What a wonderful surprise to have Paul Gehrs send me a short note to say: “I imagine you’ve already seen this, but excitement [for your book] is building here in Winnipeg.”
I hadn’t seen it. Thanks to Gail Perry of The Winnipeg Free Press for this gorgeous review!
Photo of the full-page book section spread below, or if you prefer, the link to the paper’s column here: https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-life/entertainment/books/2024/05/04/the-trails-less-travelled
So many years in the writing, and finally – here it is, world!
Today is the official launch of The Good Walk (University of Regina Press, 2024). It’s no longer listed on all the websites as “pre-order.” It’s out in the wild. And here’s a photo from McNally-Robinson Bookstore in Winnipeg to prove it!!
“Equal parts memoir, travelogue, and manifesto, The Good Walk recounts the adventures of settler and Indigenous ramblers who together retrace the earliest historical trails and pathways of the prairies” (from the back cover)
“Unsettles all our precious notions of a peaceable history with wisdom, erudition, and such good grace” (Trevor Herriot, author of The Economy of Sparrows and Towards a Prairie Atonement)
Review by Foreward Reviews here.
You can order the book here, or from any online bookseller!
Listen to a CBC interview about the book here.
“Anderson observes and savours all the spirits and souls of life…” Louise Halfe Skydancer
Events this last week proved how unintentionally fitting a name can sometimes be. The Peregrine Lunar Lander, a joint NASA-Astrobotic mission launched January 8th, is no longer expected to reach its goal. It was set to be the first commercial space probe, and the first American vehicle since the last Apollo mission in 1972, to land on the moon’s surface. However, several hours after launch, Astrobotic issued a photograph showing damage to the outer insulation of the craft. The statement noted that because of a propellant leak and difficulties in orienting the ship, a landing is now considered impossible. On social media, Astrobotic went on to state: “At this time, the goal is to get Peregrine as close to lunar distance as we can before it loses the ability to maintain its sun-pointing position and subsequently loses power.”
As a scholar of pilgrimage and pilgrimage studies, the name Peregrine (“pilgrim”) strikes me as uniquely suited to the Lunar Lander, which will now wander through space.
“Peregrinus” originally meant “foreigner” or “resident non-citizen [of the Roman Empire].” But already in ancient times it became the term for a pilgrim. For instance, a Roman pilgrim who travelled from Trier, in modern-day Germany carved his name “Peregrinus” as a thanksgiving on a votive offering stone at the Sulis-Minerva springs in Bath, UK, perhaps two millennia ago, and you can still see the stone there.
Eventually, the word “Peregrine” came to describe a special type of pilgrim, perhaps more related to the fate of the spacecraft that will now drift through the cosmos. My colleague and friend Sara Terreault at Concordia University, Montreal, describes (in this article: https://arrow.tudublin.ie/ijrtp/vol7/iss1/4/) how in the early Middle Ages, “peregrination” became a new type of pilgrimage that proceeded not toward a sacred destination, but away from a beloved homeland. The pain of this permanent separation from home was seen as a kind of “white” or living martyrdom, as opposed to the “red” or bloody martyrdoms of so many early Christian saints. Especially in Ireland and England, and amongst “Insular” monastics, this type of pilgrimage became a movement which sought holiness in exile and wandering. Bernice Lamb-Senechal has also written about this special type of ancient pilgrimage, here: https://arrow.tudublin.ie/ijrtp/vol8/iss1/9/. John Schultz and Ian Reader have identified a similar contemporary phenomenon among serial pilgrims on the Japanese Shikoku pilgrimage, in Pilgrims Until We Die: Unending Pilgrimage in Shikoku (Oxford University Press, 2021).
In the wake of the lunar let-down, scientists are scrambling to recast definitions of “success” for their mission. “Every challenge presents an opportunity to learn and refine our approach,” stated Dr Minkwan Kim of Southampton University in The Guardian. However, the failure of the Peregrine Lander can’t but be a blow to those who placed remains on the ship, hoping for them to have a permanent resting place on the moon. The human remains included DNA or ashes from George Washington, John F. Kennedy, and Dwight Eisenhower, science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, Star Trek founder Gene Rodenberry, and several cast-members of the original Star Trek series … Scotty (James Doohan), Bones (DeForest Kelly), and Uhura (Nichelle Nichols). It’s noteworthy that the plans to deposit human remains on the moon went ahead over the formal protests of the Navajo Nation, for whom the moon is sacred, as it is to many Indigenous peoples (https://www.npr.org/2024/01/08/1223377817/navajo-moon-human-remains ).
Now, because of a propellant or valve failure, the Peregrine will become a true space wanderer. For better or worse, it will live up to its name. Like the ninth-century Irish pilgrims who set out in a boat with no sail or oars, trusting themselves to where the seas and winds might take them, Peregrine is truly on a course for the stars, boldly going where no one has gone before.
By http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn13/etmassey/star-trek-cast.jpg, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26911344
Last weekend I had the pleasure of chatting with Sonali Karnick on CBC Radio One about “Prophets of Love: The Unlikely Kinship of Leonard Cohen and the Apostle Paul.” You can find the interview HERE. Sonali is a wonderful interviewer! We’ve chatted so many times that it felt to me a bit like a quick convo with a friend about my latest news. I hope you enjoy our visit as much as I did!
The lovely folks at McGill Queen’s Press have given me a discount code for 30% off my new book, “Prophets of Love,” to share with friends and family.
If you are reading this, I consider you friend or family (and the chances are pretty good you actually are!). So the code is MQF2
If you’re in Canada, order online and use the code HERE.
If you are in the UK or Europe, email direct.orders@marston.co.uk and use the code with them.
If you’re in the US or the rest of this big world that both Cohen and Paul loved (however differently), email orders@press.uchicago.edu and use the code with them!
Have you heard of the 1960s TV comedy series “Green Acres”? It starred Eddie Albert as Oliver Wendell Douglas and Eva Gabor as Lisa Douglas. Oliver and Lisa were a socialite New York City couple who moved from their urban penthouse apartment in Manhattan to a run-down place in the country to fulfill Oliver’s dreams of being a farmer. Oliver would drive the tractor wearing a suit and tie, and Lisa did chores in lace nighties or designer dresses while wearing her pearls. The locals were anything but yokels, and a lot of the plotlines revolved around Eddie getting himself into some pickle and having to be bailed out by bemused neighbours and their advice. (For those interested in such things, there was an interesting subplot with the locals and Lisa being able to hear the theme music and credits, while Eddie was blissfully unaware).
I barely remember the show. But it must have stuck somewhere. More than once this last year, while out trimming bushes or picking up wood or fixing a mower I’ve found myself humming “Goodbye city life, Green Acres we are there.”
Our two acres in Pomquet Nova Scotia (Mi’kma’ki territory) has no run-down century farmhouse, but a Kent mini-home. But after decades of living in Montreal, Nottingham, and Dublin, what I see when I look up is as different from the storefronts and sidewalks and constant traffic I’d grown used to as Green Acres was from the Big Apple. Here, the nights are quiet and dark – so still you can sometimes hear the blood in your ears. Two packs of coyotes often sing across the river to each other at dusk. On afternoon “golden hours” the light suffuses our marshy inlet, turning trees and water into some kind of Flemish Renaissance painting. The big excitement now is not a new café or a street festival, but five blue herons at once, a bald eagle low overhead, or the day we spied a pair of puffins in the salt marsh. Or eggs left on our doorstep by the neighbour, so fresh they’re still warm.
“Next year we’ll harvest some of those.”
From not owning a car for over twenty years, we now have two. Our bikes, once our main mode of commuting, sit idle, but we spend more time than we’d like on the ride-on mower. I’ve had to re-remember habits I’d forgotten: how to brace a gas can so it doesn’t tip over in the trunk, how to file the points and clean up a spark plug, changing oil, raking and shovelling and planting. How to safely burn brush, and the best way to cook sausages over the embers. I haven’t consulted a bus schedule in months – but we check the wind speeds and rainfall every day.
A year ago this month, when we moved back to Canada and first saw this land, there were ripe chokecherries filling the bushes along the driveway. We had five suitcases, our cat Sweet Pea, and each other, but nothing else. “Next year,” I told myself, “Next year we’ll harvest some of those.”
Things always happen more slowly than one would like. In just one year we haven’t even scratched the surface of our dreams and “druthers”. But this week I made chokecherry jelly. Plenty of mosquito bites went into getting those berries. But that first bite of a fresh roll with chokecherry jelly was just about perfect. These really are “green acres.” And we really are there.
(by Dr Rob Fennell AST)
Atlantic School of Theology is pleased to announce the appointment of Rev. Dr. Matthew Anderson as the new Director of Camino Nova Scotia!
Matthew is a professor, podcaster, filmmaker, the author of three books, a Lutheran minister, and a pilgrim with thousands of miles on his boots. In 2015, he helped inaugurate annual treks across Treaty territories on the prairies with Indigenous guidance, and from 2014 the first Old Montreal to Kahnawà:ke Mohawk Territory pilgrimage for students. His podcast “Pilgrimage Stories from Up and Down the Staircase” is on all your podcast platforms.
This summer, Wood Lake Publishing releases Matthew’s newest book, Our Home and Treaty Land: Walking Our Creation Story (co-written with Dr Ray Aldred). Matthew’s pilgrimage blog is at https://somethinggrand.ca. There you can also find his documentary on the Camino de Santiago.
The appointment begins immediately
Matthew is excited to be moving with his wife Dr Sara Parks to the North Shore of Nova Scotia, and can’t wait to explore the land and meet other pilgrims with Camino Nova Scotia! His appointment begins on June 27, 2022.
Atlantic School of Theology and Camino Nova Scotia are grateful to the Province of Nova Scotia’s Department of Communities, Culture, Tourism and Heritage for funding that has made possible Matthew Anderson’s appointment and the expansion of Camino Nova Scotia, for the benefit of all Nova Scotians and visitors to Nova Scotia. We are also grateful to the Office of Gaelic Affairs for its ongoing support of Camino Nova Scotia: Slighe nan Gàidheal | Gaels’ Trail.
(header image credit: image mrbanjo1138 Flickr Creative Commons)
By Christine Way Skinner
Sometimes a book comes along at just the right time. For me, this was Matthew Anderson’s Pairings: The Bible and Booze (Novalis, 2022). As pandemic restrictions were loosening and the possibility of gathering with other people was restored, I yearned for a good discussion group. Pairings provided just the right text for a post-pandemic bible study! The concept is clever. Anderson has chosen ten scripture stories and “paired” them with an appropriate drink. He begins with “Low-Hanging Fruit: Apple Cider and the Second Creation Account,” and ends with “Bringing Down the Curtain: Bloody Caesars and the Book of Revelation.”
Though the book seems light and fun – and it is – it is by no means superficial.
The book is small – only 111 pages – but Anderson packs a wealth of material in each short chapter. Readers will be presented with insights into both Scripture and the history of various libations. Though the book seems light and fun – and it is – it is by no means superficial. Anderson provides rich, thought-provoking points for discussion on important and meaningful topics. Each time, our group has met, folks have arrived with points underlined that they wanted to discuss. And discuss we did! So far, the topics have included the portrayal of women in the Bible, the church’s role in colonialism, the comfort that faith brings to our lives, and the admixture of bitterness and sweetness in human life.
I have recently become fond of ordering a beer flight in our local restaurant/brewery where I can sample a variety of beers in small sizes. This always leads me to think, “I’d really like to try more of that beer.” Pairings reminds me of such beer flights. Every chapter left me intrigued to learn more. So, I very much appreciated the excellent suggestions for further reading that Anderson provides at the chapter’s end. I also appreciated that he provides non-alcoholic drink pairing for those who prefer this. Sharing a drink among friends can be wonderful, but alcohol can also be problematic. Thus, I found this to be an ethical, sensitive, and compassionate addition.
The small group we formed around the book has met only four times. I look forward to our six more meetings by which time, (hint, hint), we might have a Volume II!
Christine Way Skinner is a lay minister and author. She received a Bachelor of Arts in Theology degree from St. Francis Xavier University and a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School. She is currently working on a Doctorate in Theology at St. Michael’s College in Toronto. Christine loves trying to find inclusive, compelling, and creative ways to pass on the church’s 2000-year-old traditions. She enjoys exploring the arts, gardening, and engaging conversations. Christine’s numerous publications can be found and purchased here.
I’m delighted with the wonderful translation into French of Pairings: The Bible and Booze, done by biblical scholar, podcaster, journalist, Catholic activist, and PhD student Sabrina di Matteo (phew, it’s tiring just to list all those occupations!). So it’s a real pleasure to announce the upcoming French-language book launch where we present this book to the world together!
Il faut le boire pour le croire
(from the translation – only one of many improvements to the original!)
Funny that les éditions Novalis and éditeur Jonathan Guilbault are partnering with Librairie Paulines on rue Masson in the Rosemont area of Montreal for the launch. I used to live just up the street from this bookstore, on 7e avenue, so I know this chic and interesting neighbourhood (and this cool bookstore) well!
On the agenda: quiz, conversation, swag, cocktails! Because of the pandemic, it’s been a while since I’ve been in Montreal, so my homecoming will be dans la langue francaise, as it should be!!
You can check out an “Apocalypse et gin tonic” quiz, and a short intro video here!
If you can’t make the launch, you can order Apocalypse et gin-tonic here (and of course, the English version, Pairings, is still available, and at a sale price, here!)
The St Kevin’s bus from downtown Dublin to Glendalough is one of the last great travel deals. 20 euro for a round trip, cash only. I settled into my seat, adjusted my FFP2 mask, and watched the city turn gradually into country. The Wicklow Mountains south of Dublin remind me a lot of the Appalachians, the kind of mountains you get in Quebec or Vermont. Within a half-hour we were in sheep and stone fence country. I’d sat on the wrong side for the low winter sun, which winked across my face through the window as the bus twisted and turned on the narrow roads. I felt slightly sick.
A few more turns and we were at the Glendalough Visitor Centre. The other passengers got off and quickly spread out over the trails. I wanted to get my bearings. But I didn’t have a clear idea of where I was in relation to everything else, especially the trail. I chatted through the barrier with the masked information person. She asked if I wanted to pay admission and see the display. “Sure,” I replied. “I hope you don’t mind me asking,” she went on, seeming embarrassed. “But are you over 60? A senior ticket is a mite cheaper.” I was the only person in the entire place. I watched a short film about the monastic city and the lakes, and wandered a while looking at old stone crosses. Eventually, I started out on the paths toward the monastic site and the lakes.
Glendalough is gorgeous. It’s pastoral and pretty. In mid-February the river was running fast and deep, and the trees had no foliage. But there was still lots of green, in the vibrant moss that covered everything, and the grass and bush everywhere around. I walked past the round tower, perhaps inspired by medieval minarets, and past the lower lake until I stood on the shore of the upper lake. There was a stiff and cold February breeze from the west (which I was happy to find out later would be at my back). The lake was choppy. I peered at the far end. Was that where I was going to walk? The man at the national park office, again at the barred entrance with a pandemic mask, sold me an Ordnance Survey map of the route from Valleymount. “You’ll need this,” he said.
I was booked to stay at the Glendalough Hermitage Centre. They were giving me a cottage part-way up the mountain, nestled just beneath St Kevin’s Catholic church. St Kevin’s is a beautiful mid-nineteenth century granite famine church overlooking a complex including the Hermitage, and several schools. It’s a twenty minute walk back to St Kevin’s from the monastic site, a trudge along the highway that I got used to over my short stay. Sister Peggy met me at the door. “You must be Matthew, then” she said. She showed me my cottage. I dropped my bag and went out again for supper, which meant another ten minute walk down and up hill. It gets dark early in the mountains in February. I eventually settled back in, with a fire in the wood stove. Inky cold blackness all around, and the stars so bright you felt you could touch them.
The next morning I was up early and sitting outside the petrol station, eating half of my bacon butty (a sandwich) and having morning tea. The taxi showed up to take me to Valleymount, where I began my walk. “Oh, by the way,” the driver said as we entered the village on the Pollaphuca reservoir, “the path you’re taking turns left there.” He pointed. The best bit of advice – in fact, the ONLY advice – I got on the walk. But absolutely essential.
Valleymount is a collection of houses on a spit of land between two bodies of water. The taxi driver told me they’d flooded the valleys on either side. If it’s really dry and the water drops, he said, you can sometimes see the tops of the chimneys come up from under the surface.
The older route for the walk begins in the village of Hollywood, not Valleymount. However, the guidebook “Pilgrim Paths in Ireland” by John G. O’Dwyer recommended the Valleymount start for being on less trafficked ways. It certainly was less traffic. I only saw one other pilgrim on this lovely pastoral lane. A German, coming the other direction, whistling and making it look easy.
Things got a bit more interesting after I stopped for a quick bite at Ballinagee Bridge. The trail began to follow forest paths near the King’s River, and once or twice I got that anxious feeling peering ahead for a marker to confirm I’d gone the right way
After coming across “St Kevin’s Pool” (not on my Ordnance Survey map), it was a fairly short ascent to Wicklow Gap, where you can look back for miles over the valley. There was a VERY strong west wind. I was happy for my new trekking gear. It was cold. “May the wind be always at your back” took on a new meaning.
The terrain became more rugged and less treed. The wind really never let up from that point until near the end of the Trail.
On the Glendalough side of the Gap, the Trail intersected increasing numbers of old broken-down stone homes, or perhaps mine buildings. There were some fenced black pools that I believe were flooded mineshafts. I came across a sign that said that a Canadian mining company called St Kevin’s reopened the local lead mines in the late 1950s.
Here the St Kevin’s Trail overlapped the Miner’s Way, a route that retraced the daily walking commute of lead-miners over the centuries
Finally the Trail dropped down into the valley. Unfortunately, for about a kilometre I had to hop over or around mud pits, some deep enough to suck off boots or sink a walker to mid-calf, which slowed the walk.
In the valley I came across a stone ruin called, I believe, the “Fiddlers’ Loft.” Inside were trees that had grown up over the years. One was a “rag tree,” an unofficial pilgrimage site where people had hung pandemic masks, bits of cloth, and even a dress, as a sort of prayer or offering.
Finally (about 20 km from the start) the monastic site came into view. The ancient gates are still there, and still welcoming
On arrival I drank a whole pot of tea. I must have been dehydrated, because at the local petrol station/deli/corner store I also ordered a lemonade and immediately also finished that.
Knowing my bus would be leaving before sunrise the next morning I took some time to look at St Kevin’s Church uphill from my hermitage cottage
I bumped into Sister Peggy and paid for my stay. There was a notice on the board that said retreatants were invited to participate in evening prayers in the chapel. “Maybe I’ll come to the prayers tonight,” I said. “It’s centring prayer on Thursdays,” Sister Peggy responded. I thought she was issuing an invitation, but it may have been a warning.
“Oh yeah,” I answered. “Sounds good.” I may not have been listening fully. So at 7:30 I sat down in the little chapel, keeping a social distance with the two others. There were candles, and silence, and darkness. After five and a half hours of walking up and over the Wicklow pass, a soft chair and darkness. And quiet. For 40 minutes the only sound was breathing and the radiators clicking. I managed to stay awake, but barely. Not sure if that counts as centring, but there were some prayers said!
There is a wonderful piece by the famous Irish poet Seamus Heaney about the legend that St Kevin was praying in his very narrow monastic cell, arms outstretched through the cell window, when a blackbird landed on his palm. He was so still, she laid her eggs there. Rather than disturb the bird, Kevin stayed still for two weeks until the baby birds had flown. Throughout the hermitage there are art pieces about this legend. You can hear the author read his poem by clicking here.
St Kevin is always pictured with his blackbird, so it was only fitting that the next morning, as I waited in the darkness by the visitor centre, all around me were unseen blackbirds singing in the dawn. There was just enough light so that when the bus finally showed up, I saw a blackbird flit away from close by my feet. I was the only person waiting, and the first on the bus. Then, as so often happens in new situations, we drove back the kilometre and a half I had just walked. There was a bus stop just beside where I had set out that morning 40 minutes earlier. I could have saved myself a long walk in the dark. But then I wouldn’t have had my time with St Kevin’s blackbirds.
somethinggrand 
