The Beast of Seumus Farquarson: A Halloween Tale

In the Scots highlands there are malignant brownies said to inhabit the crags of my clan's district. These small beasties are nothin' in comparison to what I saw that night. I passed out after slippin' and gashin' my head on a rock. It was not an enormous gash but enough of a bruiser to give my reveled body a reprieve from guzzling. I wanted to sleep anyway, but this was not the place I should have snoozed. I awoke to a sloshing floppy sound, wet upon the rocks. Accompanying the sound was a smell, a stench, pardon the expression,

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Sponging The Stone

I DON'T REMEMBER reading the book until my adult years, yet Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol seems always to have been with me. The Carol entered my life when I lay on the living room floor with a belly full of Christmas turkey avoiding adult conversation at my grandmother's dinner. My first recollection of the story is in the form of the 1951 American film version Scrooge. Alastair Sim, the most robust interpreter of Scrooge, fascinated me by his depiction of a man who starts off as "solitary as an oyster" and winds up a "second father" to

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Ask The Popcorn Man

REMEMBER WHEN ON social occasions you responded with lightning quick accuracy to the question “What do you do?" You sat easily with family and friends in a circle of equality. That was then. Things have changed. Imagine. You are either unemployed or underemployed but you have memories of "gainful employment." Now you are increasingly angered by the embarrassing question, "...and what do you do?" The circle of equality now seems distorted by your presence. You feel unproductive and unacceptable. "All they need are good jobs," a friend of mine once bellowed. “Work projects - that would improve their images, get them

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Ripping The Roof Off

YEARS AGO, I read with admiration and excitement about a Christian philosopher who "ripped the roof" off his theological system, examined what was there, and started over again from scratch. Becoming as agnostic as humanly possible, he read broadly in Christian and philosophical thought for two years. He quit all his teaching and associations with the church. When I read the results of his experiment, I was unimpressed by his conclusions but had to admit that I admired his approach and the courage it took to undergo such a vulnerable evaluation. I'd like to say that I voluntarily followed

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Catch Me If You Can

MY INNER CHILD has the pernicious habit of throwing himself down the stairs. This behaviour began one evening during the winter of '56 when I climbed the stairs up to the second story washroom in our Berry Street . Being only four years old, I was not steady on my feet. The excitement of going to the Ice Capades coupled with the urgency of nature's call and the staccato voice of Danny Gallivan calling the hockey game between the Leafs and the Habs, contributed to my imbalance. The cotton socks that adorned my pudgy, short feet often snagged on the

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Who Do You Say I Am

"WHAT ARE THEY saying about me? What do you think about me?" Everybody has asked these questions but when Jesus of Nazareth posed them to his friends at Caesarea-Philippi, an ancient Roman cosmopolitan city on the edge of the Sea of Galilee, he started a discussion that continues to baffle, enrage and inspire people two millennia later. I have always wondered if these were real or trick questions. Was Jesus cornering Peter into giving the right dogmatic answer, later to be included in sacred writings, or was this an open question addressed to all people? I don't want

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Joyful Happiness: A Spiritual Memoir

WHEN WAS I truly happy? The happiest time of my life dovetails with the time when I felt the most stress and suffering. With the loss of both my job and my first marriage, 1991 was my Annus horribilis and my most blessed year. That year I discovered what it was to be loved and to love through the lens of God's compassion and forgiveness.

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Tools of Character

AS DIFFICULT AS it is to learn to trust a mentor, it is even more arduous to break down our self suspicion. Do we have what it takes to break free of the entanglements of the Dark Wood - to melt with feeling-intellect the icy encrustations of Hell that keep us paralyzed in our self defeating patterns? We stare eyeball to eyeball at the antagonist within, sizing up our character and our chances of restoration.

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Monsters at the Margin

VIRTUE IS FOUND at the margins of society more often than at its centre. If this is so, Mary Shelley's Monster is a real find! Her creature is an isolate of great sensitivity, kindness, and insight. Contrary to James Whale's 1931 film of the Creature as a lumbering dolt, Mary Shelley's Monster was modeled on Rousseau's notion of humanity as the "noble savage." The nobility of the Creature is evident as he unveils his chronicle to Victor Frankenstein upon the icy crags of Mount Blanc. Meet Frankenstein's Creature

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Resurrection: Beyond Ghosts and Ghouls

MORE THAN A fact or doctrine, the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth embodies personal and historical hope. While reading a variety of viewpoints on the resurrection, I have been alternatively confused, comforted, restored and unexpectedly devastated by this theme. Internally and subjectively the resurrection is an encounter with the epicenter of meaning and significance. Without a living encounter and reliance on the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, spirituality amounts to little more than armchair speculation. This strikes at the root of my fears because my intellect hesitates to believe that a person whose bodily functions had ceased, whose tether to

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