Menu

What’s in a name (change?)

June 8, 2021 By Bowen, Featured, First Nations 3 Comments

I was reading a facebook thread today where someone posted about changing the name of British Columbia to something else, something indigenous. And one of the responses was “no. too much change, too fast.” And that got me thinking. The process of changing the name of a place does indeed take awhile, but the act is instantaneous. One minute you are living in the Northwest territories, and the next minute you’re living in Nunavut. One minute you’re living in Upper Canada, and the next minute you’re living in Ontario. One minute you’re living in the colony of Newfoundland, and the …

Read More

Trust in life itself

June 4, 2021 By Being, Culture, Emergence, Featured, Invitation, Uncategorized 2 Comments

I think this quote really captures my own social justice practice and my own spiritual practice. Ilia Delio is perhaps what we would call an evolutionary theologian and what she says here about “becoming something that is not yet known” says volumes to me: By evolution, I mean simply that change is integral to life. We are becoming something that is not yet known. To live in evolution is to let go of structures that prevent convergence and deepening of consciousness and assume new structures that are consonant with creativity, inspiration, and development. Evolution requires trust in the process of …

Read More

Recon —

June 3, 2021 By Featured, First Nations, Poetry 5 Comments

215 orange and red ribbons hang at Bowen Island United Church

I can barely say the word. I don’t use it much anymore. So much needs to be done before we can contemplate it. So much truth, so much restoration of lands and people and communities. But today I came across this poem by Anishinaabe (Wasauksing First Nation) poet Rebeka Tabobondung who is the founder of MUSKRAT Magazine. She published this in 2013 and I will let her say it, because at some deep level this is what I am always working towards: Reconciliation We are waking up to our historyfrom a forced slumberWe are breathing it into our lungsso it …

Read More

Colonization and the shadow of belonging

June 1, 2021 By Featured, First Nations 9 Comments

The great shadow of North American history I think is that settlers know deep down that we don’t belong here. The idea of “settling” the west was predicated on the continent being cleansed of its original inhabitants. This happened in a number of ways. There was outright murder perpetuated by war, disease and neglect. There were treaties which ripped people from their territories and bound the loyalties of indigenous people to the Crown rather than their own laws. There was the residential school system which had as its goal the “education” and “civilization” of indigenous children such that they would …

Read More

Coming back home in time

May 31, 2021 By Being, Bowen 5 Comments

It’s funny to start noticing the cycles and patterns that return here over a year. I’ve lived on this island for 20 years now and this is the first time I have spent an entire year (15 months now, and counting) without traveling outside of the bioregion. And as everyone has noiticed, time has taken on a ndifferent ndimension during the pandemic, but perhpas what is really happening is that we are just getting more comfortable with the way time actually is. This morning I was cruising through my garden, sending slugs to their doom and cropping a few lettuce …

Read More