Nancy and I were on Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands not far from the French coast of Normandy, from Friday afternoon through Tuesday morning. The occasion for being there was to lead a retreat on pilgrimage, but we had two days to visit friends and explore parts of the island, eight by four miles, [...]
Talk given in the Vancouver Public Library 7 February 2004 by Jim Forest In the history of protest, one of the oldest examples we know of occurred in Constantinople in the year 842 when, opposing the iconoclast Emperor Leo V, a thousand monks took part in an icon-bearing procession in the capital city. They were [...]
The Orthodox Church, by Bishop Kallistos (but published under his lay name, Timothy Ware, as he was still a layman when he wrote the first edition in the sixties). Many regard this as the best overall introduction to Orthodoxy. The author is a professor at Oxford, pastor of the Greek parish in Oxford, and a [...]
by Jim Forest One weekend Katya went for a visit to the home of her Grandfather Lev and her Grandmother Olga. At the time, Katya’s parents were having difficulties in their marriage. They thought a quiet weekend together, just the two of them, would do them good. So off Katya went, though all was not [...]
(This is the text of the now out-of-print children’s book published in England by Hunt & Thorpe and, in translation, in several European counties. As yet there has been no US edition — the American religious publishers I submitted it to judged it too secular while secular publishers found it too religious. The illustrations are [...]
by Jim Forest Among the cautionary characters the reader encounters in Charles Dickens’s novel of the 1840s, Bleak House, is Mrs. Jellyby, who resolutely devotes every waking hour to the “Borrioboola-Gha venture.” The reader never discovers the details of the endeavor except that it involves the settlement of impoverished Britons among African natives with the [...]
by Jim Forest Reading Christian history, it is hard to imagine that Jesus called on his followers to love their enemies: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To him who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and [...]
from the May 1980 Sojourners by Jim Forest Iona: If you have a good map of Scotland you will find it among the Inner Hebrides off the southwest tip of Mull, a comma of land separated by a strait the width of an exclamation point. If you enjoy discovering the mysteries old tales held in [...]
Rosemary Lynch, a Franciscan nun beloved by many, died the January 9, 2011 at a hospice in Las Vegas, Nevada, four days after having being hit by a car that was backing out of a driveway. She was 93. After retiring from work at the Franciscan headquarters in Rome, Rosemary accepted an assignment in Las [...]
an interview with a member of the Dutch Resistance of World War II by Jim Forest Hebe Kohlbrugge was one of the few Dutch people who had a clear idea of the nature of Nazism before the invasion of Holland in 1940. Working in Germany at the time of Hitler’s rise to power, she was [...]
