The Mourning Cloak

transformation & rebirth

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The Rev. Joshua Gerhard Paetkau, M.Div, Rector of the Parishes of New Carlisle and Chaleur Bay in the Anglican Diocese of Quebec.

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  • Becoming Flesh: Jamieson Webster’s Conversion Disorder.

    Works Reviewed. Webster, Jamieson. Conversion Disorder: Listening to the Body in Psychoanalysis. New York: Columbia University Press, 2019. 303 pages. Psychoanalysis, ever since its Freudian genesis, has been plagued by a certain categorical ambiguity; it touches on, and is set against, medicine, philosophy, religion, psychology, psychiatry, self-help, literature and so on. This ambiguity lends, perhaps,…

  • The Stigma of Language: a Review of Eleana Vaja’s “Epilepsy Metaphors.”

    Works Reviewed. Eleana Vaja. Epilepsy Metaphors. Liminal Spaces of Individuation.  There is an image, taken from the life of John Hughlings Jackson, that has somehow impressed itself upon my mind as an emblem of the modern era. Hughlings Jackson, the father of modern neurology, would buy a book from the bookshop, tear it in half, and put…

  • Visions of the Secular: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Commodification of Freedom.

    Secularism is a complex idea, or set of ideas and practices, with a long history. Considerable thought and work has gone into tracing that history and much ink has been spilled. Charles Taylor, a Quebec-based philosopher, in his book A Secular Age outlines a perspectival shift from the Middle Ages in which it was almost…

  • With Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs: A Review of “The Hymnal: A Reading History.”

    Works Reviewed: Christopher N. Phillips The Hymnal: A Reading History. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2018. I remember my father once commenting, in an offhand way, that if you want to know about the theology of a particular church, you can just peruse their hymnals. Hymnals being such an essential part of the fabric of my own church experience, it hardly…

  • New Year’s Reflections: Sanctity and Sanity in 2018.

    In his Christmas address in 2016 the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople declared 2017 “The Year of Protection of the Sanctity of Childhood.” This statement was later incorporated, in February of 2017, into the joint declaration “Sins Before our Eyes: A Forum on Modern Slavery” issued in Istanbul by Patriarch Bartholomew and the Archbishop of Canterbury.…

  • Beyond Burning our World. A Review of Energy Dreams: Of Actuality.

    Works Reviewed. Marder, Michael. Energy Dreams: Of Actuality. New York: Columbia University Press. 2017 . One needs little convincing, these days, that our world is burning. While the concept of hell no longer plays a significant role in religious piety – at least in the North Atlantic world – the daily news tells a different story. From the…

  • Every Day

      A Meditation on Every Day.  Every Day War is no longer declared, but rather continued. The outrageous has become the everyday. The hero is absent from the battle. The weak are moved into the firing zone. The uniform of the day is patience, the order of merit is the wretched star of hope over the…

  • PermaWar.

    PermaWar.  There it is; a succinct description of the current stage of globalisation in which we find ourselves. The obscene rejection of all the principles of a true permaculture. Rather than build and design for peace and for the  true flourishing of human and natural activity, we are subject to the perpetual drumbeat of war. The onward…

  • Saudi Arms Deal: Canada has not done the right thing. A Reply to Professor Hansen

    It has been some time since I last attended to this space and, perhaps, a political rant is not the best re-introduction. Still, I was provoked. Irked, really, by the astounding lack of empathy and general good sense of a so-called “international security expert.” To be clear the personage in question, one Randall Hansen, is…

  • The Politics of the Image.

    Works Reviewed: Chiara Bottici Imaginal Politics: Images Beyond Imagination and the Imaginary. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014. Nevertheless human life was thus image-graced and image-cursed; it could comprehend itself only through images, the images were not to be banished, they had been with us since the herd-beginning, they were anterior to and mightier than our thinking, they…