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The Wycliffe Blog - Vestigia Dei
Vestigia Dei – is a Latin term meaning “traces of God.” As a theological term it is associated with natural theology – that is, the view that there are vestiges of God within creation. We’ve chosen this term as the title of the Wycliffe College blog because our hope is that through these writings, readers might glimpse evidences for God as our writers interact with the wider world.
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We are not good at predicting the futureBy Annette Brownlee On this day the Lord has acted. We will rejoice and be glad in it (Psalm 118:24) |
Tue, March 30, 2021 |
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Stuck at home, in Guelph, OntarioBy David Kupp “Stuck at home” stuck: “mired, glued, compelled, resolutely adhered, halted, saddled disagreeably” home: “one’s place of residence, domicile, habitat”
How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity! (Psalm 133:1)
A bevy of new and resurrected words and phrases have pinned themselves to the pandemic elephant, who has been rampaging through our terminological garden the past 12 months. Here are ten of my favourites:... |
Mon, March 29, 2021 |
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The Tyranny of NowBy Stephen Chester My first degree was in history. I was educated at the University of York in England by professors who were by and large resolutely unimpressed by notions of human progress. In one introductory lecture on the medieval period the question put before us was why Europe in 1550 was so much more fragmented, insecure, and less prosperous than it had been in 1250. And although they did not say so... |
Tue, March 16, 2021 |
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The divine purpose of work and leisureBy Thomas Power The pandemic has brought forth many questions about how we conduct our lives. We have been forced to re-examine our patterns of living, attitudes, and behaviour and begun to think anew about the very nature of work and its concomitant, recreation, or leisure. We are posing fundamental questions such as: What is leisure? How do we define it? Is leisure the mere absence of work? Is it simply doing nothing... |
Fri, March 05, 2021 |
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LentBy Joseph Mangina The word lenten, the Oxford English Dictionary tells me, is older than the word Lent. In Old English lenten was in fact a noun, and it meant simply “spring.” Later it became the favored term for the forty-day period of fasting and penitence between Ash Wednesday and Easter, symbolic of Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness after his baptism. Eventually the word got shortened and became Lent; and now (through... |
Wed, February 24, 2021 |
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Deep at the heart of everythingBy Ephraim Radner My wife Annette and I own several charcoal and wash drawings by a wonderful artist, Churchill Davenport. We acquired them when we were married in the late 1980’s. Davenport was a parishioner in the Brooklyn church where I worked, and had become involved in our experiment at having daily Morning Prayer in the church sanctuary at 7:30 a.m., joining with six or seven pilgrims, as it were, in the journey... |
Fri, February 19, 2021 |
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Elizabeth Cady Stanton: Taking a Stand against Slavery and against Racial EqualityBy Marion Taylor I was first introduced to renowned abolitionist, women’s rights activist, and feminist biblical commentator Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) at a birthday party held in her honor at Yale Divinity School. I encountered Stanton again when my research interests turned to recovering forgotten women interpreters of the Bible. I remember how excited I was the day I found her exposition of the Ten Commandments that was buried in her 1860 political... |
Tue, February 09, 2021 |
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Tips for dealing with pandemic anxietyBy Wanda Malcolm To say that COVID-19 has brought many unwanted challenges into our lives is a blindingly obvious statement. We are weary of the isolation and loneliness. Our worry about the future and the wellbeing of those who are most vulnerable to the virus is a relentlessly heavy burden. The losses are staggering. We struggle daily with the loss of choice about what we can... |
Fri, February 05, 2021 |
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CandlemasBy Catherine Sider-Hamilton Where I grew up, in southern Pennsylvania, Groundhog Day was a big thing. For weeks before February 2, the papers, the broadcasters asked: would the groundhog—who had a name, Punxatawny Phil, from Punxatawny, Penn.—see his shadow? Were we in for another six weeks of winter, or was Spring, and light and life, around the corner? (That was a question of course that only made sense in southern Pennsylvania, and in... |
Fri, January 29, 2021 |
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Remembering the First TST DirectorBy Alan L. Hayes C. Douglas Jay, the founding director of the Toronto School of Theology, died peacefully on January 1st, at the age of 95. When he accepted the challenge to be TST’s first director in 1969, neither he nor anyone else could know whether TST would ever be more than an interesting but passing ecumenical experiment. Probably few would have dared to hope that it would become one of the... |
Mon, January 18, 2021 |
