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....
On May 3, 2013, St. Xavier's College, Maitighar, Nepal, was filled with joy and gratitude as it inaugurated its Silver Jubilee year by installing and blessing a statue of St. Francis Xavier, the patron of the college. The long awaited inauguration was witnessed by the joyful faces of the 3,000 students who gathered on the lawn of the college....
I checked the author's name on the title page, Frederick Crowe SJ, and I began flipping through my mental contacts lists to try and recall how I knew that name. I knew I knew it, but at the time I couldn't remember how or why I remembered it. The subtitle on the title page helped as it referenced the name Bernard Lonergan SJ. Suddenly I realised that I had something quite extraordinary in my hands. The pages in this blue box comprised what was to be Frederick Crowe's final published book: Christ and History: The Christology of Bernard Lonergan from 1935 to 1982....
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....
As I write this, I am sitting in the President's Office of St. Paul's High School in Winnipeg, MB, at the very imposing presidential desk. I've been in the office for about a week, trying to get a handle on the dimensions of my new job, attending to the practicalities of establishing myself in a new setting, and meeting as many of my new co-workers (faculty, staff, board members, etc.) as I can before school officially starts after Labour Day....
My first experience of Asian hospitality was in December, 1971. I had just arrived in Darjeeling, and was enjoying a walk through a village. A family immediately called me into their house, and quickly prepared a traditional snack of tea and a fried egg. Although I could hardly communicate with them, they recognized me as a "Father" from St. Joseph's College. They had benefitted from Jesuit education and so happily welcomed me....
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....
Take your umbrella, just in case, was the wise advice given me by the young hotel clerk. Indeed! As we headed into the street in central Dublin, a light rain--more a mist--was falling. Of course it is never as bad as we imagine or remember. During my three-day visit, rain always seemed to be falling, yet the long stretches of warm sunshine surpassed the periods of rain....
What fun it must be to be a multi-billionaire! You can pretty much buy anything or do anything you want. Like Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, net worth $25.2 billion and the world's 19th richest person. He just bought the Washington Post, one of America's most respected newspapers, for $250 million out of his own pocket, less than one per cent of his net worth....
It's the largest retailer in the world, the world's third-largest public company with more than 11,000 stores and 2.2 million employees worldwide, and it's not unionized. For the labour union movement, Walmart is the Holy Grail....
