Category: Writings

If there’s a thread that runs through The World According to Brother Ian, and you may have noticed this, it’s that almost everything I post here connects in one way or another to the Ten Things to Teach & Know. Several folks have asked where this comes from, so if you like, I’ll tell you:…

Last night the phone alarm went off. It was in somebody’s purse in the living room, and I didn’t want to wake somebody to get up & get it & turn it off, because somebody was sleeping & apparently didn’t hear it. It had gone off at 6am (still night, here) the rest of the week.…

I remember it well – my girlfriend & I were interviewing someone so we could live in his apartment complex. “Interviewing” means, of course, that he had all the questions. What we noticed, though, was that we liked his questions. Do you have parties very often? (Well, just potlucks. Is that what you mean?) How…

“Look out! It’s a deer!” As I pulled around the corner in the wooded part, just outside of Nanaimo, BC, my friend’s words drew my eye to the crouching, then bounding doe who suddenly jumped from the side of the road in the dusk. I slowed, and just missed her flank as she bounced by. “I’m…

In the 1880s, the Canadian government was committed to crossing the country with the transcontinental railroad (CPR, or Canadian Pacific Railroad), which was finished in 1885. This connected the east with the west, at a price of many immigrant workers’ lives, much money in rushing the project, and occasional questionable assaults on First Nations’ rights…

I read the news today, oh boy…. Over the past week, I have continued my long-time thing of not having a television. Now, the interesting thing about not having a television is the great number of well-meaning friends who ask me, “Wow! How would you know if something important happens? What if they shot the president?…

A TIME BEFORE Many of us don’t remember this, but a long time ago, we lived inside our mother’s wombs. We were tiny, living human beings. There were two hearts inside your mother’s body: her own heart and your heart. During this time your mother did everything for you; she breathed for you, ate for…

Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack in everything That’s how the light gets in. Leonard Cohen

All year long. That’s real Thanksgiving, hey – surrounding each kindness shared, each hug, each smile with a stranger with a quiet “thank you” each day, even each hour, each minute. Let there be no doubt that Thanksgiving is a wonderful holiday, if only because it’s one we all agree on. We can come together…