Gavin Miller
Gavin C. Miller is a field biologist with experience in ecological restoration and native plant propagation, and is also sometimes a freelance writer. He lives in Toronto.
Bio last updated December 18th, 2020.
Articles by Gavin Miller
The Year of Smashing Statues
By Gavin Miller
December 31, 2020
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.
Although the Vatican did say that the statues were brought into the Synod “without idolatrous intent”, who’s to say that they weren’t lying? If the higher-ups in the Church can cover up abuse and stealthily promote liberal moral laxity, they are certainly capable of lying Closer attention to the origins and context of the Pachamama figurines shows that they were possibly purchased at a tourist market in Manaus by a Catholic NGO and then brought to the Vatican Indeed, some of the videos show people bowing and showing deference in the presence of the statues
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The Path of Silent Recollection
Gavin Miller
March 13, 2018
Toronto writer Gavin C. Miller notices how the power of silence creates a meeting of minds between intimidating Roman Catholic Cardinal Robert Sarah and Buddhist-oriented interior designer Jeremy Vandermeij.
And perhaps, if Jeremy Vandermeij and Cardinal Sarah are any indication, the way of silent recollection may in the end be the path out of the frenzied polarization and enmity that threaten our civilisation and the planet Vandermeij’s article led me to check out Robert Cardinal Sarah’s book, The Powe...
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The Political Tragedy of Scorsese’s Silence
Gavin Miller
March 17, 2017
Did you see the film Silence? Toronto-based writer Gavin C. Miller gives Convivium readers a review and seeks to debunk wide spread misconceptions that may be held about the film.
And this is where the real challenge of the film lies: is there a point where force and brutality can overcome heroism and crush it to powder? Does sufficient faith lead one to a happy ending? The title Silence refers to the silence of God Did I really want to see another film about morbid clergy, t...
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Fake Orchids and False Gods
Gavin Miller
April 1, 2015
How has it come to pass, Gavin C. Miller asks, that the adoration of the Magi has become the world's most adored hairspray? Even atheists might wonder how advertising compels them to worship
Ironically, the unearthly magenta-and-white flowers and thick glossy leaves made me think, at first, "how could this thing be real?" I lost the photo, and the last time I looked for the plant, the hillside was covered with dog-strangling vines. For those not familiar with the metaphor, the Flying Sp...
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Common Life: Dreams & Synchronicity
Gavin Miller
March 1, 2012
We live in a world stranger and more enveloped in mystery than what the post-modern consensus of our culture can imagine.
The dream about my father playing with funeral wreaths had nothing to do with any real danger Even after Nan, as we called her, had a debilitating stroke that left her profoundly cognitively disabled for the last seven years of her life, I don't think her perceptions were dimmed My paternal grandmot...