distant quantum dots. Furthermore, I am totally dependent on so many people be they doctors, mechanics, dentists, pilots, cooks, plumbers or accountants....
Salmon numbers are way up this year. Millions of the silvered fish have streamed into the fresh rivers of the Pacific Northwest. In fact, over 30 million sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka) have finned and funneled through the Georgia Strait up into mother Fraser. Relentless and heaven-bound, the sockeye have surged up the Fraser, spilled into the turbulent Thompson, to finally rest, spawn and die in the 12 km long Adams River over 450 km deep in the heart of BC. Not all make this perilous journey, but millions of sockeye managed to spawn in the Adams this year. Thousands of people from all over the world came to stand on the banks of the river and marvel at this dance of life....
