Johnston Smith is a retired teacher and an active spiritual director in Winnipeg.
38 posts
Every now and then a development come along which shakes up our smugness. The discovery of the Americas did this to sixteenth century Europe and, eventually, so did the discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo. So did geologist Charles Lyell in the 1830's who argued that earth was much older than the Seventeenth Century Bishop Ussher's scripture-based determination that the earth's creation had occurred on Sunday October 23, 4004.B.C. And let's not get started on Charles Darwin!...
I write this reflection on November 8 after our St. Paul's community gathered to remember the valiant sacrifice of Canadian soldiers--particularly 25 of our own boys --- and to affirm our purpose to work for peace. Most of the kids were quite moved by the ceremonies and the speeches. I was too, but now my heart is drawn to another question: what ever happened to honour among people and especially among those who would lead us?...
Grade nine kids come to St. Paul 's from varied backgrounds-–socio-economic, religious, ethnic--- but they all face the same new challenge: theology. Our grade nine course is a primer in the basics of the Catholic Christian faith and we begin with a unit on the Society of Jesus....
Recently Winnipeg's Archbishop Richard Gagnon was installed as chancellor of St. Paul's College, the Catholic college in the University of Manitoba. Preaching at the mass prior to his installation, Archbishop Gagnon made an observation which has stuck in my head and my heart. The gospel of the day was the story of the raising of Lazarus. In what was almost a throwaway comment, he observed that, while we might say that Lazarus was returned to the land of the living, it is truer to say that he was returned to the land of the dying....
In his Ignatius Knew, American Jesuit Ralph Metz proposes what he calls "an Ignatian pedagogical paradigm" at the core of which is the cycle experience/reflection/action. In my work with highschool students doing the Spiritual Exercises, I have found the hardest part for the retreatants is the "reflection" aspect. Both their own age and the age in which they live promote a "consumerist" attitude towards experience, a fast-food approach where life is gobbled down and one moves on to the next experience, not quite mindlessly but certainly not mindfully....
For this week's poem, igNation turns to Johnston Smith who teaches at St. Paul's High School in Winnipeg, Manitoba...
January 25th is the Feast Day of the Conversion of St. Paul. To mark this day we post a poem about the day written by Johnston Smith, a teacher at St. Paul's High School, Winnipeg....
One of my guilty pleasures is reading "Chiesa" at espressoonline, a blog composed by the cheekily pen-named "Sandro Magister." Sometimes gossipy but usually well informed, Magister has been writing constantly about Pope Francis since his accession. In a recent entry he cites a commentary by Antonio Spadaro SJ, the man who interviewed Pope Francis in that now famous Civilità Cattolica article....
The German statesman Otto von Bismark is reputed to have said, "Politics is like sausage making: if you want to enjoy the product, don't look too closely at the process." In our society, major group decisions are usually made by some compromise between clashing power interests. The recent Occupy Wall Street movement and the 2012-3 National Hockey League lockout illustrate how the exercise of clashing power drives decisions. Perhaps Adam Smith would call all this "enlightened self-interest." Well, I certainly see the self-interest but am not so sure about the "enlightened" part!...
