Have you ever had your mind blown? Some of you may know that I studied physics at university. One of the great things about studying physics is that it gives you a nice orderly view of how the world works. Maybe you remember high school physics, falling objects, blocks sliding down frictionless planes. The way it works is that you have matter, particles, blocks, whatever, and these material objects are acted upon by forces like gravity, and as a result they move. The nice thing about it is that if you know how big the force is, you can calculate exactly how the object going to move in space and time. And so once you throw in additional forces like electricity and magnetism, you get a ni
“Today also my complaint is bitter; his hand is heavy despite my groaning.” When is the last time you said words like these? Was it today? Or maybe there’s someone you know who could be saying them right now? If they’re not your words today, these or words like them have been yours in the past, and they will be again in the future. The degree and severity may vary, for we are not all afflicted equally or in the same ways. But pain and suffering, and the bitterness which results is an integral part of the human condition, indeed it is part of what makes us human. Sometimes, it gets worse. What if you lost everything, your home, your possessions, your family, what if your body was racked w
I have a confession to make. Sometimes I find it a challenge to take our Sunday readings and figure out how they are relevant for us today. Jesus was after all, speaking to people of a different era, living in a different culture some 2000 years ago. But not today. In today’s gospel it is as if Jesus is speaking directly to us, to our time and place. “Do not worry,” Jesus says. And he’s speaking to us. There’s a lot of worrying going on in our world, in our community, in our homes. So much so that one in nine of us will be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder at some point in our lives. It is the most common of all mental illnesses in Canada. We worry a lot, to the point where our wor