Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

An Immodest Proposal by James R. Inglis

An Immodest Proposal:

For preventing the elderly in Canada from being a burden to their families or country, and for making them beneficial to the public.

By James Robert Inglis

With apologies to Jonathan Swift (Satire Alert!)

I am saddened as I stroll through the grocery stores or malls on the weekend. Everywhere one looks, in every nook and cranny seems to be the lurking object often referred to as the “senior”.  The senior can often be observed on their own, but are more likely to be found in packs of three or four. Those tasked with earning an honest living must navigate through their masses as they occupy all available seating or shuffle down the grocery aisles restricting the flow of earnest shoppers with important tasks to accomplish.

Praying For Justice In A Contemplative Conundrum by Jeff Imbach

Some Reflections Of Praying For Justice In A Contemplative Conundrum

How do I pray contemplatively the enormous structural implications of our current economic and political realities?  I want to be hopeful and resist cynicism.  I want to be trusting and not be filled with fear about the economically driven political policies and decisions that are becoming almost hard-wired into the system.  I want to walk with you, my Love.

How do I pray contemplatively from my heart and with my actions as I watch the present unfolding of our world?

Psalm 62:8, “O my people, trust in God at all times.  Pour out your heart to the Lord, for God is our refuge.”

OK then Loving One, let me pour out my heart to you. 

Praying For Justice In A Contemplative Conundrum by Jeff Imbach

Some Reflections Of Praying For Justice In A Contemplative Conundrum

How do I pray contemplatively the enormous structural implications of our current economic and political realities?  I want to be hopeful and resist cynicism.  I want to be trusting and not be filled with fear about the economically driven political policies and decisions that are becoming almost hard-wired into the system.  I want to walk with you, my Love.

How do I pray contemplatively from my heart and with my actions as I watch the present unfolding of our world?

Psalm 62:8, “O my people, trust in God at all times.  Pour out your heart to the Lord, for God is our refuge.”

OK then Loving One, let me pour out my heart to you. 

Treasures in the Streets - Notes from Solitary Confinement - with Chris Hoke and Neaners

Friends,

One of the highest hopes for ministries among the outcast is that men and women would discover their own value. 

For instance, in the massive trash dumps of Guatemala City there are hundreds of despised poor men and women that pick through the rubble each day to survive. Most citizens refer to these filthy lives as subhuman "scavengers." People on the margins often internalize these labels. "Wetback." "Convict." "Illegal." "Criminal." They see themselves as having no value, and often live accordingly.  But a ministry there in the Guatemalan dump, seeking to love the unwanted, calls the lives they find in the wreckage "treasures" instead. The heart of God inverts most of our world's values.

The problem, though, is trying to help the unwanted internalize their new value. Sure, the ministry workers see them as "treasures," but when do the despised discover themselves to be so?

Stephen Leacock: Bred in the Bone by Ron Dart

He (Leacock) was more famous than this country -- Don Herron

It is the 100th anniversary in 2012 of one of the classics of Canadian literature. Many do not read Leacock’s Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town these days, but when the missive was published in 1912, Leacock had most Canadians holding both their sides in laughter. Leacock became, in many ways, a pioneer of the distinctive Canadian genre of irony and humour, and Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town was published in many editions. When Leacock died in late March 1944, The New York Herald Tribune suggested that “Stephen Leacock, surely, was the First Citizen of Canada”--indeed, high words of praise for an Anglican, political economist, raconteur and literary genius.

Stephen Leacock: A Centennial Celebration by Ron Dart

 [Leacock] was more famous than this country. -- Don Herron

In Canada, I belong to the Conservative party. -- Stephen Leacock

At McGill, as at Ottawa Collegiate, I was blessed with teachers. Stephen Leacock, head of the department of Economics and Political Science, was one of the most brilliant men I have ever known. He was an ardent conservative and fierce Canadian nationalist. -- Eugene Forsey

Political Science, then, deals with the state; it is, in short, as it is often termed, the “theory of the state”. -- Stephen Leacock, Elements of Political Science (1906)

Who was Stephen Leacock, as a thinker and activist, before the publication of his best selling books of humour such as Literary Lapses (1910), Nonsense Novels (1911), Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (1912), Behind the Beyond (1913) and Arcadian Adventures With the Idle Rich (1914)? There is no doubt that Leacock was launched in a certain direction with these bumper crop book sales. He established himself as the central writer in Canada with these slim missives. But, there is more to the tale to tell. Leacock was 41 years of age when Literary Lapses left the publishing tarmac in 1910. What had he thought and written before 1910?