Give Me All The Flickering Lights

Doug Sikkema

December 23, 2013

Doug Sikkema reviews Joseph Gordon-Levitt's beautiful short film, Flickering Lights, which invites viewers to become participants in a collage of moments where the subtle play of light both arrests and moves the viewer.

In Gordon-Levitt's film, the poet Wirrow's description of light as "bits of foil in the distance / blowing kisses from the sun to me" reminded me of Gerard Manley Hopkins' lines: "The world is charged with the grandeur of God Yet how did (and does) such a profound penetration of the transcendent lig...

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The Opposition's Might Suggests the Cause is Right

John Sikkema

December 20, 2013

This country is to have a new law school—one unlike any other existing accredited Canadian legal institution: On Wednesday, British Columbia's Minister for Advanced Education, Amrik Virk, announced that his department would follow the advice of the Federation of Law Societies of Canada, and approve ...

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Home and Heart

Peter Stockland

December 19, 2013

What happens, though, when the very notion of home is in the hands of a race of perpetual Phileas Foggs? If it was a stunning feat for a Victorian to leave home and travel around the world in 80 days, what can home possibly signify to moderns whose feet rarely touch the ground? ...

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Advent Hope

Ray Pennings

December 18, 2013

Corporately, we try to apply justice, responsibility, freedom, dignity, and community to the issues of today.

But without the birth, life, and death of one Jesus of Nazareth, 2,000 years ago in Bethlehem, our work would be nonsensical ...

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Canadian Christmas in the Reflektive Age

Brian Dijkema

December 17, 2013

We in North America are so accustomed to the tableau of images from Europe that we rarely stop to think of how an event in a little shed in a dry and dusty town in Palestine came to be associated with candles, snow, and green boughs ...

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Patronage: Of Visions and Revisions

Doug Sikkema

December 13, 2013

Eliot and Ezra Pound—makes for an interesting case study in the relationship between an editor-patron and a poet, since the fair copy drafts with Pound's edits have been preserved What is remarkable is that Eliot, at this point quite a capable and recognized poet in avante circles, allows Pound to e...

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Jumping out of the Private-Public Box

Ray Pennings

December 11, 2013

Yet Coyne then uses a sweeping contrast, highlighting church groups as a specific example of private organizations who "wish to remain private, separate, and apart from the public square Political parties are not purely private organizations, of the kind who wish only to remain private, separate and...

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Panem et circenses

Peter Stockland

December 10, 2013

Doubtless, a similar argument went through Caesar's mind as his thumb hung suspended in the Colosseum air, poised between turning up or turning down, the bridge between a human life or death. Yet without downgrading the importance of a vital bridge that is reportedly poised to fall down, it strikes ...

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A Flourishing Detroit Requires More Than an Influx of Cash

James K.A. Smith

December 9, 2013

What's the connection between these two news items? You guessed it: many creditors, including unions and their pensioners, are looking at the DIA collection as something to be monetized to help settle the city’s debts Without question, protecting the DIA collection will mean even fewer cents on the ...

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The Continued Work of Restoration

Kathryn de Ruijter

December 6, 2013

The park exists because of the hard work and patronage of the Friends of the High Line ...

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Reforming Political Institutions

Ray Pennings

December 4, 2013

Tuesday morning, Wellington-Dufferin MP Michael Chong introduced his Private Members' Bill to reform the relationship of MPs to their parties and leaders, and to embed caucus rights within the processes of the House of Commons Chong deftly avoided the traps set for him but as long as political cover...

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Seeking Empty Stomachs

Brian Dijkema

December 3, 2013

Our Catholic and Orthodox friends probably need little convincing of the practice—it’s been around for some time after all—but allow me to encourage them to take up the practice with vigour, and to make the modest proposal to my Protestant brothers and sisters that we likewise hold off on the Christ...

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Take the Tough Medicine Now

Jonathan Wellum

December 2, 2013

Without artificially low interest rates and accommodative central banks willing to "monetize" large swaths of government debt by printing money, governments would be more constrained and there would be greater financial discipline imposed on governments through higher interest rates But what happens...

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Science & Sainthood

Mark Basik

December 1, 2013

Dr. Mark Basik, a Montreal-based cancer researcher, examines the remarkable scientific career and powerful faith of famed geneticist Dr. Jerome Lejeune

The first and most obvious one was why is it that one extra, and not one missing, chromosome leads to Down's syndrome? Lejeune expected to find missing genetic material, not excess In later interventions, including at a trial challenging the legality of abortion in Saskatchewan in 1984, Lejeune woul...

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On the Table

Travis D. Smith

December 1, 2013

Travis D. Smith remembers political philosopher Sam Ajzenstat as a man of knowledge, wisdom and great counsel

Luckily, at a time in my life when I sorely needed good counsel but barely realized it and wouldn't have admitted it, I enrolled in classes taught by the Ajzenstats, Sam and Janet It was also from Sam (and Janet, together) that I learned the rhetorical strategy of motivating someone to become better...

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