felix hominum

Annual Festival of Lessons & Carols

Tickets for the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols for Advent and Christmas are now on sale at the Winspear Box Office.  With the musical talent of the U of A Mixed Chorus, Robert de Frece, the Faculty of Education Handbell Ringers, Marnie Giesbrecht and Joachim Segger the evening is always enjoyable.  It will take place Monday, Nov. 26th at 7:30pm at the Winspear Center.  Tickets are $10 and can be purchased by calling the Winspear Center Box Office at 428-1414 or online at http://tickets.winspearcentre.com

This is always a great event.  It is sponsored by the Christian campus ministries at the U of A and is a major fundraiser for the campus food bank.  And it is a traditional festival of lessons & carols:  the theme is the birth of the Christ, in Scripture and song.

ps - you could ask this person for more details, and I hear that she also has some sort of free meal deal for students in town...

...god in the quad...

appears to be the freshly minted blog of someone who likes St Catherine of Sienna.

Drop over and say hi.

new chaplain at the University of Alberta

From the diocesan website:

The Rev. Lisa Wang (Diocese of Toronto), appointed Anglican Chaplain of the University of Alberta, as of February 15th, 2007.

My prayers are with you.

elvis has left the building

the office is now cleaned out

so long, U of A

quaecumque vera

my army of remote control drones

...has enabled this humble blog to reach the podium in the Canadian Blog Awards.  felix hominum has been awarded 2nd place in the best religious blogs category.  Thanks to all who were looking forward to the haggis.  To those who are visiting for the first time, you can find either the ridiculous or the sublime in the best and worst of felix hominum.

As a means of celebrating, we will be giving the children an extra helping of turnips tomorrow.

Happy Advent.

update: ooohh here it comes:

and thanks to Robert at my blahg for hosting the awards.

lessons & carols & food bank

Our annual Festival of Lessons & Carols took place yesterday evening, and a big thanks to all the musicians, choristers and organizers.  The final numbers aren't in yet, but we raised over $4000.00 for the Campus Food Bank.  Thanks all.

nature is a broken creation

One of the students from CHRCT 351 stopped me after church yesterday (yes, there are still young people who go to church), and we had a bit of a follow up chat.

The topic under discussion was the ethic of "what is natural".  Before we get into that particular question, you need to back up a bit and get yourself a worldview, or realize that you already have one, and take a look at how it shapes your understanding of particular and specific questions.  If you think that nature as we experience it is, in some way, perfect and complete, then you will have an entirely positive view of doing "what is natural".  If however, you hold to the Christian worldview that nature as we experience it is not exactly the same as creation as God intended it, then you will have some work to do.  You will need to figure out how and where the intention of God is, and is not, reflected in what we call "nature" -  human and otherwise.  That is the result of what we have come to call "the fall" - creation is broken.  It is not beyond redemption, it still reflects somewhat of God, but what is natural is not always what is godly.

We'll be talking more later today.

Carleton University Student Council to Ban Pro-Life Groups?

UPDATE:   Anti-abortion groups on notice after CUSA tables policy amendment

Here's the lead from the Carleton University student paper:

Written by Sarah Bockstael   
Thursday, 23 November 2006

Sparks flew during question period at a Nov. 21 Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) council meeting after a motion that would prevent pro-life groups from assembling on CUSA space was tabled.

The motion — moved by Katy McIntyre, CUSA vice-president (student services), on behalf of the Womyn’s Centre — would amend the campus discrimination policy to state that “no CUSA resources, space, recognition or funding be allocated for anti-choice purposes.”

The motion was met with resistance from Carleton University Lifeline, a pro-life student organization that was denied CUSA club status at an Oct. 26 council meeting.

The easiest way to slice baloney is thinly.  I'll be cutting into this one piece at a time.  But for now I have a memory in the back of my mind of George Grant delivering a lecture at my old alma mater.  The University is failing.

Katy McIntyre, (VP Student Services) the mover of the motion, is also in charge of this:

This committee works to ensure that both events held and services provided by CUSA are accessible to all students. As well, it aims to raise awareness of issues affecting students with disabilities on campus.

Ms McIntyre, let me draw attention to an issue affecting certain students with disabilities.  Let me take just one thin slice.  Here at the U of A I've met several students who live with Down Syndrome and other conditions which we consider to be disabilities.  In order to raise awareness of issues affecting them, let me draw your attention to just one issue: abortion of their kind of person, simply because, well, it's their kind of person.

Thank you for your attention to this detail.

(Original post below)

Buzzing around the academic & blogospheric network for the past little while has been a report that Carleton University Student Council has been considering amending it's constitution so that "pro-life" student groups would be effectively nixed from campus.

In other news, universities are places of thought and open discussion.

I'll see if I can find some first hand info on this...all I've seen is second hand, and not the actual text of a motion.   

UPDATE:  a few people have been wondering about contacting Carleton:

To RESPECTFULLY express concerns to the University:

Dr. Samy Mahmoud
President and Vice-Chancellor Pro Tempore
Office of the President
503 Tory Building
1125 Colonel By Drive,
Ottawa, Ontario, K1S 5B6
Canada

Phone: 613 520-3801
Fax: 613 520-4474

Email: presidents_office@carleton.ca

call for papers - Religion and Place

Fourth Annual Symposium of the Program in Religious Studies

Call for Papers

The annual symposium of the Program in Religious Studies will be held on Monday 16 April 2007, 9:30 to 3:30, in the Papaschase Room of the Faculty Club.  We invite proposals for papers on any aspect of the topic of “Religion and Place.”  We imagine that these could be papers on sacred spaces and architecture, holy lands and pilgrimage, ritual and religious "performance" within communal spaces, contested regions, migrations of religious communities, spiritual practices within one’s own "special" space, artistic representations or musical reflections of the religious dimension of place, or any of a host of other possibilities.

contact:
Stephen Reimer, Ph.D.
Visiting Speakers Co-ordinator, Program in Religious Studies
3-5 Humanities Centre

significance, security, acceptance

Those were three themes we talked about on Saturday morning during our weekend retreat.  Thanks to Don for his insight into these three things.  A few thoughts:

What tend to search for significance, acceptance and security.  At the heart of the matter is recognizing who we are in Christ - "you are my beloved, in whom I am well pleased."  Sometimes we hear competing voices - the voices which tell us that our future is insecure, our personhood is insignificant, and that we are not accepted unless we...   And then the competing voices begin to fill in the blank.  We try to fill the voids of significance, acceptance and security with so much 'stuff'. 

There is another voice - sometimes it is barely audible to us over the din and crash of the competing voices.  It is the voice of the Father who says to us - "You also are my beloved, in whom I am well pleased".  Because of Jesus, and through Jesus, we become like Jesus.  Not only in our outward actions, but also in the attitudes of our hearts.  One of those attitudes is our view of ourselves.  We find the fulfillment of those three things in our relationship with God.  God intends for us to have a confidence that comes from knowing and trusting that He is able to give us those things.  We are significant in His sight, we are accepted through Jesus, and we have a security which is not threatened by the seeming endless changes and variations of our lives.

Be present O merciful God, and protect us through the silent hours of this night, so that we who are wearied by the changes and chances of this fleeting world, may repose upon thy eternal changelessness, through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Order for Compline, Book of Common Prayer