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

Read This Archive

When The Teacher Comes

FACING OURSELVES HONESTLY is a bitter pill to swallow; we hope it is also good medicine. At the end of our rope, a guide or mentor can be just what is needed to move from self-pity to wholeness. If we can learn to trust. Dante fears that the bitter but gracious truths he had learned about himself will die with him, leaving no opportunity to be translated into life. He is ready for a teacher, but the Teacher has not come. Paul Patterson continues to channel Dante's imagination through the part of The Divine Comedy. In the twilight

Read This Archive

A Stranger To Justice

Everybody loves to see justice done on somebody else. Justice has become an off-putting term for me. I associate it with political correctness and link it to individual rights. Justice seems to me merely ideological, an excuse for group or self interest. I know this attitude of mine must be prejudiced since every moral perspective, including Aristotle and the Bible, place justice close to the starting point of its ethics. It's time that I take a more objective look at the virtue starting with the reasons for my bias against it.

Read This Archive

Traintalk: Am I a Tourist or a Pilgrim?

THE LAST FIVE years have been comfortable. THE LAST FIVE Admitting this comes hard for someone with my intensity. An amiable life conjures images of being lazy, being part of a bovine collective, lulled asleep by consumerism and the mind-numbing drone of what my grandfather called “the idiot box” — the family TV set. I laugh as I write this staring at recent additions to that idiot box: a DVD player, a VCR, and Digital Surround Sound. That little distraction that once graced the center of the living room has taken over. My so-called room of living has evolved

Read This Archive