Guest Writer
New Perspective
Foreword by Sheena Koops My 14 year old daughter, Arwen, and I are sitting in a giant circle, two rows deep, with large board-room-style wooden desks and plush, rolling chairs. We have joined many others, women and men, to consider this year’s Treaty Four Gathering theme, “Empowering Women” and to consider the legacy of Canada’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. It is a Monday night in September. Kete-ayah Alma Poitras has invited any who wish to smudge as we begin our gathering. Smudging is a practice, a quiet moment of prayer and cleansing. I join the line to…
Read MoreFreezing Rain
By Mira Krahn I was looking forward to this winter. My winter a year ago in South East Asia was cold, but lacking the clean, fresh look of piled snow. I love the silence in the air when flakes fall at night. I love the crisp crunch beneath my boots. I miss the winter walking I did as a university student, parking far away to get a free spot. I love feeling hardy once I escape the cold, mascara smudged and hair frosted. This week hit a windchill low of -40*C. The next day had freezing rain. On that day,…
Read MoreHome: Potluck
Katelyn Pippus “It’s not, actually, strictly, about food for me. It’s about what happens when we come together, slow down, open our homes, look into one another’s faces, listen to one another’s stories….. It happens when we enter the joy and sorrow of the people we love, and we join together at the table to feed one another and be fed, and while it’s not strictly about food, it doesn’t happen without it. Food is the starting point, the common ground…..” *Shauna Niequist, As the doors to the fellowship hall open, I am hit by the aroma of casseroles, stews,…
Read MoreMy Path
Natasha Coroluick I never know where to start when telling my story. Everyone I talk to tells me to “start from the beginning”. Is that meaning to start with, “I was born on a chilly November day twenty-nine years ago.”? Or is it the beginning of where my life began on its path? I suppose I will start where it’s relevant. Twenty years ago I was new to small town living. My grandmother had passed away in the summer of ’95 and we moved into her home in Avonlea, SK. I remember our mom telling my sister and me that…
Read MoreHome from Retreat
Vivian Dunn We are home from Moose Jaw and the experience of “Encouraging One Another”. I am going to share with you on one of the subjects spoken about: reaching out to immigrants. When I lost my husband to cancer and I was sitting in my suite like a “basket case”, I prayed to God and asked him to help me find someone to help, so I could get my mind off of “Vivian”. God answered my prayer and my first immigrant friend was a young Mexican boy who found out I had been a teacher and knocked on my…
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