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ome Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of the faithful and kindle in us the power of your love. Father, we are at Pentecost and we thank you for the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. As the first lesson captures the wild and visual, somewhat traditional perception it holds, we are also aware of its’ power to guide, lead, comfort and inspire us. Keep us open and responsive to the leading of the Holy Spirit – in our vocations, in the sacred spaces where we invite friendship, enjoy family life and embrace community. May we be among those ‘who call upon the name of the Lord and are saved’.
Let us pray to the Lord, hear us Lord of glory.
y friend died earlier this evening. After nine months of living under the shadow of an inoperable brain tumour, he just breathed his last breath, the life drained out of his tired body, and he was gone. In a hospital room filled with photographs and CD’s and the clutter that comes when a family sits vigil over days and weeks, he finally just let go. With his family holding his hands and stroking his head and praying and weeping – all the while wondering at the fact that this long anticipated thing was actually happening – Gerald died.
Science Monitor are having to rethink their way of doing business, while north of the border both the CBC and Global are facing serious financial challenges. In this podcast Bramwell Ryan offers an analysis of the current situation, and an invitation to the church to begin to imagine how this shifting media reality might actually offer fresh opportunities for the shaping of the culture in which we live.
ccording to Facebook, I have 137 friends. And I’m a very bad Facebook member. I only check in about once a month; I think I have only once invited someone to be my friend, and that was my wife; and I really only use the site when I want to connect with someone who isn’t answering their e-mail. Yet I still have 137 friends.
hough I began thinking about this address – and doing a fair amount of reading related to it – in the mid-Winter, the actual writing of it took place just a couple of weeks back during a writing retreat I was able to take at The Collegeville Institute at St John’s Abbey in Minnesota. In part I tell you this to place at least some of my cards openly on the table: given my druthers, the best place to do a bit of sustained writing and thinking is at a retreat centre run by Benedictine monks. That probably already says something about my biases.