The Valley Catholic
Having the familiar
disappear can
grieve the heart.
“Home is where we start from,”
T.S. Eliot wrote and it describes an
experience that can be felt both as
freedom and as heartache. I grew
up in a second-generation immigrant
community on the Canadian prairies.
My grandparents’ generation had been
the first settlers and everything they
built, from houses to schools, were
built with what they could afford and
situated along roads and railways they
could access.
Many buildings that surrounded
me when I was a child have disappeared: The elementar y school I
attended closed while I was still
a student there. The building and
school grounds have long disappeared. Wheat fields grow there now.
The same is true for the high school I
attended.
COMMENTARY
Spirituality
By Father Ron Rolheiser
Disappearing roots
I attended two separate seminaries
are orphaned in this way. Already in
and each of these has suffered the same
1970, Alvin Toffler, in his book, “Future
fate; both stood empty for a number of
Shock,” pointed out how transience
years and then were gutted by fire. The
and impermanence are beginning to
theological college I
shape our psyches, as
taught at for the first
things, people, plac15 years of my priestes, knowl