Jimmy Carter, the former U.S. president who turned 95 on Oct. 1, is one of the most decent, self-sacrificing human beings of the 20th (and 21st) century. 

Early in his book, Biography of Silence, Pablo d’Ors notes some of the many experiences he cultivated in his life as a young adult — travelling, reading voraciously and having numerous romances. “Like many of my contemporaries, I was convinced that the more experiences I had and the more intense and stunning they were, the sooner and better I would become a complete person.”

An old adage in development work is the dictum, “Give a person a fish, and you will feed her for one day; teach her how to fish, and you will feed her for a lifetime.” 

In his work with the Mennonite Church of Canada, Steve Heinrichs encourages congregations across Canada to seek reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. He urges Mennonites to learn about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 calls to action and to study the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Authors of dystopian novels are bound to get a lot wrong. After all, they are looking into what they believe will be a dark future which is inherently unpredictable. The year 1984, for example, turned out to be nothing like George Orwell’s famous novel of the same name.

Since the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, Quebec governments have been bent on driving religion out of their culture. Ironically, this campaign has co-existed with the broader campaign to preserve Quebec’s uniqueness in an English-speaking North America. 

In our liturgy, Catholics confess that we have “greatly sinned, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do.” Sin takes more than one form, and often what we fail to do makes as much space for evil to grow as do our overtly sinful actions.

The overwhelming election victory of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party has heightened fears among members of the nation’s minority religions, including Christians. Yet Christians in the Western world might well learn some lessons, both positive and negative, from Modi’s politics of Hindu nationalism.

Fourteen years. That’s how long Jean Vanier said his life was in “a holding pattern.” 

For fans of the Edmonton Oilers, like myself, the Stanley Cup playoffs are a time of mourning. Our team has only made it to the playoffs once in the last 13 years. Well, we can cheer for another Canadian team, but this season all three which made the playoffs — Winnipeg Jets, Calgary Flames and Toronto Maple Leafs — lost their first-round series.