Jesus Stolen, Then Returned, Thank God!

Jan 142014
 

Schmalz jesus statueWhatsoever You Do — Timothy Schmalz

This happened in early December (but I am slow). Timothy Schmalz’s life-size statue of Jesus “Whatsoever You Do” was stolen from the venerable Anglican Church of Saint Stephen-in-the-Fields in the Kensington Market area of downtown Toronto. This is significant in several ways, paramount to the NC community is the fact that the minister at Saint Stephen-in-the-Fields is Maggie Helwig (novelist, essayist and poet) who published a sermon, “Now the Green Blade Rises,” here in March, 2011. Maggie is an old friend; years ago we co-edited the annual anthology Coming Attractions. In fact, I was just in the church in September when I was in Toronto on one of my book promotion jaunts (unfortunately, I missed Maggie). The statue was outside next to the sidewalk, beautiful and touching.

Then, a few days later, the thief returned the statue (secretly, in the night) with a note attached: “I’m sorry, it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

I leave you to read into this what you will.

Timothy Schmalz is a well-known Canadian artist. He made headlines a few days before the theft when his “Homeless Jesus” was blessed by the Pope in Rome.

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Five Things Literary: The Virtual Literary World, with Douglas Glover | Open Book: Ontario

Sep 182013
 

1. I live in a virtual world outside my real country and in a place where I get my mail addressed to another place entirely. For lack of a literary community, I invented one: the online magazine Numéro Cinq. It started out as a student blog for a class I taught, then it became a literary blog, then it became a magazine. It keeps shedding its skin. It’s a community. I have re-found old friends, formed new friendships, become a patron for new writers, resuscitated the forgotten, changed people’s lives for the better and made myself a very busy person.

Read the rest via Five Things Literary: The Virtual Literary World, with Douglas Glover | Open Book: Ontario.

Now the Green Blade Rises: Sermon — Maggie Helwig

Mar 192011
 

Maggie Helwig is an incredibly gifted novelist and poet and an old friend dating from the early 1990s when for four years (1991-1994) she and I edited the annual discovery & showcase anthology Coming Attractions published by Oberon Press. Among the new writers we discovered were Lisa Moore, Caroline Adderson and Elise Levine (who subsequently got her MFA at Vermont College of Fine Arts). Maggie lives in Toronto, and is the author of six books of poetry, two books of essays, a collection of short stories, and three novels. Her most recent novel, Girls Fall Down, was shortlisted for the Relit Award and the City of Toronto Book Award. She has worked as a human rights activist with organizations including the East Timor Alert Network and War Resisters’ International. Maggie is currently completing a Master of Divinity degree at Trinity College, and will be ordained in the Anglican Church of Canada in May.

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Now the Green Blade Rises

By Maggie Helwig

A homily preached at Trinity College Chapel, Toronto, Easter Sunday, April 12, 2009


And at the beginning of everything, a garden.

Two people in a garden, and in this place the whole human story begins; begins and begins again, new, utterly changed.

John Donne wrote, “We think that Paradise and Calvary, Christ’s Cross and Adam’s tree, stood in one place.” We knew this, two days ago, our failures and petty evils, our violence and greed, converging on that terrible death, all our sins wrapped up in the torture and murder of a man on a tree.

But this place, this day, is more than that, it is all places; it is the cross and the grave and the place of rebirth all at once, it is paradise and Jerusalem, the city and the garden, and in the meeting of these two people are all people, all of us falling at the feet of the unknown and so deeply known Resurrected One.

And Mary Magdalene in the garden, the last one left, pathetically stubborn, unable to let go, unable to accept the inevitable loss and move on; she is the first to know, and she is the first to tell the story.

But she begins with a mistake – or not a mistake, perhaps. Perhaps something more. The man approaches her, and she takes him for a gardener. It isn’t that surprising, really, that she doesn’t recognize Jesus right away. How could she have expected this? How could any of us expect this?
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