Late last week I was chatting with the editor of a Canadian think tank publication who sounded apologetically proud of how well his magazine is doing. In addition to being able to say truthfully how much it influences influencers, he … Continue reading →

Skimming the table of contents of Nick Wolterstoff’s recently published collection of essays entitled Hearing the Call, I found two articles leaping off the page at me: “Letter to a Young Theologian” and “Playing with Snakes: A Word to Seminary … Continue reading →

Faithful presence. Those two words returned to my mind again and again as I reflected on the movie Of Gods and Men. The film depicts the life of eight Trappist monks at Our Lady of the Atlas monastery in Algeria … Continue reading →

There is a lot of talk these days about the sorry state of universities, and even more talk about the even sorrier state of humanities within those universities. One recurring theme is that universities are too specialized. “Too specialized,” in … Continue reading →

President Obama opened and closed last night’s State of the Union with a series of auspicious military metaphors. In opening, “These achievements are a testament to the courage, selflessness and teamwork of America’s Armed Forces. At a time when too … Continue reading →

Having been a small child in the last years before Canada dumped its red Royal Mailboxes into the dustbin of history, I have always considered the British Crown a useless necessity. It has always baffled me how anyone who has … Continue reading →

Following on from my blog post last week—which seems to have struck quite a nerve, judging from the feedback I got (which showed that many, many people are grappling with these vocational questions all the time)—I’d like to say just … Continue reading →

I was speaking to a friend of mine over the holidays about Marilyn Chandler McEntyre’s book Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies. In one of those too-short conversations that take place over coffee and between pews after church, … Continue reading →

Washington was built on a swamp, Ottawa on an old sleepy lumber town, St. Petersburg on a swampy patch of Baltic seacoast. Imperial exercises in urban planning don’t always go wrong, or at least not while the empires which sustain … Continue reading →

There is a passage in the Old Testament book of Kings where the temple of God—the cultural centre of the people of Israel—is given a thorough cleaning and refurbishment after years of desecration and abuse. In the midst of this … Continue reading →