by Donna Sinclair One of the great pleasures of retirement is having time to re-read authors who have been enriched your life over the years. After listening to the Trump inauguration speech, with its warlike image of a God who blesses America but not, apparently, Muslims, refugees, or the rest of the world, I felt […]

Each week, we bring you interesting stories from around the web. Here’s what caught our eye this week! ENVIRONMENT Revenge of the goldfish! Dumped pets growing into giant monsters Who doesn’t love the idea of releasing the poor goldfish, who has spent his life swimming around in bowl-shaped circles, into the great wet wild? The […]

 by Susan McCaslin “What is this Joy? That no animal falters, but knows what it must do?” from Come into animal presence, Denise Levertov (Poems: 1960-1967) On Dec. 27, 2015 our five-year old mini-Australian shepherd Penny was brutally and instantly killed by a truck before my husband’s and my eyes. The incident was an accident, […]

by Donna Sinclair It’s been over three months since the federal election; one month since Christmas. Partisan sniping in Parliament has recommenced and newspaper columnists are inexplicably (to my mind) arguing for a foolish pipeline.  The festivities are over. As W.H. Auden says, we are now  “back in the moderate Aristotelian city… And the kitchen […]

by Donna Sinclair There was a time when all my mittens were stiff with candle wax. It was almost a secret signal, a way to discern other protesters. If you hold a vigil for peace outside the office of your Member of Parliament, you are going to drip candle wax on your mitts and down […]

 by Susan McCaslin This posting originally appeared on the blog of Inanna Publications at http://www.inanna.ca. The word “religion” can generate more hostility than the other words embedded in the title of this piece, and perhaps rightly so. People mistrustful of religion examine history and notice how many of the major religions have been and continue […]

by Donna Sinclair Dietrich Bonhoeffer has been on my mind these days. I think of him with every newscast. Bonhoeffer is the icon of Germany’s Confessing Church, that small band of dissenting German Christians who stood against Hitler. They were imprisoned and often died for their courage. I deeply admire the courage of some Canadian […]

by Andy Sinclair Yoga, for me, is a path into spirituality. When I first began to study it, I learned about the eight limbs, or branches, of ashtanga yoga. That was interesting. However, I mostly wanted to learn about the third limb, asana – the postures. I loved being effortful and physical and it was […]

by Donna Sinclair A long long time ago I was a mystic. I remember it well. I was about five years old. We lived on an island in Lake Temagami. My father had placed me in the bow of the rowboat, and I trailed my hand in the water and understood that the lake and […]

by Donna Sinclair My book club was discussing Malcolm Gladwell’s David and Goliath. It appears that young David won their famous battle because he understood and exploited his huge opponent’s glaring vulnerabilities. Contrary to centuries of story-telling, David only seemed to be at a disadvantage. In reality, Gladwell tells us, Goliath was just “too big […]