Midsummer Pause

July 26, 2021By Alan Roxburgh

It’s midsummer. Alan reflects on how easy it is to be overburdened with worries and concerns in this heavy summer. But there is another way. Let’s live deeply into the wonder and beauty of this moment as the Spirit is working. We can take this time to listen to the rooted voices filled with hope … Read More

Your Job is to Hold Hands

July 26, 2021By Alan Roxburgh

I wasn’t prepared to be changed by a book on the dieback of yellow cedars in southeast Alaska. But that’s how God changes us – in completely unexpected ways. Several years ago I found myself reading Mary Jo Leddy, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Lauren E. Oakes and Simone Weil. Collectively, the Spirit was using their writing … Read More

Hard to Keep Going

July 19, 2021By Alan Roxburgh

Anyone else finding it hard to keep going these days? Roxburgh shares some reflections on the way forward when the world we live in is not working anymore. He points to a Dorothy Day quote shared by Stephanie Spellers on Facebook: Whenever I groan within myself and think how hard it is to keep writing … Read More

God’s People and Resurgence

July 19, 2021By Alan Roxburgh

In this blog post I want to address the question: Within the communities in which we live, what does a Gospel response to the fragility of belonging look like? Another of my conversation partners in Joining God in the Great Unraveling: Where We Are & What I Have Learned (2021) is Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and … Read More

Manufacturing and Mystery

July 12, 2021By Alan Roxburgh

Our very human tendency is to try to manufacture our own lives. We try to control through what we manufacture rather than trusting in the mysterious process…which is God’s gift to us and our work. Fabrications are not suited to the life of faith. They don’t wear well. – Mary Jo Leddy, Reweaving Religious Life, … Read More

Fires and Local Life

July 9, 2021By Alan Roxburgh

Alan reflects on the recent fires in Western Canada and the US. These tragic events underline how important it is for us to dwell in the local and become attentive. It is in the local, among the ordinary people we share life with, that the action and answers to the many growing crises are to … Read More

What I’ve Learned

July 5, 2021By Alan Roxburgh

Six years ago (2015), Joining God, Remaking the Church, Changing the World was published. It was broadly received across the Euro-tribal churches because it signalled the malaise confronting these churches (ecclesiocentrism, technique, individualism and clergy-centrism). It proposed that God’s central concern is not the fixing of these churches. Rather, the Spirit is out ahead in … Read More