Settle Down or Lean In?

Andrea Mrozek

January 8, 2019

Both strains of advice to young women—to either settle down or "lean in" to work—ignore that family life is unattainable for many, writes Cardus Family Program Director Andrea Mrozek.

There’s no shortage of advice directed at young women, but most of it misses the mark by failing to grapple with one stark reality of the wealthy Western world: Family and marriage are wholly unattainable for many All of this advice, especially the admonition for women to settle down sooner, implies...

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Sharing the Alpha Conversation

Shaila Visser

January 7, 2019

What is Alpha and how did this gospel initiative come to take place in over 100 countries and 90 languages each year? Convivium sits down with Shaila Visser, National Director of Alpha Canada to learn more about how how a good meal, short video, and honest conversation just might be they key to accompanying those wrestling with some of life's most important questions.

When you put food and conversation together and give people a safe place to come, the Holy Spirit is released in a way that allows hearts to soften, minds to open to the gospel by the time we watch the Alpha film series Alpha is an opportunity for a group of people to be around a table to share a me...

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Called To Whole-Hearted Faith

Anna Buhrmann

January 7, 2019

At the five-day Urbana 18 student faith conference in St. Louis, former Convivium intern Anna Burhmann is witness to ways to guard against making Christ a mere convenience in our lives.

Pastor Bruel’s summons to a raw, real, and transformative pursuit of the Gospel echoed the exhortation Calvin Bennett, vice-president of camps for InterVarsity Canada, had given the night prior to the 400 members of the Canadian Student Leadership Track – namely, to be open to the invitation of Jesu...

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Blessed Are the Peacemakers

Josh Nadeau

January 4, 2019

In the lull after Christmas and New Year’s, Josh Nadeau finds the pursuit of peace ever-elusive but never more imperative.

Pressing for a unity between these two seemingly different pulls, that of inner and outer peace, is a large part of what it means to be a person of faith in the world today ...

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Keeping Interfaith Conversation Honest

Andrew P.W. Bennett with Chris Stackaruk

January 3, 2019

Fr. Dcn. Andrew Bennett, director of the Cardus Institute for Religious Freedom, and Chris Stackaruk, co-founder of Neighborly Faith, examine the way ignorance of religious traditions risks hostile division while the wrong kind of understanding feeds the error that all believers are fundamentally the same.

That's a real tragedy, because it alienates people of real traditional faith who say, "I do not want to live in a lowest common denominator sort of association with people of difference, where we say, 'We're all human all the time And what I found was that not a lot of work was being done to help la...

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No Christians by Proxy

Kaitlin Packer

January 3, 2019

Kaitlin Packer's faith is more than a check-box or the roof she was raised under. Rather, faith is the reality of the soul. 

But it’s only a fond flashback to my childhood if Christ is not Ruler of my soul ...

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The Art of Giving Thanks

January 2, 2019

As 2018 ended, we asked Convivium readers if they’d like to express personal thanks to someone special in life. The selection that follows, rich with gratitude, covers the continuum of faith, hope and charity.

As one of the eldest of your and Dad's 12 children, growing up with you at home most of the time, being close to you as you spent your days cooking, cleaning, caring for your children, getting after us when we misbehaved, I learned by the testimony of your example that being a mother means laying do...

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Under Superhero Hoods

Peter Stockland with Travis D. Smith

December 28, 2018

In a conversation about his 2018 book Superhero Ethics, author Travis Smith guides Convivium’s Peter Stockland past the classical, Biblical and liberal-democratic sources of comic book characters, ending up at the existential chasm in the immortal words of Bruce Springsteen: “Hey, what else can we do now?”

Superhero comics confusingly combine a tragicomic premise—the good guys always win, and innocent bystanders get saved, but human beings and the world never get any better—with a modern romantic-rationalistic confidence in progress A cynical person might say that the creators of superhero stories exp...

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Trying to Find a Place in This World

Haley Welch

December 27, 2018

In the last seven years, Convivium contributor Haley Welch has moved many times: to new neighbourhoods, new provinces, and new countries. To move on (or away) is not equivalent to editing out the reality of that place from her story, she writes.

There are many versions of home in this world, and I’ve lived in a few of them – rural towns, medium-sized cities, mega-cities, foreign homestays, rented rooms, shared apartments – sometimes for months, sometimes for years More than just a place or its contents, home is a familiarity marked by a sen...

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Tiny, Blue, Redeemable

December 27, 2018

"How blue is the sea, how blue is the sky, how blue and tiny and redeemable everything is, even you, even your eyes, even your imagination.”

You still and smile, the sea air forever consecrated in this moment and you find yourself repeating deep down, “How blue and tiny and redeemable everything is, even me, even my eyes, even my imagination ...

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Stubborn Scrub

December 27, 2018

You will not die of a broken heart, yet the quality of hope has been asphyxiated by this same sturdy edge. A gust of wind and the green shrub sends some of its scent through the open frame.

Green scrubs of shrub hug the alcove just beyond your window, the promise of life that springs up stubbornly, belying even the binding firmament of cement ...

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Forgiving Fog

December 27, 2018

Mist: the natural element most closely related to mystery. What knowingness is obscured in this early light of day?

Mist, the natural element most closely related to mystery ...

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Not Alone

Peter Stockland

December 21, 2018

God being only and lonely is confounding to the point of terrifying, and at the same time comforting to the core of our being, writes Convivium Publisher Peter Stockland. From His eternal knowing of loneliness, He reaches across and through creation to touch and comfort each of our lonely hearts.

Enter Job, Chesterton writes, as the character through whom God’s knowing of loneliness can be reasonably said to become familiar to us? Everywhere else in the Old Testament “positively rejoices” with the obliterating comparison of man to God The pre-figuring to which he alludes, of course, begins i...

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Coffee, Snacks, Literature

Mario Toneguzzi

December 21, 2018

Calgary’s new public library will unveil a vending machine in the new year that delivers locally written stories and poems at the touch of a button, Mario Toneguzzi reports.

Griebel said the library partnered with Loft 112, an arts organization in the city’s East Village just outside the downtown core, which put out a call for Calgary authors to provide content for the Short Story Dispenser The Calgary Public Library saw the use of a Short Story Dispenser as an opportun...

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Waiting for Aslan

Rachel Feddema

December 21, 2018

An Ottawa production of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe leaves Convivium’s Rachel DeBruyn sensing the anticipation of Advent and the impact of the way in which we remember.

I know well the story of the four Pevensie children who escape by train to the countryside during the Second World War, and tumble into the magical world of Narnia through a wardrobe in their temporary home A 2018 audience knows how the story of the Second World War ended ...

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