The State of Alabama has had a controversial relationship with the Ten Commandments. Not so much its teachings but its physical representation.

The phrases “hot ticket” and “religious freedom forum” appear only infrequently in the same sentence, especially on Parliament Hill where the operative word is secularism, secularism and more secularism.

Mondegreens are those wonderful phenomena in language where a misheard phrase is substituted for the real thing, usually in music. The term comes from American writer Sylvia Wright who explained that she misheard the phrase “and laid him on the green” in a Scottish ballad as “and Lady Mondegreen.” 

He was exhausted, lonely, in pain and occasionally maligned. But he carried a vision in his head and a love in his heart that kept him going despite the circumstances.

For several months, I have been attending yoga classes. As a tall man who has been crammed into ill-fitting chairs and desks all my life, I find these classes difficult. My body is stiff. I can be frustrated because of my inability to do poses others do so readily.

I officially jumped on the audiobook bandwagon about a year ago. 

Frustrated by the Church’s inability to defuse long-running clergy sex scandals, Pope Francis has summoned the worldwide presidents of Catholic bishops conferences to the Vatican in February to find better ways to protect children and eradicate predatory priests.

How little it takes. How few people cross our borders before we allow narratives of fear to start taking hold of us. 

Before I became a Catholic 10 years ago I viewed the papacy as a monarchy, representing great strength and self-assurance. 

In a remote fishing village, the people became accustomed to the pounding of the heavy seas which imperiled every boat leaving their harbour, but they never could become accustomed to the deaths. The deaths of fishermen caught in the grip of an uncompromising ocean in the dead of night.