Diana Swift

  • Diana Swift

    Diana Swift is an award-winning writer and editor with 30 years’ experience in newspaper and magazine editing and production. In January 2011, she joined the Anglican Journal as a contributing editor.

ARTICLES

Can running bring you closer to God?

Over the centuries, many people have associated closeness to God with a sense of oneness, and they’ve sought that oneness in a range of ways—prayer, meditation, fasting, chanting, dance, immersion in nature and the consuming of hallucinogens, to name a few.

Hawkins (right) with Cook-Searson (centre) and LLRIB councillor Devin Bernatchez at the site in La Ronge. Photo: Contributed

Bishops attend grave search at Anglican school site

Despite its pristine location in Saskatchewan’s boreal forest on the edge of the Canadian Shield, the town of La Ronge, Sask. (population: ca 5,700) has had its share of pain—experiencing, since 2015, a suicide crisis and evacuation for wildfires.

Forging Anglican links on the links

For nearly 20 years, birdies, bogeys and bunkers have been bonding Anglican Communion clergy—in friendly but competitive pursuit of a coveted brass prize known as

Interfaith gathering celebrates water

The waves of Lake Ontario lapped a light andante to the prayers, chants and drumbeats of a powerful ceremony—Toronto’s second annual Niigaani-gichigami Gratitude Walk and

Blair Dixon: Trailblazer for a diverse priesthood

The Rev. Blair Allison Dixon never set out to become one of the first people of African descent to be ordained in the Anglican Church of Canada, nor does the 82-year-old clergyperson see his more than four decades of service as a black priest as a political act.

Church warden from 18 to 81

In the summer of 1955, Sherman Niles had recently finished high school and was working on his parents’ dairy farm on Wolfe Island, the first and largest of the St. Lawrence River’s Thousand Islands, at the eastern end of Lake Ontario.

Nancy Mallett is honoured at the 2014 exhibit on the military chaplaincy. Photo: Michael Hudson

Nancy Mallett: Curator, keeper of history, powerhouse

When I first met Nancy Mallett, ODT, curator of the museum and archives that bear her name at Toronto’s Cathedral Church of St. James, she was the organizing genius behind a major international conference and exhibition on the history of the crèche, hosted by the cathedral in November 2011. She was 82.

Campers and counsellors give the victory sign at the 2015 session of the London Interfaith Peace Camp. Shown at the rear are the organizers: Sister Shahin Pardhan (left); Rabbi Deborah Dressler (right); Pastor Charlene Jongejan Harder (far right). Credit: Sukeina Bhimji

Shalom, salam, peace

What happens when Jewish, Muslim and Christian kids attend an interfaith summer camp together?

Joanne Turner still honours the venerable folk art of quilt. Photo: Contributed

A passion for quilting

Robert Louis Stevenson celebrated the imaginative magic of the comforter in his famous children’s poem “The Land of Counterpane.” And down on Cape Breton Island, Joanne Turner is still honouring the venerable folk art of the quilt.

Across Canada, parishes are obliged to train those working with the vulnerable: seniors, shut-ins, children. Photo: Contributed

Making church safer for all

The Anglican Communion’s Safe Church Consultation emerged from painful revelations in the 1990s that Christian churches-supposedly places of trust-were sometimes magnets for bullies and predators and sites of misconduct and abuse.

Elizabeth Murray, right, with Bishop Melissa Skelton at her investiture into the Order of the Diocese of New Westminster, Nov. 1, 205. Photo: Wayne Chose

New West honours wizard of public relations

In November 2015, Elizabeth Murray was invested into the Order of the Diocese of New Westminster at the nomination of Bishop Melissa Skelton. “It was awesome. I felt humbled and honoured,” said the British Columbia octogenarian.

Bishop Adam breaks the ice with his infectious grin and keen sense of humour. Photo: Mary Brown

Bishop in a Chevy pickup

Bishop Adam Halkett is so good with numbers that Mary Brown, diocese of Saskatchewan bookkeeper, once teased him about it, saying, “What are you doing here? You could make a lot more money in the business world.”

Shazim Khan, the imam of the Masjid Al-Salaam mosque, says the arson was an "isolated incident," adding, "this will not change our perception of this community, which is peaceful, loving and welcoming." Photo: Screen capture/CBC News

Anglicans rally around Peterborough Muslims

Anglican churches have joined the broader Peterborough, Ont., community in an outpouring of support and generosity for the members of the city’s only mosque, the Masjid Al-Salaam, which was torched by arson in a probable hate crime late in the evening of November 14.

It wasn't until 1931 that an annual proclamation set October's second Monday as the annual Thanksgiving Day in Canada. Photo: FamVeld/Shutterstock

A very movable feast

As we sit down to creation’s bounty in the form of a magnificent harvest dinner this month, let’s be thankful we can plan for this fine-weather feast on the second Monday in October. Historically, the date of Canada’s day of thanks has been anything but fixed.

Despite the lack of official Buckingham Palace-orchestrated celebrations on September 9, an exhibition of photographs of Queen Elizabeth will mark her becoming the U.K.'s longest-serving monarch. Photo: Dutourdumonde Photography/Shutterstock

Canadian church congratulates Queen on record reign

On September 9, at 12:30 p.m., ET, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will surpass her great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria, as the longest-reigning monarch in British history. Victoria surpassed the almost 60-year reign of King George III on Sept. 23, 1896.

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