Contact

Nancy and Jim Forest
Kanisstraat 5
1811 GJ Alkmaar
The Netherlands

Jim’s e-mail: jhforest (at) gmail.com / Nancy’s e-mail: forestflier (at) gmail.com
web: http://www.forestflier.com/
tel intl (+31-72) 515-418o
tel within NL: (072) 515-4180

Thomas Merton on Compassion and peacemaking November 18, 2019

A basic question for those involved in planning protest actions is how to reach and change the minds of those who feel accused, judged and condemned by the protest and react defensively and even angrily if not violently. It was a topic that Thomas Merton wrote to me about of several occasions in the sixties. […]

St Francis and the Seventh Beatitude October 4, 2019

by Jim Forest “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.” — Matthew 5:9 No saint has been more identified with the beatitude of peacemaking than Saint Francis of Assisi. The most famous prayer for peace, echoing the seventh beatitude, is attributed to him: “Lord, make me an instrument of your […]

Lord, that I might see September 29, 2019

images: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jimforest/albums/72157711100733001 [air view of the Abbey of Gethsemani] One of the significant events of my life was being a participant in a retreat on the spiritual roots of peacemaking and protest hosted by Thomas Merton and held at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky in November 1964. It was a formative event in the […]

Kanisstraat: exploring a street name August 31, 2019

We live on a small, traffic-free street, Kanisstraat, in the historic center of the Dutch city of Alkmaar. Kanisstraat has been our address since 1982, when the neighborhood was run down and houses cheap. We’re just a minute’s walk from the town’s most impressive structure, the cathedral of Saints Laurence and Matthew, completed in 1518 […]