Colleagues List, April 28th, 2019

Vol. XIV No. 41

GLOBAL AND ECUMENICAL IN SCOPE
CANADIAN IN PERSPECTI 

Wayne A. Holst, Editor
My E-Mail Address: waholst@telus.net

This email is sent only to a voluntary subscriber list.

If you no longer wish to receive these weekly columns,

write to me personally - waholst@telus.net

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Dear Friends:

This issue of Colleagues List arrives early this week,
and that is because we leave for East Europe and Russia
on Thursday, April 25th.

The next issue will reach you in three weeks, May 19th
and we should have new travels to talk about.

My Special Item this week is my Spring Anglican Journal
column entitled "Finches and Falcons." I share some insights
from observing them near our home.

If you live in the northern hemisphere, I hope you have
a great spring! We will be travelling from Austria north to
Russia and hope to experience spring as we go.

Wayne

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SPECIAL ITEM

Here is my Spring column for the Anglican Journal:
"Finches and Falcons."

https://tinyurl.com/y38kvagp

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COLLEAGUE CONTRIBUTIONS

John Griffith,
Calgary, AB.

What Was I Thinking (blog)
April 20th, 2019

"I Have Been Feeling Blue"
  https://tinyurl.com/y3ore2xb

--

Ron Rolheiser,
San Antonio, TX

Personal Web Site,
April 22nd, 2019

"Ascending, Descending, and Just Keeping Steady"
   https://tinyurl.com/yyt4fm46

--

Mark Whittall,
Ottawa, ON.

Sermons and Blog,
April 21st, 2019

"Easter, It Happens to Us"
  https://tinyurl.com/y2l4l6k7

--

Jim Taylor,
Okanagan, BC

Personal Web Log,
April 24th, 2019

"Observing Ourselves Observing Ourselves"
  https://tinyurl.com/y2mljpae

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NET NOTES

EASTER MAYBE PEOPLE
We May Have Much in Common

The Christian Century,
April 16th, 2019

https://tinyurl.com/y5f5mcd9

--

THEOLOGY OF THE FUTURE
Theologians and Bible Scholars
Need to Work Together
by N.T. Wright

Christianity Today,
March 18th, 2019

https://tinyurl.com/y3rf29n2

--

CANADIAN DECRIBES BOMBING
Church in Sri Lanka Was Nearby

Broadview,
April 21st, 2019

https://tinyurl.com/y5allv2n

--

WHO ARE SRI LANKA'S CHRISTIANS?
Background to the Tragedy

America Magazine,
April 23rd, 2019

https://tinyurl.com/yywcnltr

--

THE WEST'S DEBT TO NOTRE DAME
"Our Lady" - A Key Christian Theme

America Magazine,
April 22nd, 2019

https://tinyurl.com/y2mkks5g

--

THE FACES OF GERMANY'S
EUROPEAN IDENTITY
The Nation Has Contributed Much

La Croix International,
April 24th, 2019

https://tinyurl.com/y5tv4mxm

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MOMENT IN TIME

Globe and Mail
April 24th, 2019

Hughes Commission report is released -

MOUNT CASHEL

The Mount Cashel orphanage was located in St. John's.
 
April 24, 1992: The top official in Newfoundland’s Justice
Department knew what was happening at Mount Cashel
Boys’ Home. So did the chief of provincial police.

For years, boys were being physically and sexually abused
in the St. John’s orphanage, run by the Christian Brothers,
a Catholic lay order. A detective uncovered evidence of this
in 1975, but was told to remove references to sexual abuse
from his reports. The deputy justice minister, in turn, kept
the reports hidden in his personal filing cabinet. No charges
were laid. Two abusers were allowed to leave the province,
while others remained in charge of Mount Cashel. The story
stayed hidden until 1989, when a call to a radio station
prompted police to reopen the file. A royal commission, led
by retired judge Samuel Hughes, was struck to investigate
government and police mishandling of the 1975 investigation.

Hughes interviewed more than 200 witnesses and released
a public report in April, 1992. The cover-up, he concluded,
was a “response by co-religionists of the alleged offenders
to what was perceived as a challenge to the faith and morals
of their religious community.”

Nine Christian Brothers were eventually convicted of assault
- related crimes. More than 100 survivors have received some
sort of compensation. – Mark Rendell

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WISDOM OF THE WEEK

From Sojourners and the Bruderhof online:

So often we think we have got to make a difference
and be a big dog. Let us just try to be little fleas bitting.
Enough fleas bitting strategically can make a very big
dog very uncomfortable.

- Marian Wright Edelman

--

There is a difference between curing and healing,
and I believe the church is called to the slow and
difficult work of healing. We are called to enter into
one another’s pain, anoint it as holy, and stick
around no matter the outcome.

- Rachel Held Evans

--

But now the power of Easter has burst upon us with
the resurrection of Christ. Now we find in ourselves
a strength which is not our own, and which is freely
given to us whenever we need it, raising us above
the Law, giving us a new law which is hidden in Christ:
the law of his merciful love for us. Now we no longer
strive to be good because we have to, because it is
a duty, but because our joy is to please him who has
given all his love to us! Now our life is full of meaning!

- Thomas Merton

--

The Bible leaves no doubt at all about the sanctity
of the act of world-making, or of the world that was
made, or of creaturely or bodily life in this world.
We are holy creatures living among other holy
creatures in a world that is holy. Some people
know this, and some do not. Nobody, of course,
knows it all the time. But what keeps it from being
far better known than it is? Why is it apparently
unknown to millions of professed students of the
Bible? How can modern Christianity have so
solemnly folded its hands while so much of the
work of God was and is being destroyed?

- Wendell Berry

--

Easter comes out ringing in terms that we all hear
if we seek to hear it, that the soul of man is immortal.
Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ we have fit
 testimony that this earthly life is not the end, that
death is just something of a turn in the road, that life
moves down a continual moving river, and that death
is just a little turn in the river, that this earthly life is
merely an embryonic prelude to a new awakening,
that death is not a period which ends this great
sentence of life but a comma that punctuates it to
more loftier significance. That is what it says.

That is the meaning of Easter. That is the question
that Easter answers – that death is not the end.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

*****

CLOSING THOUGHT - Rachel Held Evans

There is a difference between curing and healing,
and I believe the church is called to the slow and
difficult work of healing. We are called to enter into
one another’s pain, anoint it as holy, and stick
around no matter the outcome.

(end)

*****

Our Last ACTS Activity of the Program Year -

ST. DAVID'S SPIRITUAL TRAVELERS TOUR, 2019
East Europe and Russia were chosen as our destinations!

This will be our fifth Spiritual Travelers Tour, with a

group emerging from St. David's but very open to others.

 

The Tour is entitled: "From Vienna to Moscow"

We plan a twenty-day tour that combines a focus
on spirituality, culture and the relationship between

religion and politics. The tour will run from April 25th

through May 15th, 2019.

https://tinyurl.com/y834742f

A beautiful brochure with trip cost, itinerary, and
many helpful travel hints has been published.

https://tinyurl.com/y7j55gym

Our trip sale reached an important milestone
as 38 persons registered, helping us to surpass
our optimal goal of 30 passengers.

30 travelers had paid their trip fare as of the deadline:
January 15th, 2019. This will be our travel group.

Our Canadian tour company is Rostad Tours, Calgary.
Contact Rostad Tours: http://www.rostad.com/
Phone 1-800-361-8687 or 403-238-4090.

24 persons attended the pre-trip gathering at

St. David's Calgary, Monday, March 25th, 2019

  

St. David's sent off their Spiritual Travelers

with a liturgy of blessing, Sunday, April 14th.

We are now about to depart.

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