Permission to be still: Geez magazine supplement promotes contemplation

Enns with current, and previous, booklets

It's not the first time that Geez, the Winnipeg-based magazine about faith and activism, has provided its readers with a l'il extra. It has done so three times before -- with tiny supplements about technology, social change, and wisdom. 

This time around, subscribers and single copy buyers of the five-year-old quarterly will be getting a 16-page, illustrated, black and white A Beginner's Guide into Contemplation, written by associate editor Bre Wollgroski. According to a story in the Winnipeg Free Press, the booklet is meant to provide a seven-day guide to bringing out their kinder, gentler side. 

"It's meant to be refreshing," explains editor Aiden Enns of the tiny 16-page illustrated Beginner's Guide to Contemplation included in the summer issue of the Winnipeg-based Christian activist magazine.

"In the context of the magazine, that's bound like a book, out pops this little book that is light and easy to read."

He said that the booklet's summertime focus is to provide some degree of comfort to its readers in a difficult world. 

"My intention with the contemplation (booklet) is to help people who are struggling with prayer because they abandoned the faith of their youth. But they still want to do something spiritual," says the B.C.-born-and-raised Enns, who co-founded the ad-free magazine in 2006.

"This book gives them the permission to be still, be creative, and simply breathe and to know that they are there."

[photo: Joe Bryksa, Winnipeg Free Press]