Hopewit

  National Arboretum, Ottawa JACKASS: a donkey, especially male, or a a stupid, annoying, or detestable person. – Merriam Webster In my novel, Isaac Janssen, MDiv , you’ll find a chapter on the relationship between the follower of Christ and the “other,” particularly when conflicts arise. In this case, the conflict is over one of those mundane and ubiquitous landlord/renter disagreements. Ike is of the mind that as disciples, all Christians should exercise Paul’s “fruits of the spirit,” all should embrace the demanding generosity of the Sermon on the Mount, even with those who offend or harm, and that for a pastor, it must be doubly so. But man! It can be hard! Those of us who’ve long since been persuaded that Christ’s gospel is both broader and far more generous than childhood Sunday School led us to believe, should probably have shed any conviction that for every question, the right answer is written down; we just need to find it, read and believe it.   ...

  The old church at Fish Creek When a Winnipeg friend heard I was in hospital in Saskatoon, he messaged me to say he hoped I’d be out of “that cesspool of contamination” very soon. I admit, it was the stubborn pneumonia and imagined consequences that pretty much wiped the fear of COVID 19 off my radar screen as they loaded me into an ambulance in Rosthern, as I waited in a cold compartment for assessment in the Emergency section of St. Paul’s Hospital, as I was wheeled back and forth between CT scans, X-ray machines and finally transferred to the sixth floor. Clearly a case of forgetting about the wasp on the dresser as long as there’s a scorpion hanging around under your bed.                 Health care during a pandemic can reveal a lot about ourselves. How we react to the care that can be given by workers who are themselves traumatized by their vulnerability is a case in point. So I’m thirsty; I push ...