It wasn’t so long ago that many of us were using the COVID-19 virus to argue that our world was more interconnected than we care to admit. Divisions are commonplace and people move through their lives erecting barriers between the haves and have-nots, between the East and the West, between the good and the bad.
In my own life I have often looked for inspiration from great men and women.
Another day, another clean slate for Nova Scotia in its coronavirus struggle. No additional deaths attributed to COVID-19, no new cases.
“Even the priest and the prophet forage in a land they know not.” This is the New American Bible translation of Jeremiah 14:18, a line of Scripture that will be familiar to anyone in North America who prays the Liturgy of the Hours
The horrifying death of George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer has sparked protests against police brutality and racism in the United States and worldwide.
It’s astonishing that, amidst massive protests across the United States against police racism, RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki had to sort through various definitions of systemic racism to determine whether it was endemic to Canada’s national police force. At first, she claimed the RCMP was free of systemic racism before doing an about-face and admitting that racism is indeed entrenched in the Mounties.
Lower class
While being allowed to visit numerous vital places but not being allowed to come to the Catholic Church, the soul’s place, I have felt like a Canadian of lower class.
As Canadian churches continue to re-open, it would be wise to heed advice Pope Francis offered to Catholics everywhere.
The other day at a neighbourhood “social distancing” soiree, while discussing the protest movement following the brutal killing of George Floyd by a bad cop in Minneapolis, I got lectured by a white women in her early 60s.
It’s hard to reconcile continued restrictions on kneeling in church and last week’s images of Prime Minister Trudeau kneeling on Parliament Hill to protest racism in Canada.
I have been plagued by cats almost my entire adult life. (OK, maybe I like them just a little.) Dogs, I feel I understand. They’re reasonably straightforward. You know when they’re happy, when they’re guilty of chewing your favourite shoe and when they’re sulking.