2011‑2022, and is preserved here for archival purposes.
On the day Canadians remember those who died fighting for freedom’s sake, Rob Joustra challenges us to name what we would give up, here and now, for our country.
What would you give up for Canada? Not for your home, your kids, your community, your mosque, or your job: for Canada. What would you give? What's it worth to you?
Issue polling gets a famously bad name, in part because it's hard to accurately measur...
As our pandemic winter shadows withdraw like halting springtime snow, Alisha Ruiss reminds us that even the tiniest crack in the darkness can begin to illuminate God’s promise anew.
I was born with my eyes wide open, my parents tell me, unblinking at the bright world I had entered, several days later than anticipated, in midwinter. And so it seems I have continued to live: curious, hungry for clarity, attempting to fit the fullness of ...
Along with COVID-19 and a sanity-challenging American election, 2020 made rampant the demolishing of monuments. Gavin Miller warns iconoclasm is more than vandalism: it threatens civil life.
About a year ago, I saw a statue of the Pieta that someone had donated to my friend’s parish. It was placed in a relatively inconspicuous part of the church campus and was frankly hideous, with distorted limbs and blunt facial features. As pastor of the par...
Ottawa photographer Ruth Dick reminds viewers that the gift and mystery of life can, more often than not, be found in the form of a child.
What can be more sacred than a child? Only a child held in the embrace of an adult's loving arms. In the simple lines of a candid photo taken during a street celebration in Montreal, Ottawa photographer Ruth Dick brings child and love together in a unity of...
Ottawa photographer Ruth Dick delights in catching the magic of music created in a moment.
A photographer friend who is also a great musician said the single word "in", when he saw this photograph. He meant I'd gotten right into the middle of what was passing between the musicians in their act of creating the music, and caught it.
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Photographer Peter Stockland reflects on the gift of light in illuminating an affirmation of everlasting faith.
France's Cathédrale Notre-Dame-et-Saint-Castor-de-Nîmes stands where a temple of the Roman Emperor Augustus once stood. Its interior shadows felt like I was sliding past ghosts until I saw this stained glass side window. I composed the picture so smaller so...
Photographer Jeff Sheldon conveys the expanse of space that matches what we imagine to be the soaring notes of the choir's holy song.
The choir is so distant it is barely identifiable in Jeff Sheldon’s photograph except that for our eyes to even discern them we are first urged up to look up to the full soaring height of the ceiling where, we know, the glorious sounds of holy song rise, ga...
Photographer Rob Wilson captures a stunning sunrise view of Artist Point, near Deming Washington.
This image is a testimony to the perspective change that happens when we have friends in different areas of life. They offer the perspectives that we can’t always see for ourselves. The vantage point that photographer Rob Wilson has for this photo shrinks t...
As the Convivium Team reflects on the launch of the Sacred Spaces Gallery, Hannah Marazzi sits down with Makoto Fujimura, artist, writer, and catalyst to understand the role of beauty, belonging, and art as signs of the New Creation.
This past year, Convivium launched the Sacred Spaces Gallery, a unique online space devoted to contemplating the intersection of the sacred and divine within ordinary life. Photographers from across the n...
Photographer Rob Wilson captures the reflection of a mountain peak in a glacial lake, giving the illusion of a floating mountain range.
When the sky clouds over, when the world loses its depth, when it feels like everything is precariously floating in mid-air: have faith. Take a leap into the unknown. Eventually the sky will clear and you’ll be able to see the depth of beauty that surrounds...
Photographer Rob Wilson submits this photograph as a testimony to the art and song of creation.
The pristine canvas of cloud cover reflects off a lake, giving the illusion of a symmetrical painting of the peaks of Mount Shuksan, viewed from Artist Point in Washington State, USA. With no clear sense of depth or space, the crystal clear reflection makes...
Photographer Rob Wilson plays with leading lines in this image, leading us down a shared path of history and experience.
The presence of the path speaks of those who went before, yet the path is open to those who might now discover it for themselves. The branches seem to be reaching up and clasping together, forming a tunnel for those who might walk, run, or wander through. W...
Photographer Rob Wilson presents this lakeshore dock as a sacred space even in the pouring rain.
It’s an interesting experience, seeing a place that would be lively in the sunshine abandoned in the rain. This dock, built in a shape resembling a Cross, extends an invitation for us to stand above the water-- above the element that both refreshes and with...
Photographer Hannah Martin captures this fleeting view of the sunlight at dusk in Tofino British Columbia.
As a sunrise causes us to look ahead, dusk causes us to look back, and reflect on the makings of the day. The golden light burns only for a few minutes over the ridge, casting long shadows of the insignificant logs and debris resting in its gaze. It brings ...
Wedding photographer, Hannah Martin captures this simple response of love from a wife to her husband's song, a tune she knows so well.
The way she listens—head bowed, leaning in—shows a love for the music and for its humble maestro. She has likely heard the song before, but not like this. Not here with the night sky overhead, the crackling fire, the sea breeze on her shoulders. This is new...
Photographer Hannah Martin photographs her husband Joey on the beach in Tofino, British Columbia. Her image prompts us to consider what posture we might take either before or after attempting the sport of surfing.
Out on the water, a surfer must make a choice: get tossed around by the overwhelming swell, or turn his board and ride the wave. Either way, he is submitting to the powerful surge of energy, just with a different attitude. Let’s have the right attitude toda...
Ottawa's lines and spires of power converge in holy symmetry.
St. Patrick's Basilica is parish in the centre of Ottawa that has existed since 1855, making it the city's oldest English-speaking church. It remains a bustling urban place of worship, yet one summer evening as I passed there was a deep tranquility in the l...
Photographer Hannah Martin invites the Sacred Spaces viewers into a moment of peace by imagining you could sit in these chairs with this view and just be.
Take your mind to this place. Sit in the chair. Look out through the triangular pane. Focus on each tree on the hill across the water. Be in this place for a moment. Find rest and peace, even for just a moment.
Backeddy Resort and Marina. Sechelt...
Photographer Peter Stockland is struck on his rush hour commute by a figure of stillness and solitude along the canal's edge.
Photography can instill, even in the age of incessant rapid fire digital images, the sacred virtue of patience. Standing on a bridge over the Rideau Canal during morning rush hour in downtown Ottawa, I saw this young woman astride her paddle board poling he...
To follow in the footsteps of the faithful who have come before shapes our path to glory.
The chapel of the Grande Séminaire de Montréal is not a place you walk through. Like faith, you enter into it, drawn inexorably forward by the its unusual shape that has the pews flanking the nave in parallel rows rather than branching off it at horizontall...
A line of geese begin their ascension to the heavens, skimming the water's surface in their quest.
As summer's light fades into autumn's cool blues, a flock of geese align for a horizontal arising as they skim the waters of the St. Lawrence a few kilometres upriver from Montreal.
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Photographer Peter Stockland encounters a flock of sheep and is prompted to reflection on the risen Lamb.
In the mountainous Cévennes region of southern France, shepherding is a tradition thousands of years deep, marked by the great "summer transhumance" when sheep are moved from plains and valleys to high plateaux where they graze until October. The area was a...
Photographer Hayley Lockrem captures men in prayer, a posture common to those across time, space, and tradition.
I was honoured to be invited to a large Sikh festival by a dear friend. Besides being unconditionally welcomed and over-fed, I was struck by the physical posture during their prayers and ceremonies. I was amazed to find the scene so familiar to experiences ...
Photographer Dave Andrew's captures the stillness of a moored canoe waiting in the sacred act of stillness.
The gentle lap of water is almost audible in photographer Dave Andrews' soft image of a canoe bobbing in the stillness of morning water. Water - the holiest and most ordinary of elements - brings to mind lines from Philip Larkin's poem "Water":
"If ...