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I’m Thinking of Ending Things and Men Writing Women
"I’m Thinking of Ending Things is, like so many stories, a story about a man masquerading as a story about a woman. Which ultimately makes me wonder why we need to spend so much time trying to figure out how to build a better mask."
Have Celebrities Become the Grifters of Quarantine?
In March, Mad Men actress January Jones posted an Instagram video of herself dancing while wearing a light-therapy mask—a hauntingly blank full-face plastic covering backlit by a blood-red glow. The mouth of the mask is open in a grimace, and through its massive eyeholes, Jones’s blue eyes are barely visible. Swaying her hips to the music, she inserts a straw into the mouth of the mask and begins to sip from the Coors Light can in her hand.
Jones is one of a handful of celebrities who’ve beco...
Taylor Swift Is the Surprising Face of Millennial Anxiety
Near the end of Miss Americana, the Taylor Swift bio-doc directed by Lana Wilson, in that bring-it-on-home section such movies always seem to conclude with, Swift muses about the demand for constant reinvention that’s placed with special intensity on female pop stars. In an industry ready to discard a woman by the time she’s thirty-five, Swift says, you have to keep “constantly finding new facets of yourself that people find to be shiny.” Various iterations of Swift flick across the screen as...
The paradox of poverty
For the Sisterhood of Saint John the Divine, a vow of poverty is about ‘more than dollars and cents.’
Since even before St. Paul wrote in 1 Timothy that “the love of money is the root of all evil,” Christians have struggled to make peace with the very fact of money. “You cannot serve both God and money,” Jesus warns in the gospels.
In fact, the Bible has an enormous amount to say on the topic of money, and perhaps that is why faith, poverty and wealth have played a touchy dance since Christia...
For the love of bees
“The apple trees were coming into bloom,
but no bees droned among the blossoms,
so there was no pollination and there would be no fruit.”
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
There’s an old custom called “telling the bees.”
The Rev. Sheilagh Ashworth is using her hive tool—a thin piece of metal with a right-angled hook at its end—to pry sticky bits of honey and ease languid bees off the top of an open hive box as she relays this piece of folklore.
“If an important thing happens in your life—there’s a...
On forgiving your rapist
A Montreal-based Anglican is telling the world about finding forgiveness in the wake of sexual assault—but Noah Hermès’ message doesn’t stop there.
Note: Noah Hermès, the subject of this article, is non-binary, a gender identity that is not exclusively male or female, and uses the pronoun “they” rather than “he” or “she.” At the time of the assault and the writing of the blog post referenced in this story, Hermès used their birth name, “Nina.” They have since changed their name to Noah.
Noah ...
‘She was not long with us, but she was here’: Families of missing and murdered Indigenous women tell their stories at exhibit in Toronto cathedral
On a table set against the wall of St. James Cathedral in Toronto, an array of framed photographs shows the smiling face of Patricia Carpenter. Neatly lined up next to the pictures are three Cabbage Patch Kids dolls—some of her favourite childhood toys—pages of her poetry and writing, and the purple and green wallet in which she carried photos of her younger brothers and ultrasounds of her baby.
When Patricia’s body was found in 1992, she was 14 years old.
“I didn’t talk about my daughter unt...
When trafficking victims are shackled by debt, can financial institutions help?
A woman and a man enter a bank together and request to take out a loan in the woman’s name. She signs the required documents. When asked for her ID, the man she is with produces it.
The scene is common and seems innocuous. But, says Richard Dunwoody of AFO Ventures, who has 30 years’ experience in the credit and banking industries, it could be hiding something sinister.
The scenario above is one of many that Dunwoody says his eyes were opened to after learning about the surprising ways human ...
Closing the gender gap in church leadership
When Canon Judy Rois was a student in the late 1970s, she wanted to take a preaching course. But when she went to sign up, she discovered she wasn’t allowed because she was a woman.
After much lobbying, she recalls, she was let into the class—the only stipulation was, she had to wait until everyone else had entered the room, then sit at the back, so as not to “distract” her male classmates. “I could sit at the back quietly and not say anything and not make any noise, because a man might see m...
A gentle invitation to worship
As people enter through the narthex of St. Faith’s Anglican Church, Vancouver, B.C., on a Sunday evening, they are greeted by a small table bearing a chalkboard with a welcoming message, as well as a box of small wooden hearts and an assortment of words—healing, play, forgiveness, creativity. There is an invitation to take a heart and a word.
Inside, another basket is set with colourful socks and cozy blankets. Some help themselves to these comfortable offerings. Everyone gathers in a semi-ci...
‘You can’t be selfish and survive’ in Canada’s harsh but beautiful North
The Ungava Peninsula in Nunavik, northern Quebec, is flanked by Hudson Bay on one side and Ungava Bay on the other. Here, above the treeline, wide open skies frame sweeping views of snow through the crisp, cold air.
“It’s a beautiful place, amazingly beautiful,” says Esther Wesley, co-ordinator of the Anglican Healing Fund. “But life is harsh.”
Wesley, along with Melanie Delva, reconciliation animator for the Anglican Church of Canada, travelled to the area in December, during a two-week visi...
Homeless encampment presents quandary for Winnipeg Anglican church
People living in tents next to All Saints’ Anglican Church in Winnipeg, diocese of Rupert’s Land, are being asked to leave after a decision made “with some sadness” by the church’s vestry, says the Rev. Brent Neumann.
Neumann, the priest at All Saints’, says the people living on the property will not be asked to return after vacating the site today, May 30, as part of an agreement to leave the property 48 hours before a wedding scheduled to take place at the church on Saturday, June 2.
The sa...
Flipping Burgers
Ivan Valencia, Scott Malcolmson, Marc Priestly, and Kyle Matheson of Nuburger.