Tag: christmas
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The Missing Cup
My latest column in the Christian Courier. ___________________ TIS THE SEASON OF THE HOLIDAY coffee cup. Whether you prefer to line up at Second Cup or Starbucks, your paper cup will evoke a festive and holiday spirit. It will do so, of course, without reference to any traditional Christian teachings concerning the birth of the…
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A Christmas Prayer
My latest column in the Christian Courier is a prayer for Christmas. __________________ Praise to you, O living Word, for you give the gift of our world. You are the creating one through whom ancient Laurentian mountains have their craggy existence. By your imaginative power, forests of black spruce, larch, and balsam grow along ridges…
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Fashioning our Self
My latest in the Christian Courier, here. _____________ A good number of Canadians are sporting new outfits these January days. We are wearing our Christmas gifts – or, perhaps more likely, we are newly-attired from our own post-Christmas bargain shopping. There are a good many of us who got into a new pair of jeans…
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Judgment and Grace of Strangers
But this was the first and only time that someone had called me on it, essentially saying: “Hey man, stop being such an ass. Get off your phone and look at me.”
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Reconsidering Christmas
An article I wrote in the Montreal Gazette – a decade ago! _________________ Each year at Christmas time my family engages in an act of resistance, in an act that cuts against the grain of contemporary culture. Our act of resistance consists in this: setting up a nativity scene in our home. Our daughter, especially,…
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convenient pieties — holding Christ at arm’s length
To offer a specific example, even the idea of attending church can become a convenient piety – “I go to church on Sunday. It’s important to go to church on Sunday.” But this sentiment easily becomes a convenient basis for essentially ignoring God the rest of the week – a convenient way of forgetting Jesus’…
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Spend Less – Getting Christmas Right
As we continue to make our way through the season of Advent, and as we approach the celebration of Christmas, we are sticking with the four themes of our Advent Conspiracy. In this season we are invited (or even commanded) to do the following: Worship Fully Spend Less Give…
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Representing Advent and Christmas
I am by no means an artist. In fact it’s only in the past number of months that I’ve begun putting pencil to paper – that I’ve begun taking baby steps in trying to understand how to use shading, lines and different pencils (2B 4b HB 6H) in service of an idea or image. And…
encrusted words 