Faith at the Margins

In this series of posts I explore the margins, in my faith and in my life experiences. Journeying from a secure and nested childhood to being an immigrant to being an anglophone minority in a French province, my life experiences have brought me to certain edges, have given me a taste for being the outsider, for not belonging.

This is a story of migrations, physical and spiritual. A story of leaving the nest. A story of learning empathy and standing with those at the margins in solidarity.

We have to be outsiders, we have to be on the margins, we have to be on the other side of the wall to know what it's like to not belong so that we work to build families, communities, societies, nations, and religions where people do belong.

This seems like an impossible task. That's why it's called faith at the margins. Faith is the hope that what seems impossible, is possible.

Richard Rohr says, "we live our way into a new kind of thinking".

Faith is a way of living, an action, that asserts universal belonging, a wholeness for all humans and all creation.

Living in no-man's-land

May 9, 2019

In my attempt to understand my life path, to explain the inevitable sense of loss and regret with midlife, I sometimes think "maybe I made a mistake, went the wrong way." But I didn't take a wrong turn that landed me in a place, physically and spiritually, where I feel the pain and loss of a broken world. I grew up. I woke up. I left the nest. I landed in no-man's-land with eyes to see the truth.

Solidarity at the margins

May 1, 2019

We have to experience what it's like as the outsider, the minority, the one without rights, to know what it feels like to be marginalized.

Beyond margins

April 29, 2019

My capacity for becoming more aware of the margin is increasing. Maybe it's because my children are almost grown up, and that first calling of mine, to nurture and protect them, is coming to an end. All that energy and heart needs to go somewhere.

Moving to the margins

April 25, 2019

I grew up in the happy bubble of secure ignorance. This is not a bad thing for a child to experience. In fact I think it's one of the most developmentally supportive conditions, for childhood. But eventually you have to grow up and become aware of your own privilege.