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.” 

Over the Labour Day weekend, there sure were a lot of U.S. politicians conveying their “thoughts and prayers” for the victims and their families of the latest mass shooting, but no visible action on doing anything about the American gun epidemic.

It’s a brilliant example of the power of persistent, passionate prayer and how speaking the truth in love can cause hearts to do a 180-degree turn.

Weather was at the front of my minds as I headed out to the lake this summer with four kids in tow while my husband was away working. 

The top executives from 181 of the richest corporations in America recently signed a one-page document on business ethics that could have been penned by the Pope.

Anti-Christian bias

Re: “Report keeps Jesuit off monument pedestal” (Aug. 11-18):

Parks Canada, members of two Indigenous groups and others say that the positioning of figures on the Champlain monument in Orillia is “racist.” They’ve now decided to make changes to it including removing a Jesuit figure as an “example of reconciliation.” 

George Orwell wrote in “Politics and the English Language” that “political language ... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” 

It all started innocently enough when I used the expression “children of God” in a recent column. Apparently in this secularized age it is an expression that some find insulting. 

Early in junior high school, I watched a kid named Frank play out what I was certain, even then, would be a pattern for his life.

With the death of Bishop John Michael Sherlock on Aug. 12 at the age of 93, I expect that I am not the only member of the sprawling Diocese of London whose sense of bereavement is mixed with bursts of jubilation at a race that was so well run.