Holding, as an attribute of God, sort of fell out of the sky for me this month. I was looking out the window with wonder at just how many stars we can see without leaving the city in this new-to-us, small(er) city we now call home. As I juggle all the new things, I wondered why I hadn’t thought of it before. The Creator of the Universe is holding time and space in an eternal trajectory.

I read somewhere years ago that one of the great sources of human anxiety is time. Time is too slow or too fast or there is not enough of it. We live on schedules and deadlines that seem to push us harder than we would like or is even healthy.

Premier Christian Radio in the UK just sponsored a survey that investigated how the COVID crisis has affected religious beliefs and attitudes. There were three major findings — namely, that 67 per cent of those who characterize themselves as “religious” found their belief in God challenged, that almost a quarter said the pandemic made them more fearful of death, and that around a third of those surveyed said that their prayer life had been affected by the crisis.

Despite plenty of reasons to believe otherwise, Christianity remains the greatest force in the global push for human equality, human rights and the dignity of the human person.

I recently gave a virtual commencement speech at Our Lady Seat of Wisdom College in Barry’s Bay, Ont. Incidentally, OLSW (as it shall henceforth be abbreviated) is one of only two Canadian Catholic colleges or universities on the prestigious Newman Guide of the Cardinal Newman Society.

 It has become commonplace to speak of our current reality as “a time like no other.”

Unfurling Bernadette Devlin, Quebec’s Catholic bishops, Irish nuns and William F. Buckley Jr. in the same thought, never mind one sentence, might be considered psychologically, even rhetorically, impossible. Well, there it is. Impossibility vanquished. 

A woman passes by a crowd protesting public-health measures to curb the spread of COVID-19. Her destination? The hospital, to visit her husband, intubated and fighting for his life from the virus.

I often point out how little we as Christians and social conservatives are respected in Canadian society. It’s as if we are not even citizens and our points of view are so hideous it is taken for granted we deserve to be crushed whenever we articulate our crazy ideas.

It was the walk that first attracted my attention. Not so much a walk as a hobble, dragging one leg painfully after the other. Dusk had descended on the streets and the chill of winter had finally given way to the promise of spring, although it was still far too cold for the many people scattered around the neighbouring homeless shelters.