Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

Is there a place for dreaming? by Wayne Northey

IS THERE A PLACE FOR DREAMING?
RESTORATIVE JUSTICE AND INTERNATIONAL STATE CONFLICT
by Wayne Northey

This lecture grew out of a six-month research project where Wayne served as first Scholar in Residence, Centre
for Research on Conflict, Conflict Studies, Saint Paul University, Ottawa, Canada. He is also writing a book based upon this research.

Download spu_presentation_september_2007__3_1.pdf

George Grant and the Anglican Church of Canada: A 20th Century Prophet by Ron Dart

"Liberalism was, in origin, criticism of the old established order. Today, it is the voice of the establishment."     George Grant

Part I 

The inside flap on the recent book about George Grant, Athens and Jerusalem: George Grant’s Theology, Philosophy, and Politics (2006), says this: ‘George Grant (1918-1988) has been called Canada’s greatest political philosopher. To this day, his work continues to stimulate, challenge, and inspire Canadians to think more deeply about matters of social justice and individual responsibility. However, while there has been considerable discussion of Grant’s political theories, relatively little attention has been paid to their theological and philosophical underpinnings’. There is little doubt, in short, that Grant was the most important Christian public intellectual in Canada in the later half of the 20^th century, and for those who take their faith with some intellectual seriousness, much can be learned from George Grant the prophet, theologian, philosopher and engaged thinker.

Thai Tsunami Recovery Update by Asher

His Message: Jailed But Not Barred from God

TIERRA NUEVA'S CHAPLAIN REACHES OUT FROM THE INSIDE by Ralph Schwartz

The door to a meeting room in the Skagit County Jail suddenly clanged open and a handful of inmates, clad in red jumpsuits and sandals, drifted in.

Guards call the space the multiuse room or library, and it serves that function with tattered paperbacks stacked in tall piles, a table and some plastic chairs. The room is dark, its cinderblock walls painted a dull brown.

The Saints are Coming - U2 / Greenday

"The Gap (between the rich and the poor)" by Canadian Polital Dance Punkers, "You Say Party, We Say Die"

God Calls Violent Men by Bob Ekblad

Violent men make the headlines daily, and many people consider those not on our side as worthy of banishment or death.  God has called me and many here at Tierra Nueva to seek for, find, bind up, love, pray for and in various ways minister to violent men and women—both inside and outside jail.   God is calling the entire church to reach out in love to violent men, and women too, inviting them into a life filled with adventure, love and meaning as agents of transformation in the company of Jesus.

Every week I have the privilege of seeing hardened, violent men profoundly touched by God’s affectionate embrace.  When people in our weekly jail Bible studies come to truly realize God adores them, they respond to God’s call and become disciples—often 12-15 at a time.   

John Donne on Mercy and Justice

"[I]n every work of God there is mercy and justice, so, as they presuppose one another. And as in his created Elements, so in these there is a condensing and rarifying, by which they become and grow into one another. For often that action which was principally intended for a work of Justice against one Malefactor, extends it self to an universall Mercy, by the Example. And the children of God know how to resolve and make liquid all his Actions. They can spie out and extract Balmes, and Oyles from his Vinegers; and supple, and cure with his corrosives. Be he what he will, they will make him most Mercifull, if Mercy be then wholsomest for them. . . . And in like manner out of his Mercies they can distil Justice, when presumption upon Mercy needs a corrective" (Essays in Divinity 62-63).

Allow the Poor Man to Save You by Brita Miko

This article appears as a chapter of Brad Jersak's Kissing the Leper.

God sells righteousness very cheap to those who are eager to buy: namely, for a little piece of bread, worthless clothes, a cup of cold water and one coin.1

                               Abba Epiphanus

This began with a taste of heaven and hell. This began with a taste of peace and torment. This began while giving birth to my second child. The doctor broke my water just before 7 a.m., and my baby was born at 8:22 a.m. That final hour was contraction upon contraction. Labor is not the kind of pain that makes you cry; it’s the kind of pain that makes you gasp and writhe and cry out “O God, help me!” It’s also the kind of pain that makes you pass out—which I did, twice. Those unconscious moments of bliss during otherwise conscious pain were what started me thinking…

Die With Me: Pickton, Jesus, and Me by Brita Miko

(This piece began in a newsgroup. Brad Jersak’s words are here, enfolded in mine. All italicized words are Brad’s). 

Life is not theoretical. The reality of life is lived. Hard lived moment by hard lived moment. Moments of beauty. Moments of grace. Moments of agony. Moments of terror. We are inside it and it is inside us. 

The life of Christ is a life happening in these very specific particular moments, or it is not happening at all. It doesn’t only happen in the mind, like a disembodied Word. It is incarnated again and again, born anew into every circumstance. It is for everything or it is for nothing at all. It is always true or it never was true. The lived reality is where we must know it and receive it and be it. It cannot be magical words for another world. It must be the way through in this one. Or it is no way at all. 

The life of Christ is the life I believe I want. Most of the time. But sometimes, I become scared. I get scared by what the life of Christ might mean. Now is one of those times.