“That church saved my life. Christ Church! That’s the last time I got to be a high-school dropout: I should have been in school, and a youth worker at the church, who had been in prison, grabbed me and slammed me against the wall one day and said: ‘What is the matter with you? If you stay around here, you’ll end up living in one of these apartments with six babies before you’re 20.’ I used to be hanging about, getting into trouble. He changed my life.”
I haven't blogged for so long! Been relying on Twitter and Facebook. I'm just back from the annual meeting of the United Church of Canada's Montreal & Ottawa Conference in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, Quebec, and the annual meeting of the Canadian Theological Society at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, held at Concordia University. Montreal was great as always - smoked meat, distractions like the boutique at the Musée des beaux-arts and the Apple Store, hundreds of people around Concordia and on Crescent Street on a Monday night, driving up and down the Main and St. Urbain.
And I'm mourning the death of the Rev. Rod Carter, who taught restorative justice at Queen's Theological College. Rod had been in prison and received a pardon, going on to serve in the military and as a Correctional Services of Canada chaplain, making a difference in the lives of many, many offenders and students - his story is a good counter to the portrayal of pardons by the federal government and media. A gentle man who had a quiet passion for justice.
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