Dawsonwood

Tout Bagay!

2010-01-22T10:31:00.002-05:00

Dear Friends,

The novel which I am serializing on Hubpages has found its way mysteriously to my old blog at Dawsonwood, which is something that I would have done intentionally if had I had been moe computer savy.

The posts on this site are so much easier to follow...however...I carry on with Hubpages because I have notified a lot of people to look for the installments there.

Please note dear American friends...the character Jonathan George, M.D. PhD is more sympathetic than he first appears in the opening chapters of this novel. Indeed, there are some fascinating secrets about him which are revealed as characters become less stereotypical and more human. Indeed, that is the whole point of the book.

We have narrow ideas of one another and make snap judgments...or judgments based on far too little information. The characters in this book are moving towards acceptance of self and acceptance of other and the deep understanding that we are all one.

I have been aware that many novels today are colourless. Race is often just written out and physical descriptions are scanty. And, in a novel where race is not a major theme, this is appropriate. However, in this novel race is important because it is one of the keys to the understanding of the personalities and the essential humaness of all the characters. And then there is the wonderful notion of 'creole-ness' as well.

I am interested in editorial feedback from any of my readers since this version of the novel (version six counting the first five versions which were written at the novel marathon weekend) will not be the last. I would like to find a publisher for this book and to do a much, much better job of this than I did on the Dawsonwood Diaries. Please send me editorial input. Don't bother correcting my spelling...someone will do that...and its Canadian english spelling in the main anyway because Marcel Robinson is a Canadian of Haitian descent.

Thank you,
Blessings,
Connie

2007-10-13T22:58:00.000-04:00

You've got to read this:

I BELONG TO GOD
by Robert Knighton

In the first weeks of my course on Spiritual Formation, the class was encouraged to take this phrase and meditate upon it. So simple. I belong to God. Actually, I preferred the longer version as found at the beginning of the Heidelberg Catechism: My only comfort is this: that I am not my own –but body and soul, in life or in death, I belong to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ. Connie and I meditated upon the word ‘belong’ – and ultimately connected it to the verb ‘to long (for)’. Our deepest longing, that which drives us outward for meaning and reassurance, is to belong. We are hardwired for this – that’s why the cartoon ‘the Ugly Duckling’ stirs so many tears.

The timing was important. Over the summer, I had not been able to go to music camp as planned, to finish well my connection with official SA. Belonging became an issue again. I had not ‘belonged’ within the SA for fifteen years, then suddenly I ‘belonged’ again – what a grace and joy. God redeeming the years the locusts ate. Now I didn’t belong again. Defined out of existence. My ministry taken over by the Area Commanders.

I belong to God. Isn’t it interesting how we can allow ourselves to get distracted from this? At root, I know that anything I am or do is energized by belonging to Jesus, belonging to God. The LORD is God! He created us, and we belong to him; we are his people, the sheep in his pasture. (Psalm 100) And that nothing, ever, nowhere can pluck me out of his hand, remove me from his care. But in practicality, we interpret this through relationships with people, and organizations, and through circumstances and fruitfulness. Good things all – but potentially distracting.

Now these words penetrate my heart: I belong to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ. In the Old Testament, salvation is portrayed as having our feet set on a broad plain. Free from smallness and restriction, alive to potential and possibility. The green pastures of Psalm 23. God leading us out of pasture land too long grazed, no longer capable of supporting life abundant, and setting us in limitless time and space. Then exhorting us to roam, to discover, to graze afresh, to rest – always secure in His care. How many of us feel that way? Mary, when confronted by tidings of the impossible answered "I belong to the Lord, body and soul, let it happen as you say”. (Luke 1:38)

Over the six weeks of living with these words of God, I have found so many ways of losing touch with this reassurance. Of feeling like an orphan. Or, like Elijah on the mountains Carmel and Horeb, alone and buffeted. Paul knew this feeling so well and spoke the words which break through the storm:. Whether we live or die, it must be for the Lord. Alive or dead, we still belong to the Lord. (Romans 14:7-8) Frankly, I prefer the alive. Yet sometimes the Deceiver suggests ways in which I am dead. “Whatever”, I say – “I belong to God.”

Now that God has called my attention to these words, this assurance, my meditation has been upon them as well. What are the fruits of belonging? What are the implications? The service possibilities? I now understand ‘the renewing of my mind’ as being given eyes of belonging rather than any consciousness of alienation. A couple of years ago, I took as ‘my verses’ Matthew 11:28-30 from The Message: Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. … Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly." I now understand them as ‘belonging verses’ -that just like God used to walk in the garden with Adam and Eve, because they belonged to Him, so He wants to walk with me, because I belong to Him.

Paul once exhorted the Corinthians, everything is yours, including the world, life, death, the present, and the future. Everything belongs to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God. (1. Cor. 3:22-3) When I am discouraged through a sense of any lack, that is not the Spirit alive in me, but the Accuser. ‘My father is rich in houses and lands.’ And I am the child of the King. How weak are the measures which we use to evaluate this richness– material goods, release from sickness or pain, important ministry! Everything belongs to us because we belong to God! No room whatsoever for the benighted philosophy of scarcity – our lives can speak in all ways the wonderful assurance of abundance. We are not people terrorized by the ‘bottom line’ – but as those who belong to God we are resourced by the fullness of God’s riches.

(A new covenantal catechism) Question 1. Who are you?
I am a child of God.

Prayer: Lord you are my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? You are the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud, be gracious to me and answer me! O God of my salvation! (Psalm 27:1, 7, 9f)

Question 2. What does it mean to be a child of God?
That I belong to God, who loves me.

Prayer: You O Lord have done great things for us, and we rejoice. Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like the watercourses in the Negeb. May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy. Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves. (Psalm 126:3-6)

Jesus my Lord will love me forever,
From Him no pow'r of evil can sever;
He gave His life to ransom my soul -Now I belong to Him!

Chorus: Now I belong to Jesus, Jesus belongs to me -
Not for the years of time alone but for eternity.

Dawsonwood Is Alive and Well

2007-09-18T06:52:00.000-04:00

Dear Blogging Friends,

Dawsonwood Cottage is alive and well. I'd better post this on Facebook if I can figure out how to do it, because some of you seem to have become Facebook addicts and I have not posted here since last spring. This is about what God is doing in our lives.

We welcomed an international student from Vietnam, Vu Pham, on September 7. Fifteen years old, he is studying in Bracebridge this year in Grade 10, but doing Grade 11 math and chemistry. He joined the soccor team last night and is off to his first tournament today!!! It is fun having a young person about the house. So much fun indeed, that I did not hesitate in the slightest to say yes to offering shorter term accomodation to another student. "D" is finishing Grade 12 and, small world that it is, knows Vu in another context.

So the Knightons are experiencing the excitement of teenaged boys after raising our two girls. Rob's knees are aching from several games of tennis with Vu over the weekend and I am actually cooking for the first time in what seems like months. Well, it is months because my wounded hand has made all manual labour difficult. It is also a challenge to make meals which have even a semblance of Asian acceptability. Vu has given me the skinny on stir fried vegetables and there will never be soggy stir fry in this house again!

Yes, the hand. Still swelling irratically. Still sore. Still scarred looking. An anomaly they say, with respect to the scarring. Personally, I don't care about the scar. I have lived long enough to deserve every war wound on my body. However, this scar seems to have a life of its own, becoming raised and prominent and dry after certain activities and inflamed after that. Sometimes massage helps, sometimes it seems to make things worse. I would welcome tips from anyone who has experience of scar tissue.

The next few weeks are exceedingly busy. Rob is going back to school. No not his PhD.. As a matter of fact, he is selling his complete library of theology. He's on a different track at this stage of his life. He is studying spiritual direction at Tyndale University, figures he has done this work for the last thirty years in various ways, but is choosing to do this intentionally for whatever years God gives him. His contract with The Salvation Army ended when that organization reinvented its structure for supplying pastoral care to its ministers. Change calls for a creative response.

We are into autumn birthday season. Rachael will turn 6. Sarah will turn 30 and AAAAAAAGH!, I will turn a factor of these numers. No not 180! Rob and I have our 40th wedding anniversary on the 14 October. We are having a family celebration on the Sunday of Canadian Thanksgiving and taking a cruise in November. Barb and Dylan and children will move into Dawsonwood while we are away to look after 'the boys.' Sarah and Jeff are celebrating their anniversary on October 16. Resigned that I would never get my 'wear' out of it, I finally sent the expensive dress I bought for that day to charity. Sarah said, "Mom, get over it. It's been eight years!" Unbelievable.

And all you young mothers out there...don't be smug. Time flies whether you are having fun or not. So have fun. It will be your turn soon. You'll be filling your empty nests with other mother's sons. People will be astonished when they see your wedding photos. They will say politely, "Oh yes, I can see that is you. The smile is the same." Your daughters will enthuse, "Mom, you were beautiful." You will look into the mirror and scarecely recognize your own faces.

Bless you all.

Guest Blog From Robert

2007-06-01T12:34:00.000-04:00

Connie’s challenge has stayed with me throughout this month. Since it is true that, until it can be said of me “In him is life” and of our churches “in them is life”, we are falling far short of the glory of God which He intends for us, we really must have the fullest possible picture, expectation and reception of life.. Our weakness in witness to the world, in fellowship with each other, and in communion with God spring from our want of life. So what is life?
I have become convinced in my heart that Jesus’ own preaching of the Kingdom gives us the best picture of the life he himself experienced and which he was bringing to the earth. For example, according to Matthew and Luke, when John’s disciples came to inquire into the nature of Jesus’ messiahship, the Master replied "Go back and tell John what's going on: The blind see, The lame walk, Lepers are cleansed, The deaf hear, The dead are raised, The wretched of the earth learn that God is on their side. (or, in Luke, The wretched of the earth have God's salvation hospitality extended to them) Is this what you were expecting? Then count yourselves most blessed!" (Mt. 11, Lk 7 TM) Again, Matthew records as part of the feeding of the four thousand, When the people saw the mutes speaking, the maimed healthy, the paraplegics walking around, the blind looking around, they were astonished and let everyone know that God was blazingly alive among them. (Mt 15, TM)
Life as Jesus lived and as He gave to others is the ability to notice, appreciate, celebrate, incorporate and participate in what God is doing in the world each and every day. That is why Jesus portrayed his ministry as giving eyes and ears, tongues and limbs, why He healed outcastes and embraced the ‘poor in spirit’ including them out of their exclusion from worldly society. That is why He gave life to dead people, to nephesh met, dead souls.
I do not believe that abundant life has anything to do with material affluence. The so-called health and wealth gospel was devised for the itching ears of North Americans and is a travesty of the truth. I was formed with the expectation that life is about noticing and appreciating what God is doing when I was twenty-one, and on Youth Service Corps in Fonds-des-Negres, Haiti. I encountered so many Christians who celebrated the richness of life in Christ while having literally none of earth’s goods, nor having expectation of them! The witness of these simple, ‘poor’ people was not based on ignorance but upon richness of vision. The prevalence of voodoo was the parody and corruption of the spiritual energy which we felt in the church – sort of like the Garden of Eden experience all over again. Many of our people knew themselves to be walking and talking with Jesus each day- the flip of this is that some were tempted into embracing a more controllable spiritual experience, a magic, through voodoo.
Life at its foundation is the ability to notice God and what He is doing. At a church in which there is life, the time spent together is all about noticing God – whether it is a liturgical church filled with Scripture reading and written prayers and sacred service, a Quaker community waiting on the Spirit, a contemporary fellowship with great singing and gifted worship leadership or a traditional congregation with eyes open and ears ‘dug’ for them by the Spirit. As people leave a living church service, they are convinced that they have noticed God in the compassionate fellowship, the corporate attentiveness, the joy, the love, the grace, the hope expressed. “We have together been with God”.
Living Christians spend moments during the day, and time at the end of the day, just to record on paper or in memory all of the gracious sights and sounds of God at work they have noticed, in all of the various and surprising ways He has shown Himself to them and spoken to them. Not likely in Theophany but through intentional and ‘serendipitous’ contact with people and situations, by momentary glimpses and fixed vision. And living Christians pray with passion and purpose “..to see Thee more clearly…day by day.” Abundant life is about the richness of the vision- the quality, the clarity and the breadth of that which we hear and see. Jesus taught His followers over and over, “if you have seen me, you have seen the Father…I only do what I see the Father doing, so to see me at work is to see Him at work”. This remains the first part of the paradigm for life. And as Jesus suggested to John’s disciples, it is here and now for us a gift of God that we who otherwise would be blind see and we deaf hear.
Over the years, the most common spiritual lament I have heard as a minister is that people no longer ‘see God.’ Try as they might, whether they run to the east and then to the west, God seems far away. A famine of hearing has overtaken them. They cannot find Him- He seems to be hiding His face from them. Praying the Psalms which speak directly to this difficulty is a help. But so is sabbatical and Sabbath, time bought out of the busyness of the market place, time of obedience to God, and the discipline of writing down everything which comes to our notice. God will be in this. God will always honour our discipline of notice.
We notice because God helps us to notice by His Spirit. This ‘Friend’ specially given to us in the Church is for the purpose of our vision, But when the Friend comes, the Spirit of the Truth, he will take you by the hand and guide you into all the truth there is. He won't draw attention to himself, but will make sense out of what is about to happen and, indeed, out of all that I have done and said. He will honor me; he will take from me and deliver it to you. Everything the Father has is also mine. That is why I've said, 'He takes from me and delivers to you.' "In a day or so you're not going to see me, but then in another day or so you will see me." This is the beginning of the reality of “In _____ is life.” He or she or they notice God.
And taking notice, living people and living churches ponder these things in their hearts, they consider the ways of God, they reflect, they contemplate, they search for truth. Is this what you were expecting? Then count yourselves most blessed!" The Spirit does indeed bring discernment, but life is also about our disciplines of contemplation. We need the word of God to dwell in us richly. Life absolutely requires examination and consideration, it does not happen by some kind of spiritual osmosis. If we desire life, our schedule must reflect this – in time for private personal contemplation, in time for corporate study and prayer. There is no such thing as life Lite, available to us through reading a good book in our spare time, or listening to Christian radio on our way to work.
Jesus regularly led his followers away from the hustle and bustle to specifically consider the ways of God. Living Christians and living fellowships and churches must do the same today. Even when we discipline ourselves to write everything down, if we don’t then study what we have written it becomes, as James said, like those who glance in the mirror, walk away, and two minutes later have no idea who they are, what they look like. Investing time to consider what God is showing us is our critical contribution to life. Jesus often castigated his followers for their lack of understanding – they just were unwilling to pay the price of considering The Way which they were being shown.
Wisdom is God-breathed, as is ‘heart’. But both happen as part of disciplined spiritual lives in which churches and individual Christians place themselves under the tutelage of the Spirit, to consider and appreciate the things they are hearing and seeing. God has made it clear that His thoughts are not our thoughts, nor His ways our ways. And yet He graciously allows the transformation to happen, the renewal of our minds, until this mind is in us which was in Christ Jesus. That is the gift of life - that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. A knowledge which engages us!
A chronic weakness in the church and in individual Christians today is the lack of such integrated knowledge. Somehow, Jeremiah 31:33-4 "This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time," declares the LORD. "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts… No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,' because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest," declares the LORD has been extrapolated to mean that all of this life wisdom comes passively, perhaps ‘charismatically’, without any work on our part. A Great Lie from the Deceiver!! There is a cost to life – there is work to be done! How gracious of God that such work can be so joyful and ‘heart-warming’ when done in fellowship!

Behold Thou Art There

2007-04-29T00:28:00.000-04:00

Okay, so those of you raised on the KJV will be able to fill in the rest of this quotation. There is nothing like that old book for resonating phrases and metaphors which stand the test of time.

Psalm 139:8 (King James Version)
8 If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.

I've been making my bed in hell quite a bit over the last month. Barb had the lovely new baby. I got post partum depression. It was like the big push was over; he was here; he was healthy and lovely...and now what? I had trouble getting out of bed. The adrenalin rush was over. I suspected my anti-depressant meds were not working and felt, well, hellish.

It always helps to talk these things through and I did; with God and Rob and my sister-in-law Heather and just as the clouds lifted and I felt energy returning and started to get into spring cleaning, I had a major accident with a sliding glass door, cuttung several tendons and a nerve in my right hand. Last Sunday I had plastic surgery to repair the damage and this week I started physio...painful but absolutely necessary to get back the use of my hand. The physiotherapist requires me to do ten repetitions every half hour of an exercise which is the therapeutic equivalent to giving the world the middle finger.

In the meantime, Rob got a call from a specialist who is looking into some of his health problems. He is back on antibiotics for the fourth time in five months.

And then, he was notified that the Salvation Army was changing the way it delivers Pastoral Care and that his contracts would not be renewed.

I did my usual rant...much, much shorter in duration these days...I just have bits of negative garbage which have to come shooting out of my mouth for a few minutes. I don't believe any of it, but somehow I have this sort of magical thinking that if I say the worst things which come into my mind this will pre-empt anything worse happening...or if more bad things happen, they can't possibly be as bad as the scenarios I have already concocted. This means I cannot get any more depressed or disappointed.

A few supportive prayers later, I didn't feel as bad. And by this evening, I was feeling triumphant. Barb had whizzed around the house cleaning for company which was coming to Dawsonwood for an overnight. Dylan had assessed and started into basement repairs necessitated by my breaking the slider and had hacked away at a little dry rot problem in the basement. Theren help was so welcome.

I found that I can type in some manner using my right thumb and left hand.

Rob will apply for his CPP. We won't starve. And to tell you the truth...Rob is as happy as he ever is...he says..."More time to play with my grandchildren." And maybe God has something better in store for him which will not require travelling 2,000 kms. per week!!!

Psalm 139:7-10 (King James Version)

7 Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
8 If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.
9 If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;
10 Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.

HERE HE IS AT LAST

2007-04-04T12:27:00.000-04:00

William David Harris

born

April 2, 2007

Soldier's Memorial Hospital

Orillia, Ontario

10:02 p.m.

A miraculous 7 lbs. 10 oz.!!

Mother and baby doing well; having a couple of days in hospital to establish breast feeding.

Thank you for your prayers. This is indeed a miracle.

NO BABY YET

2007-03-22T00:02:00.000-04:00

Here is a picture of 'the princess and the frog' from last Hallowe'en. The frog doesn't look like he wants the princess to kiss him. We don't know yet whether or not he wants to share his bedroom with his expected new brother.

Okay, so Barb hasn't had her baby yet. We are into week four (at least) of bed rest for her and while it has been taxing on all of us...especially Barb...check that out at http://www.lovebarbara.blogger.com/ ...it has meant that the baby has grown more and is now, by ultrasound a whopping 6 lb. 4 oz.!!! We are really rejoicing that the bed rest (couch rest) has paid off, Barb's blood pressure has been better and the baby has had a chance to get more nourishment. Thank you to those who have been praying for her and her family.

I am grateful...that is all I can say...it is the extent of my spiritual reflections at this point in time. And I am feeling relieved and humorous tonight...maybe that is Spirit.

Here is a picture of an unidentified friend on my recent trip to Florida.

I can't risk messing up this simple post by trying to add any more snapshots. I'll post some of the new baby and his sibs and cousins when the time comes...the fullness of time, of course.

Our Dog Babe

2007-03-04T09:52:00.001-05:00

Our dog Babe died on Saturday evening, February 17. She would have been fifteen years old on March 1, well over 100 in human years. She did not die quietly in bed, but having escaped the house while I was putting out the recycling, that dog of independent mind decided to go roaming. She was dead before we noticed that she was missing.

I would like to think that she met her her end chasing a car, a favourite pastime of all her breed, but that is not the case. She trotted along, blending into the snowy shadows of the evening. Neither she, nor the kindly folk who hit her, had a chance. It is some comfort to know that she died instantly and in some ways, on her own terms.

Highly intelligent, Babe had a stubborn streak. She would have felt it very undignified to have degenerated into a feeble, housebound, old age.Babe was incorrigibly bossy, knew what was good for river swimmers and skate board riders. Her sometimes irritating sharp barking and herding instinct were an inheritance from her forebears in the Shetland Islands. As she grew older, she kept her beauty, the Blue Merle markings of her pedigree and her lovely, wise face.

Our lives are forever changed. Rob misses his daily walks and hardly knows how to start his mornings. For several days after she died, I continued to hear Babe barking, not protractedly, just an occasional 'woof.' It was both disconcerting and comforting.

This past week Rob was away overnight for work, as he frequently is, and I was alone in the house. I realized just how companionable Babe was, particularly when a horrific storm of freezing rain and high winds interrupted sleep at 3:00 a.m.. Formerly, just having her at my door would have been reassuring. Now I found I could not sleep at all and finally got up and spent the rest of the night sweeping up and folding laundry. The house is empty.

Babe is linked to all of the memories of our lives over the last fifteen years. There was the time we had a fire in our Edwardian house in Orillia and we thought that Babe had succumbed. What a relief when the firefighters found her. Covered in soot, she came bolting out of the family room straight out the front door and raced around the house at breakneck speed, barking her lungs clear. Then there was the time, a couple of years later, when she wore a pink ribbon for my daughter Sarah's wedding day in October, 1999. Not two years later, she was part of the nursing team during my father's last illness. She sat patiently beside his chair, comforting him, licking gently the thin yet familiar hand that had petted her for years.

Rachael drew a picture of Babe and God looking down on us from heaven. God was a bright yellow cloud and sun and a rainbow. I added a sketch of a young Great Grandpa Ballantine playing in the eternal fields with Babe. Rachael called her picture 'Babe's Banner', and it has hung for a week in the breezeway where Babe rested in warmer weather.

We will not own another 'pet.' We travel too much. Our lives are far too busy for us to be the ideal companion humans. And we are getting older. Another 15 year old dog just might outlive us! My brother reminds me that there are still more than enough dogs in the family to keep us company. He knows that in my heart, no dog could replace Babe.

Wes Roberts asks some questions

2007-02-13T18:35:00.000-05:00

I read several recent posts by Wes Roberts, and as always, what this gentle and wise man had to say triggered explosions of thought. Take a look at his post for February 12, 2007 Permalink "113...what do we claim to be true?"

Wes wrote: "War images can offend. Battle talk is uncomfortable for most...to be avoided. Thus, in the messiness of language, images, symbols, I believe, the wide ranging issues of spiritual warfare (...a fairly consistent theme in our life-text, the Bible...) gets minimized, ignored, and we pretend there is no such thing. There is......." Oh yes, to the sensitive little girl who grew up in The Salvation Army (Church, not Community Centre or Thrift Store) those war images have been offensive. Coming of age during the Vienam War, I was acutely uncomfortable with the externals attached to my roots in this Christian movement: uniform wearing, street meetings, knee drill (prayer meetings), and systems of hierarchical command. For most of my life I have avoided thinking about the Biblical context and the Divine imperative behind the notion of spiritual warfare.

But Wes pointed me in the direction of Eugene Peterson's rendition of Ephesians 6:10 - 24 in which Saint Paul urges us all to take up the best spiritual weapons in order to enter into a fight to the death with the Devil. Here is the portion of the passage which spoke most deeply to me:

Truth, righteousness, peace, faith, and salvation are more than words. Learn how to apply them. You'll need them throughout your life. God's Word is an indispensable weapon. In the same way, prayer is essential in this ongoing warfare. Pray hard and long. Pray for your brothers and sisters. Keep your eyes open. Keep each other's spirits up so that no one falls behind or drops out.

Wes suggested some questions for reflection and I have chosen to respond in this blog to seal my intentions.

1. Where do you need to take more seriously these words of our God?

"Truth, righteousness, peace, faith, and salvation are more than words." I need, as always, to embody these words in my daily life. 2007 is a year in which I have covenanted with God to be more even tempered emotionally and relationally. I need truth to anchor the sometimes unwieldy breadth of my unorthodoxy. I need righteousness, a clean heart and a clear mind, in order to do my work with my family and as a writer and volunteer therapist. I need peace in place of the rage I feel when trapped in circumstances beyond my control...rage never helps..."Lord, grant me the serenity..." I need faith to believe that God is in control of that vast host of things beyond my control. That is huge. And I need salvation, not in its limited and perhaps distorted sense of being 'born again,' but in its truest sense, which is deep healing. I need to experience salvation/healing daily in order to bring this balm into my small world. This is where I need to begin.

2. What will you do about that?

I will write this blog. I will covenant with others to keep me focused and faithful (my name of course, 'constance.')

3. Where do you need to do battle for a variety of issues within your own soul?

I need to do battle with fear. This is the microcosmic battleground for me. It is not sufficient to say, 'I have an anxiety disorder' and therefore I am excused from this particular battle. Rather, I think, this particular battle is enjoined on me with a special purpose. I must fight fear in order to release the gift of God which is within me and in order to be useful in this life, which, after all, is the only life I presently have.

In the macrocosm: I believe that fear is the cause of much wrong headed thinking in this world. It is fear of differences, fear of others, fear of change, fear of self, fear of past, present and future which motivates the physical wars and rumours of wars which are destroying the world community. It is fear of surrendering to kindness and willing love which creates pain in marriages and families. It is fear of poverty which creates poverty through hording, lack of generosity, abuse of resources and wealth. And so on.
4. How will you allow others to join you in the battle?

I will write this blog. I will ask for prayer to keep my resolve. I will ask others to consider these questions and the import of Ephesians 6 for their lives.

5. What is God up to in your own life?

God has given me great blessings this year and more importantly, awareness of these blessings. My life is far, far from barren. Indeed, this barren woman is about to become a grandmother for the fifth time in as many years! My family is more cohesive, sharing and caring, living love despite uncertain circumstances. I am so grateful. My book has received a good response: people have laughed and cried and seen themselves in it. This is all I ever hoped for. This is very fulfilling and it is a direct result of my obedience to God...yes, obedience, another term I've cringed to own. My personal life vision and my mission statement are being fulfilled in ways beyond imagining. Despite fear, I am giving birth to Beauty, a commodity much touted but little understood.
6. What all do you want our Triune God to be up to?

Is this where I say, 'world peace?' Nope. I want God to continue to break down the walls between all people of faith. I want the battle for truth, righteousness, peace, faith and salvation to be joined on all fronts. I want God to open minds, to break down narrow sectarianism (another form of fear and an acute hindrance to the work of God in any generation). I want God to stir Christian imagination. And out of that great stirring, I want God to bring about creative and loving ways for Christians to confront evil in the world. I want God to help Western Christians to learn the lesson of turning the other cheek, which clearly is not weakness but wisdom since it comes from the mind of Jesus.

So there are Wes's questions and my responses. Should you wish to answer the questions in your own blog, please do. The questions themselves are a kind of spiritual warfare, don't you think?

Never Say Never

2007-01-24T21:59:00.001-05:00

I’m writing from Florida, where it has been raining off and on since we arrived. That has not dampened our spirits since it is warm and anything above 0 C or 32 F feels warm to us. We got out of Muskoka just after the first staying snow. It is unheard of for the river not to freeze in late December. As we left the snow for the rain, a thin skim of ice was forming where the river runs slowest. With this brief respite, I believe winter of 2006-7 will be my shortest ever!! The rain here has been soft and summerish and I don’t mind it.

I once said I'd visited Florida once and I'd never visit Florida again. Never say never. Perhaps my first trip was coloured by the necessity to keep up with the energy the girls generated when they were ten and thirteen!!

Highlights so far:

1. tuna sesame salad (raw tuna on a bed of really fresh greens)…amazing
2. a display of about 500 miniature paintings at a gallery and a long conversation with Thomas Farrell, a loquacious Brit who is reputedly the foremost watercolour miniaturist in the world…wow
3. seeing an ancient documentary on sponge harvesting in Tarpon Springs…not only informative but nostalgically reminiscent of documentaries we used to see as 35 mm. movies in Elementary School way back in the middle of the twentieth century

Lowlights so far:
1. Checking in and immediately out of our first hotel (mould, dirty blankets and carpet). Buyer beware, those picturs on the internet may be generic and may not represent what you are actually booking.
2. Leaving all my American money in Canada
3. Checking in to a second hotel and needing to change rooms the second night because of spiders, holes in curtains, lack of closet doors and no internet access…(all this for $100.00 CAN)

The best thing is that almost everyone I see is older than me, and the worst thing is that almost everyone is older than me. I see my future in every approaching face!!

The score, then, is even so far…and all the little troubles of home seem far away. I thank God for these days and breathe blessings on this somewhat transient place: its elderly citizens, its gated communities, its giant billboards advertizing the specialties of litigation lawyers, its excellent restaurants, its alligators, pellicans, storks, palm trees, waterways and greens.

Psychological Profiling by Dessert Selection

2007-01-12T23:04:00.000-05:00

I haven't been feeling terribly profound lately. This test was supposedly developed by psychiatrists but sounds more like something a group of psychologists would come up with late at night at a convention in Atlantic City.

I picked Lemon Meringue Pie and think that the description fits quite well, but those of you who know me best may have other opinions about that. Take this test and see if you think the appropriate description fits YOU.

Love,Connie

Don't cheat on this one, go with the first dessert you choose!!!

If all of the desserts listed below were sitting in front of you, which would you choose (sorry, you can only pick one!) Trust me....this is very accurate. Pick your dessert, and then look to see what psychiatrists think about you.

Here are your choices:

1. Angel Food Cake
2. Brownies
3. Lemon Meringue
4. Vanilla Cake With Chocolate Icing
5. Strawberry Short Cake
6. Chocolate on Chocolate
7. Ice Cream
8. Carrot Cake

No, you can't change your mind once you scroll down, so think carefully what your choice will be.

OK - Now that you've made your choice this is what the research says about you... SCROLL DOWN---No Cheating
1. ANGEL FOOD CAKE -- Sweet, loving, cuddly. You love all warm and fuzzy items. A little nutty at times. Sometimes you need an ice cream cone at the end of the day. Others perceive you as being childlike and immature at times.
2. BROWNIES -- You are adventurous, love new ideas, and are a champion of underdogs and a slayer of dragons. When tempers flare up you whip out your saber. You are always the oddball with a unique sense of humor and direction. You tend to be very loyal.
3. LEMON MERINGUE -- Smooth, sexy, & articulate with your hands, you are an excellent after-dinner speaker and a good teacher. But don't try to walk and chew gum at the same time. A bit of a diva at times, but you have many friends.
4. VANILLA CAKE WITH CHOCOLATE ICING --Fun-loving, sassy, humorous, not very grounded in life; very indecisive and lack motivation. Everyone enjoys being around you, but you are a practical joker. Others should be cautious in making you mad. However, you are a friend for life.
5. STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE -- Romantic, warm, loving. You care about other people, can be counted on in a pinch and expect the same in return. Intuitively keen. Can be very emotional.
6. CHOCOLATE ON CHOCOLATE -- Sexy; always ready to give and receive. Very creative, adventurous, ambitious, and passionate. You can appear to have a cold exterior but are warm on the inside. Not afraid to take chances. Will not settle for anything average in life. Love to laugh.
7. ICE CREAM -- You like sports, whether it be baseball, football, basketball, or soccer. If you could, you would like to participate, but you enjoy watching sports. You don't like to give up the remote control. You tend to be self-centered and high maintenance.
8. CARROT CAKE -- You are a very fun loving person, who likes to laugh. You are fun to be with. People like to hang out with you. You are a very warm hearted person and a little quirky at times. You have many loyal friends.

Okay. Tell me what type you are in the comments below or email me at conniek_4@sympatico.ca. Email your friends and get them to take the test. I want to hear from the invisible ones, too. And it would be interesting to know how accurate you think the descriptions are of YOU. Those psychologists or psychiatrists could not possibly have normed this test. I wonder how that would be done?

<http://www.incredimail.com/index.asp?id=99439>

From Norway with Love

2007-01-03T10:04:00.000-05:00

We have had no snow in Muskoka this Christmas. This is very rare. Our first Muskoka Christmas, it was -40 degrees. I can't remember if this was Fahrenheit or Celsius, but at that temperature, the difference is so slight as to be irrelevant. The oil in our car froze. The air stung our cheeks red and snatched at breath turning it instantly to ice on thick scarves and parka hoods. All was deep winter blue by day and star pricked silky black by night.

According to weather experts, in the last forty years in Canada, thirty-eight have been warmer than usual and only two colder. This lends some startling statistical support to the general sense we all have that winters are not what they used to be.

This morning I gasped with delight at these pictures from Norway taken by a friend of a friend, Ruth Elizabeth, a woman of spirit and creativity. They caused me to praise God for Beauty and to be a bit wistful about old Muskoka winters. The titles are mine, the phrase 'The Blue Hour' belongs to Ruth Elizabeth.

The Blue Hour

Skyscape

Moon in the Morning

I feel poetry rising.

Bobbie's Five Things Request

2006-12-21T00:10:00.000-05:00

Bobbie at emergingsideways, http://emergingsideways.blogspot.com/ tagged me to list five things you do not know about me. Get over to her blog and read some really fascinating Bobbie facts which go deep. I'm not sure yet how profound my own revelations will be but I've been contemplating this for the last two hours while sculpting a Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus out of Marzipan for the top of a Happy Birthday to Jesus cake. Whenever I glance over at Mary, sitting on wax paper atop my cookie jar she seems to be more squat. Marzipan is a very malleable medium. You probably didn't know that I was capable of sugar sculpture but this is not my first unknown thing. Here are my five self disclosures:

1. I am extremely impetuous. I tackle many things for which I have no experience whatsoever, such as making Marzipan decorations. I never research beforehand but grab an idea and run with it and learn while doing. I have yet to figure out whether this saves me time or makes the task longer. The famous Walker's Point Quilt Project, which came miraculously to an end with a presentation to the Church at Thanksgiving and to the community as a whole last Saturday, was a case in point. Most of what I knew about quilting before I started could have been written on the back of a postage stamp and still could, but the quilt is beautiful.

2. I have a mood disorder which is called hypomania, a mild form of bi-polar disorder. On the one hand, I believe this disorder may contribute to my creativity, while on the other hand, perhaps my creativity contributes to the disorder. When I am in a true manic phase, all creativity grinds to a halt because I can't concentrate long enough to finish things, have too many projects running at the same time and don't get enough sleep to be rested enough to be creative. Impetuousity and impulsivity are certainly linked to this mood disorder. While I still take anti-depressants to control the debilitating low mood swings, I have been off of lithium for nearly two years. I can control manic episodes by listening to feedback from those closest to me, resting more, and being more intentional about my life. Lately I have missed a number of nights of sleep because of a restless, elevated mood. While this gift of extra time resulted in the completion of the painting in the everlasting kitchen renovation, I am heeding the warning and will get to bed as soon as this post is finished. Ah, but will I sleep? (Surely this disclosure counts as more than five things in and of itself.)

3. I have managed to lose twelve pounds this year by eating salads and decreasing carbs. Now it is winter and that primitive part of my brain craves all those foods which will be my undoing. Perhaps just saying this in this space will encourage me to keep on with diet and exercise. I have felt better with those pounds off and my clothes fitting nicely. I've even felt sexy!!!

4. Some of you will know this, but I share it again anyway because it is a seasonal story and really belongs in Ripley's Believe It or Not. I am one of the few persons still living who has sung 'O Holy Night' in the Toronto Stock Exchange. This happened in the 1970's, a less politically correct time in Canada. It was a tradition that the old TSE would shut down for those few minutes when the woman from The Salvation Army sang that particular favourite carol. It was a respect thing, I think, back then, because, truth to tell, few brokers were christians. I'll write about the many facets of this experience in The Dawsonwood Diaries 'winter' edition...coming in three years time.

5. My website www.dawsonwooddiaries.com is up and running and while it is not news that I wrote a book, somewhat impetuously this year, it will be news that the website is functional. Please, you don't have to buy a book. Just go to the site briefly every day and get your friends to go to the site. Just hit it...because this somehow helps something that I don't understand, which is another example of how I launch into ventures without having a clue what I am doing. For instance, Paypal is working and people have received books through ordering them online...but I have yet to figure out where the money which they sent me has gone...that might involve research. Will I find it on my Visa as a deposit? Does Paypal hold it until I buy something from someone else? Does it lurk forever in cyberspace? Does anybody know the answer to that?

You see how ignorance can co-exist quite comfortably with wisdom...but I'm not proud of that!!!

Thank you Bobbie.

THE DAWSONWOOD DIARIES ARE HERE

2006-11-22T18:11:00.000-05:00

What can I say? Thank you God for your faithfulness. Thank you to all the friends and family who encouraged me to do this. Strange, after delays and set backs and a switch of publishers right at the end of the process, what I feel is relief and an urging to get on with the next book!!!

Who could imagine this miracle would finally come after a lifetime of writing? I don't believe I ever would have done this if it hadn't been for Linwood House Ministries, a mission trip to Bulgaria and a Path Workshop at Linwood House just two years ago. I would never have written this book if it were not for the excitement of blogging and the encouraging comments of blogging friends.

The book is available in person at:

The Gingerbread House and Reader's World, Manitoba Street in Bracebridge for $16.95

By snail mailing me with a cheque enclosed:

Connie Knighton

13 Dawsonwood Drive,

Bracebridge, Ontario

P1L 1G5

Friends and family pricing for books including shipping and tax is:

$20.00 for one book

$34.00 for two books

$15.00 each for three books or more

My website will be up and running in a few days and it will be possible to order books through that www.dawsonwooddiaries.com using Paypal. Bookmark Self Publishing are sponsoring the web page and books will also be available through their online service. Xlibris, Amazon.com and other big names have the book listed on the websites but they do not have books. Don't try to order from them.

Pray that this book will provoke reflection and bring beauty into the lives of readers, because that's where it all started, with a mission statement.

To conceive and give birth to Beauty.

A WORD FROM THE POLITICALLY RESPONSIBLE

2006-11-16T18:10:00.000-05:00

Okay. So there are real people out there who are trying to make a difference. In a real way. Check out what Mike Todd and his friend Robert are doing for HIV/AIDS by supporting the Stephen Lewis Foundation. It's brilliant, and who needs a red ipod anyway? Check out Mike's idea at http://miketodd.typepad.com/waving_or_drowning/

And then there is Joan Chittister, peacemaker and world activist. This week she is writing movingly about her trip to Syria. Theologically profound and morally challenging as ever, Joan says that the Road to Damascus is still a place for conversions.

Here in part is what she has to say. Read it in full at her site below:

"We decided that this time we would go straight to the religious leaders of the country to ask them what kind of a place they thought Syria to be.

First we met with His Beatitude Patriarch Ignatius IV Hazim, Patriarch of Antioch and the Entire East for the Russian Orthodox. He was very kind but very straight forward:

"We don't know the American people. We only hear the President . . . and we have a deep resentment about the image of Syria in the U.S. Syria is not an Islamic country. Syria is a secular state. . . . We are not oppressed as Christians. Look at our cathedral. It is no tent!"

His points were clear and the scene was set: Christianity was not being oppressed in Syria. Christianity was one religion among many there. Just as it is in the United States...

They would show us the modern church, they told us, in one of the oldest Christian populations in the world.

Our first appointment, they told us, would be a trip to "meet with the Iraqis."

The Iraqis? What did that mean? We were, after all, in Syria."

As we wound our way back from the Patriarch's palace, through the narrow back lanes of the city, I realized that Paul of Tarsus had walked in this very area, too. "Not in this area," our translator said. "Paul walked here. Here. On this street. I will show you." And, all of a sudden, we emerged "on the street called "Straight" talked about in Scripture.

The impact of the statement was far more than biblical. Damascus is the longest continuously populated city in human history. More than 7,000 years old, they tell us. We were on the very street that ties the early moments of Christianity with today's struggles..."

Read this brilliant work in full at: http://ncrcafe.org/node/677

PROCRASTINATION

2006-11-14T09:16:00.000-05:00

Deb, over at Constantly Abiding, has written on procrastination. Click on the title of this piece to view some art and her words on the subject.

I’ve given this some thought and this thought turned itself into a post. Of course, by doing this, I am neglecting to finish the story I have to tell in front of 1,500 people on December 2, 2006. But at least I am doing something! And it involves creativity.

Procrastination is the dreaded twin of perfectionism. Perfectionism is the good twin, always clean and prompt, always saying the right thing. Procrastination is the outwardly compliant child, who seethes with inner rebellion. She is the one who desires success and fears failure to the point of immobility.

My father always claimed that life was short. By repeating this endlessly, he hoped to spur my brother and me on to action. This became a family slogan. ‘Life is short.’ ‘Life is short.’ We should have it on a coat of arms. But I never truly believed my father until I myself reached my fifties. There is nothing like the brevity of time to spur a soul to action. Life goals become urgent goals when one can see the horizon of old age.

One thing that always interfered with my beginning a project was the certain knowledge that I would run into obstacles to its smooth completion. Now I have embraced this notion as a friend and give myself some time to resolve these obstacles without adding to the time-line stress of the project. Sometimes I just look at procrastination as planning time...time to figure out how I am going to tackle something.

Strangely, procrastination is related to impatience. I want the job done and I want it done yesterday. Since that is impossible, I don't begin at all. But amazingly, I am learning to calculate the length of time it will take me to complete a project and budget in difficulties and fatigue. I am actually tackling my ridiculous kitchen cabinets in this way...with small roller and tiny brush, a bank of cabinets at a time. It is so much better than trying to cram the whole project into an eight hour push.

Then, if a task is boring, I find music, conversation or an interesting documentary to provide the background intellectual stimulation required for the completion of the job. At my age, time is compressed. I multitask on tedious tasks; quietly clean out a cupboard while talking on the phone, for instance.

I suspect when it comes down to it, I will procrastinate about dying. I will linger on the brink of eternity, gazing over into the Promised Land and tarry, hoping to get one or two more things accomplished before the next life. Which is totally ridiculous!

What does the Lord require of us? Do we procrastinate about those things? Living justly? Loving mercy? Walking humbly? It seems to me that it might be possible to do these things while walking down the street. They aren't something to procrastinate about. They are a way of being in the world which obviates the necessity to accomplish anything at all.

In the end, self acceptance and forgiveness will go a long way to healing the problem of procrastination. I get more done when I am not nagging myself to death. And I think this pleases God who welcomes loving service as opposed to grudging obedience.

KNIGHTON NEWS IN BRIEF

2006-11-07T08:44:00.000-05:00

I have never done this before. Carefully crafted words have appeared on this blog. I have wanted nothing less. But right now there is no time for anything except an update. Here is the Knighton news in brief:

My grandson Robbie underwent successful surgery on the twenty-third of October. He is doing extremely well as measured by the amount of mischief he is getting into on a minute by minute basis. His asthma is well controlled. We are praising God.

I cancelled my book project with Xlibris when I discovered that the book would cost me…drum roll...$60.00 US, per book, on top of other costs to bring it to Canada. Of course, this was not stated up front. I was told there were hundreds of Canadian authors in their stables. Who? Margaret Atwood? Farley Mowat? I can’t think of any author whose work might be worth in the neighbourhood of $75.00 in paperback.

Xlibris did me a favour, although for a couple of days I was reeling. I have never in my life been both as speechless and as articulate in anger at one and the same time. In truth, if I had not been able to go straight to the phone to sign on with Xlibris last March, I might never have written this first, long delayed book.

Bookmark Publishing is doing the book in Canada. The small team there has been attentive, enthusiastic and helpful in the extreme and the book will be ready for December 2, 2006 when I tell a story at Christmas with The Salvation Army at Roy Thompson Hall in Toronto. Yes.

The often delayed book launch will be at The Gingerbread House in Bracebridge on the twenty-fifth of November. Yes, this year.

The website for ordering the book is www.dawsonwooddiaries.com and is being set up and hosted for me by Bookmark. I’ll let you know when it is running…but I suspect this will be within the next two weeks. While Bookmark will have a few copies to supply through its own online services, the first volume of The Dawsonwood Diaries will be lovingly wrapped and shipped out to you by me from Dawsonwood Cottage.

Birthdays have been celebrated by Rachael who says proudly that she is five and she is the oldest grandchild and by my daughter Sarah who is twenty-nine, where I expect her to remain for some time, and by me, aaaagh, and by my mother, who is eighty-eight but blissfully unaware of the fact. My niece Carolyn, also turned twenty-nine and gave birth to her daughter, Hannah Gabrielle, a few days later. Rob’s sister and her husband celebrated their silver wedding anniversary. Barbara is half way through her pregnancy and we are much relieved about that.

My brother Len and his wife Heather have taken on the responsibility for Yorkminster Community Church of The Salvation Army which is visible from the 401 corridor and is a Toronto landmark. For those of you who know the area, it is the A-frame church which appears to be at the corner of 401 and Yonge, but is really on Lord Seaton Drive. Drop by if you are in Toronto at eleven on a Sunday morning. Great blended worship, wonderful multi-racial, multi-cultural congregation with simultaneous translation of the service if you are a Spanish speaker. Yes, not French, Spanish. Yes, in Canada.

God is blessing me with new cupboard doors in The Dawsonwood kitchen, because I didn’t do a good paint job last year and things look shabby. I have never posted pictures of the Dawsonwood kitchen renovation because I HATED WHAT I DID to that poor room. Well, not the colour scheme, the countertops or the built in seat…but the cupboards. Aaagh.

My client base is building. I’m not sure if I am happy or sad about that. But life is full. I always need to measure out my commitments and have a tendency to over schedule myself. I’ve accepted the responsibility of being rehearsal pianist for our local production of Oliver, which Rob is conducting. This will be a stretch for me.

This post sounds like a Christmas letter but it encompasses only a month of events in our family. I’ve added a site meter to my blog and if I want people to linger more than 24 seconds, I’ll have to write MORE INTERESTINGLY, MORE CONSISTENTLY and visit you all at your sites. And post pictures and do more frequent links. I doubt that I am going to get political, but you never know.

Our municipal election is happening by post as I write. Rob got two ballots. Does this mean he gets to vote twice? I think it was safer when we all lumbered ourselves in to the polling station. So far, an astronomical number of ballots have been spoiled because the process is so complicated. And, I would really like to know how many people got more than one ballot in the mail.

SOUL LANGUAGE

2006-10-16T14:59:00.000-04:00

Poetry is of the heart, soul language, a distillation of human feeling.  It is refined thought.   It is often prayer.   Poetry resonates with personal story.  We are moved by the opening line of Psalm 130 because it describes the essence of a human experience:  Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O LORD.  This feeling, we know!
Most of the poetry which I have written for worship services is themed for a special occasion, often a holy day, a commemoration or covenant day.  At its best the work arises from heightened spiritual awareness or life changing experience.  The writing process is reflective of Wordsworth’s ‘emotion recollected in tranquility.’
One of the first such poems, The Passing of Janice Worthy, was written in a night-long storm of grief following the death of a young friend.  I was called to the hospital on my way to the beach.  Dressed in shorts, I felt inadequate to my priestly role.  In a gesture which seems absurd now, I raced home to change into uniform!!  Janice, thoughtful as ever, waited.  What followed was a compassionate release in which she taught me about forgiveness, love and dying well.  I learned about pride and helplessness in the face of ultimate reality and that my deficiencies were irrelevant.
Read at Janice’s funeral, the poem was later set to music by my brother (Major Len Ballantine) and sung in concert.  Surprisingly, a Christian teacher used it for years in his poetry curriculum.  In part, the poem reads:

From the other side
she saw us as we were,
     our shallowness,
            our foolish fears,
                   our pride.
As in life
it made no difference.
Still she gave us love,
forgetting the limits of our own.
So
simply, she taught us much.

A poem from the other end of human experience was written for the dedication of a grandchild.  It springs from a lifetime of watching parents struggle to do their best in a world which compromises their efforts.  This poem is about the discipline of relinquishment and trust in the benevolence of God.  It speaks of our inability to control outcomes.  We surrender our children because we never owned them in the first place.  Their destiny is to become individuals, personally accountable before the One who loves them supremely.  The poem ends:

But when we give our little children to God
we pray that the Divine,
implanted deep,
will draw them back.
Love Alone
despite the dusty years
recalls the golden limbed child,
his zeal of heart,
her innate godliness.
Wholeness returns
when we give our children up to God.


     For me, poetry provides a bridge into the mystery of the work of Holy Spirit.  It issues from the dialogue of prayer and a life journey with Jesus.  It is healing.  Offered in worship, poetry connects us to each other and to Abba, the parent of our hope.

How Do We Forgive

2006-10-06T10:29:00.002-04:00

Recently I was asked to sign a world wide petition against the early release of Jon Venables and Robert Thompson who tortured and killed a tiny boy who had wandered away from his mother in a shopping mall in Liverpool, England.

I quote from the email:

They took Jamie for a walk for over two and a half miles, along the way, stopping every now and again to torture the poor little boy who was crying constantly for his Mommy. Finally they stopped at a railway track where they brutally kicked him, threw stones at him,rubbed paint in his eyes and pushed batteries up his anus. It was actually worse than this. What those two boys did was so horrendous that Jamie's mother was forbidden to identify his body. They then left his beaten small body on the tracks so a train could run him over to hide the mess they had created. These two boys, even being boys, understood what they did was wrong, hence trying to make it look like an accident.

This week, Lady Justice Butler-Sloss has awarded the two boys anonymity for the rest of their lives when they leave custody with new identities. We cannot let this happen. They will also leave early this year only serving just over half of their sentence. One paper even stated that Robert may go on to University. They are getting away with their crime. They disgustingly and violently took Jamie's life away. In return they each get a new life.

This is horrendous. I decry it. And yet I cannot sign the petition. This was my response, for what it is worth.

Dear Friends,

I cannot forward this on. It has taken me some days to address my feelings about this and I feel strongly enough to invite you all to hear my thinking.

I remember the case well and the actions of these boys was egregious and yes, in many ways they 'knew' what they were doing. However, laws governing crimes committed by children are different from laws governing crimes committed by adults. Children cannot be said to be fully aware of the consequences of their actions. For instance, children have been known to jump out of apartment building windows with the mistaken notion that they might fly like superman or that they will resurrect themselves at the bottom like the eternally living Road Runner. In short, high functioning reasoning including the ability to foresee the consequences of actions develops very late in children...continuing into late adolescence up to the age of twenty-five or so. This speaks to ongoing neurological development which is necessary for logical reasoning and decision making.

While empathy and compassion develop early in some children and I think that both of my older grandchildren are good examples of this, some children are slow to identify with the suffering of others and there is much in our culture to support this. If these boys have participated in endless violent computer games and have watched inappropriately violent material on TV, they will have seen modeled a callous attitude to the suffering of others...I mean, who grieves for a death in a computer game? This means that not only the boys, but also their parents are culpable and by extension...ALL OF US who support violent films and video games in the name of artistic licence and individual freedom are guilty. It can be argued that an adult watching such material can exercise some detachment and has the ability to enter into entertainment with what has traditionally been known as "willing suspension of disbelief"...in other words we know that we are watching fiction and sometimes even ponder "I wonder how they did that?" while watching buildings blow up and cars fly off the ends of broken bridges and so on. Such distinctions are not so immediately apparent to children.

And having said that, I personally know of an abusive ADULT who dons camoflage gear and a helmet while playing violent video games. In him the distinction between reality and fiction is fairly well blurred. He is into control and he has this reinforced by his 'hobby.' If and when he enters completely into his fantasy world, none of us should be surprised.

We might take note of what has happened to those innocent Amish girls and the amazing example of peace and forgiveness which the Amish community is extending to the widow of a seriously deranged man who killed and maimed those little girls. This is a model which the whole world would benefit from. Just imagine if such forgiveness were extended in Israel and Palestine and Lebanon, in Iraq and let alone in The United States itself. The Amish may be backward in the eyes of mainstream society but their Christian attitude is precisely what Christ wants for us all. They are salt and light in the world and this is a moment in history in which their gentle behaviour could teach us all.

Yes, I believe the boys might well have served out their full sentences but we have not been made privy to the therapy which they have undergone, and it is safe to assume that they have not been deemed a threat to society...that is, they do not shown nacient signs of Psychopathology at this time.

This is my lengthy reasoned response. Would I feel the same if one of my grandchildren had been the victim? I don't know. But I am working hard to think and feel at the same time and this capacity is what separates us from the preying animals, both beasts and humans.

Finally, when we are forgiven by God, we all get new pasts. This, on Canadian Thanksgiving Weekend, is something to celebrate indeed. And should any of us find ourselves in Church to celebrate Thanksgiving this weekend, let us fully pray, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." It is a difficult line.

Pray for the two boys who have committed this atrocious act and pray for the family of the little boy who was so brutally killed. Pray that some good may come out of such extended misery. This is truly casting your vote where it counts.

Oh God,
Give us hearts of compassion where we seek an understandable revenge.
Open our minds to your wider justice.
Help us not to fear those who would kill our bodies but those who would maim and ruin our souls.
Amen

Connie Knighton B.A., M.T.S., M.F.T.

I'M BACK

2006-09-18T09:18:00.000-04:00

Hello, Dear Friends,

I've missed you all. I've missed tracing your journeys and the special gift of your wisdom. Blogging has been integral to my growth in God over the past two years and I gave it up only to embrace a greater good, which was to write the first of four books of spiritual reflection. I expect my last galleys to arrive by this Wednesday and hope to have the book in print by a projected book launch on Saturday, October 28, 2006.

Writing 'The Dawsonwood Diaries' has seriously disrupted routines at Dawsonwood Cottage. I found that I wrote best first thing in the morning and in the later evening and on into the night. It was not unusual for me to be nattering away at the computer until three o'clock in the morning. Is this late or really early???

On the whole, I am pleased with the result, although I was dismayed to find that I had edited about six chapters in hard copy and then 'forgot' to make the necessary alterations to my disk. This necessitated more corrections of galleys than I had hoped. And typos did slip in no matter how well Rob and I edited. All of this slowed down the process.

I had the most encouraging letter of rejection from Knopf, a division of Random House, with recommendations that I go to Word, Castle Quay or Zondervan. Even though the diary is marginally fictionalized, it really is autobiographical in nature and therefore not within their specific mandate. I wanted the book to be out in time for speaking engagements this fall and therefore chose to self publish through Xlibris, also a division of Random House. If this book draws any interest at all, I will find a way to publish the next book through a Christian publisher.

Yes, the book is about Christian spirituality and personal growth. This surprised me somewhat in the end, not that I would deny Christ, but I really thought that there would be more of a family therapy emphasis in my stories about my family. Not so. In the end, I am really writing about the context of my awareness of God and the fact that this came to me through family. It is about how God uses the imperfection of my creatureliness. It is about doubts as well as certainties. It is about the foundations of my attachment to God. It is about the heart of God for the strange and seemingly invisible people who have taught me much over a lifetime.

The book is serendipitous but I discovered that certain life themes came through in the end. I suppose that with diary entries being reflections somewhat losely connected, it would make good bathroom reading.

I am still debriefing this experience for myself, so please forgive me if my next few posts explore this a little more. I'll be visiting your blogs today to see what you are doing. There will be a bit of back reading to catch up on and I don't expect to read all the way backward to April, but I do want to catch up on my friends' thoughts, struggles and triumphs.

With affection,
Blessings,
Connie

UPDATE

2006-04-23T23:17:00.000-04:00

UPDATE

Dear Friends,

Some of you have written to ask where I am and how I am doing.  Well, I’m right here, ‘not’ writing away.  The book I am ‘not’ writing is being published in time for October distribution.  It will be available online and from other sources.   I have always been a stubborn soul, somewhat oppositional.  Just tell me I can’t do something and I will.  When I told myself I wasn’t writing a book, it started writing itself.

I have an engagement to do a Christmas monologue for a concert in a major Toronto venue at Christmas time.  I want my book available in the foyer.  This is my last big chance…and since I have blown any number of opportunities in the past, and since I am not likely to pass this way again…I’m going for it.  Whatever energies I have are being invested in this project.

I am sorry to have missed out on so much which you have written over the last month or so…and I have to keep missing out until this work is done.  I think of you often and keep your faces and selves in my prayers.  Blogging has been a major impetus for me to get back to what I have always wanted to do.

Now, I am going to tell myself that I will not lose weight before the Christmas concert, nor will I lose weight in order to look thin in my book picture.  I absolutely am resolved not to diet and exercise for any reason whatsoever, especially for reasons of pride.

I’ll connect again in early June.  Looking forward to reading backwards through your blogs….which is a little like I am writing this book…all chapters at once…back and forth, upside down and sideways.

Love,
Connie

My Friend Rich

2006-03-16T10:21:00.000-05:00

Those of you who have been reading my posts for a while may remember a series of posts on enacted prayer. My friend Rich Swingle who introduced me to the notion of enacted prayer is starring in this off broadway production and those of you who live in or around New York just might be interested. Click on title above for more information about Rich. Read on for his press release:

What do a 20th Century Olympic “Gold Medalist” and the 18th Century “Golden Boy” of Methodism have in common? They are both the subjects of off-Broadway, one-man plays appearing at Theatre 315 (315 West 47th Street between 8th and 9th Avenues in New York City) from April 17 through April 23.

Critically acclaimed actor Rich Swingle’s new play, “Beyond the Chariots,” takes up where the Oscar-winning (Best Picture, 1981) movie, Chariots of Fire, leaves off. In dramatic style, he chronicles the incredible adventures of 1924 Olympic Gold medal runner Eric Liddell in war-torn China. Swingle recently performed the play in Hong Kong, where Dr. James Hudson Taylor, III, saw it. As a boy Taylor was with Liddell in the Japanese concentration camp featured in the play. Taylor called the performance, "authentic, moving, thought provoking!"

On alternate performances, you can enjoy the wit and wisdom of pioneer John Wesley as he rides on horseback 250,000 miles across the 18th Century British Isles. In “The Man from Aldersgate,” award-winning actor Roger Nelson recreates the life of the founder of the Methodist Church—as only Nelson can in 1,300 performances, in 32 countries, and all 50 States!

And to make sure these glittering performances really do shine, Broadway lighting designer David Lander (Dirty Blonde and Golden Child) will be working his magic.

Beyond the Chariots will appear on April 18 at 7:00 pm, April 19 at 8:00 pm, April 21 at 8:00 pm, April 22 at 2:00 pm, and April 23 at 7:00 pm.

The Man from Aldersgate will appear on April 17 at 8:00 pm, April 19 at 2:00 pm, April 20 at 8:00 pm, April 21 at 2:00 pm, and April 22 at 8:00 pm.

For more information on these productions or to order advance tickets, visit www.FireOffBroadway.com. Order by March 17 and save 20%. Seniors and students save 25%. Group discounts are available also.

The Miracle of the Hearing Aid

2006-03-08T17:18:00.000-05:00

My mother wears hearing aids to assist her with a profound hearing loss which was caused by a case of adult mumps.  I don’t know whether she had the mumps when my brother and I had them, or how she, second to last child of ten, could have escaped them at an earlier time of her life.  I do know that my brother’s nickname for her was ‘Mumpy,’ an affectionate term which may have had nothing whatever to do with her having had the mumps.   I do know that her case of mumps was so severe that she was swollen from head to chest.  On her diminutive and elegant frame, the mumps must have been a horrific sight.

The hearing aids, which she has worn almost as long as she has worn glasses for reading,   have been a source of blessing and irritation to her from the beginning.  Fortunately the age of miniaturization was well advanced and she was spared the indignity of trailing wires and large battery packets.  The aids have always tucked conveniently into her ears, well hidden by beautifully dressed hair.  The necessity of changing the aids from time to time as technology improved has been a trial.  I suppose that one gets used to an aid, the feel of it, the size and weight of it.  Over time any given aid must become just a body part, without which one feels vaguely incomplete.  Adjusting to tinier and tinier and more and more efficient aids has been, in recent years, quite confusing and complicated.

This is why I am trying to see that her present aids work for the rest of her life.  She really couldn’t adjust to new ones.  I take the aids in for servicing by turn.  They were manufactured by a wonderful firm which will keep rebuilding them and providing warranty on new parts as long as they are needed.

The hearing aids are seldom in my mother’s ears.  They migrate from pill cup to paper  tissue.  They rattle about with her fine watch in a drawer.  I panicked to find one under the bed.  It had been stepped on and needed a major repair.  “Cheap at half the cost,” as my father would have said somewhat enigmatically.  I was so grateful to have been able to have it repaired.

Recently I needed to take an aid in for cleaning.  My mother announced:  “I DON’T THINK I REALLY NEED HEARING AIDS ANY MORE.  I CAN HEAR JUST AS WELL WITH THEM AS WITHOUT THEM.”

This was reminiscent of the time, almost five years earlier, when she had declared that she didn’t think she really needed her glasses.  “I see just as well with them as without them.”  Quite possibly she does.  From time to time she discovers the glasses in her bedside table and wonders who they belong to.

“They are yours, mom,” I say.   She tries them on wonderingly and offers, “I should try to wear these more often.”  She doesn’t wear them.

So it was with considerable concern that I heard her shouted declaration.  Her aids are a last post of communication.  Conversations are repetitive, confusing and difficult as it is.  Without the hearing aids, we would be lost.  I took the offending aid away.

This morning Rob and I took it back.  It was a very good day.  My mother received the aid like a long lost friend, and tucked it instinctively into the appropriate ear.  I retrieved her other aid from the drawer and she fitted it in place.  “I’ll be glad to get my other aid back,” she said.  That statement gave us pause.  “Mother, it’s in your left ear right now!”  I could hear a rumble of hilarity issuing from Rob.   I laughed, unable to prevent myself.

And here is the miracle, a moment of sharing the divine absurd.  My mother felt the truth of my words in the instant and joined me in laughing.  We roared on.  She giggled, touching her ear and her mouth and throwing back her head.  Tears of laughter rolled happily out of the corners of her eyes.  “Imagine that.  Imagine that,” she gasped.  We laughed on, stretching out the moment.

Alzheimer’s dementia can be a sad disease.  A lengthy dying.   It is almost as confusing and difficult for family members as it is for the one whose self is disappearing by degrees. This morning we crossed an undeclared boundary.  It was permissible to laugh at the unthinkable.  It was permissible to look mortality and frailty in the face and howl with humour.

“This will make a good memory,” my mother said, and that set us off again.  I could see she didn’t quite get this one, but it didn’t matter.  She chuckled anyway.  For a few minutes we shared emotion, were companionable and whole.  That is today’s miracle and it is more than enough.

Attachment to God

2006-03-04T14:17:00.000-05:00

You know that book I am not going to write? All rights reserved. And if this sounds like an impossibly boring start, please let me know. Please. It is a spiritual autobiography, with poems, stories, insights and so on.

My memories go back before I was two years old, and I do not remember a time when I did not know the word ‘God.’ I believe I learned this name simply as I learned the words Mama and Dada, while my mother prayed.

Prayer was a constant part of our daily life as a family. We prayed at meals, before setting out on the daily round, at dinner-time devotions and before bed. Prayer was the rhythm of our lives. Perhaps this is why I, to the chapel born, am nonetheless attracted to liturgy and the prayers of the daily office. The rhythm of prayer.

I was the much desired first child of parents who had been childless for a biblical seven years. Before my conception, I was prayed for. My mother’s pain and yearning was evident in pictures taken with her multitude of nieces and nephews. Coming from a large family, she was the only one of ten to struggle with infertility. Thirty years later, I would pray the same prayers and feel the same shame, undiminished since the days of Hannah. It is no different now. While couples may decide to remain childless and take steps to insure this, those who are not childless by choice feel that they have been denied a blessing, the fulfillment of a very human expectation and an inescapable biological urge.

My mother had many false intimations of pregnancy during those seven years. Yet, in the January before my birth, she was given an assurance from God. Before she had missed a period, she knew that she was pregnant. She felt this with unswerving conviction, but my father, Zechariah-like, disbelieved. He was not rendered speechless, but believed only when the pregnancy had progressed beyond all doubt. Unlike my mother who had a simple and unquestioning faith, my father's lifelong position was: “I’ll believe it when I see it."

At birth, I was considered to be a child of blessing. In the line of Isaac, Joseph, Samuel and John the Baptist, I was set apart for God. In the second half of the twentieth century, the fact that this particular child of blessing was a girl was tolerated. I wonder, now, about those female children of blessing whose names were excluded from scripture by patriarchy. This was not a thought which troubled many minds at that time.

Quite early I intuited that to be an answer to anyone’s prayers exacted a weight of goodness, and one which I might not always be willing to pay. One of my mother’s sisters took one look at me and pronounced, “She’s too good to live.”

Beware what you intone over the cradles of infants. They may be listening.

What could my aunt have meant? And why would she have uttered these words? Mystery. My life has been a struggle to achieve some rapprochement between being good and actually living . A major breakthrough has come in later life as I have accepted that being good doesn't demand perfection so much as authenticity. This, I have discovered, is living.

From the beginning, the burden of sanctity was heavy. No one intended this. Least of all my parents. This legacy was a simple consequence of the context of my birth. When parents take scripture more or less literally, children also believe. The words of scripture were sonorous: "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you." That was it. The primary, elemental attachment to God. It was inescapable.

When, in due course, I was dedicated in the manner of our denomination this primary connectedness was further strengthened. These were the words spoken over me:

In the dedication of this child you now declare your willingness for the Lord to take possession of her, and you wish that she shall always and only do His will. You must be willing that she should spend all her life for God, wherever He may choose to send her, and not withhold her at any time from such hardship, suffering, want or sacrifice as true devotion to the service of Christ and The Salvation Army may entail.

You must, as far as you can, keep from her all intoxicating drink, tobacco, finery, wealth, hurtful reading, worldly acquaintance, and every influence likely to injure her either in soul or body; you must let her see in you an example of what a faithful Salvation Army Soldier should be, giving all the time, strength, ability and
money possible to help on the Salvation War.
(Salvation Army Ceremonies, 1947, p. 15)

Be careful what you speak over a sleeping child.

So, I was a desired child, loved, cosseted by parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts and older cousins. Beloved. But being a child of blessing did have this dark side. In my family, at least, being a child of blessing meant being a child of self denial. Suffering. Want. Sacrifice.

I slept through the dedication service oblivious. My huge extended family witnessed my parents' declaration. They rejoiced that my mother's prayer had been answered. Throughout childhood, I, too, would watch other parents willingly pledge their children to a Christian life defined more by hardship than grace. There was, for me, a tough stoicism about this take on the godly life. The words were not so much in theological error as seriously devoid of joy. Vaguely romantic dreams of dying for the cause of Christ filled my head. Was this how one pleased God? And I was deeply aware that, should God call, my parents would deem it a high honour to see me in God’s service. Was entering ministry the best way to please my parents?

How complicated things are when we are young. How inscrutable the ways of God at any time, at any age. That I would eventually come to experience God on my own terms was nearly, though not quite, inevitable. If we can rebel against attachments within the family, then certainly we can reject our Divine attachment. Free will is a given.

This is the context into which I was born. In these circumstances, it is not surprising that I had a highly developed sense of right and wrong and a tender conscience. Nor is it surprising that I would have a personal encounter with God at a very young age. My mother recorded in her diary for October 5, 1953, "Connie gave her heart to the Lord." I was six years and one day old. But I knew, even as she wrote, that what I had experienced could not be encompassed by these traditional words. These were her words, her understanding, her interpretation of my experience.

What I experienced was other. Bright Light of Knowing. Radiant Comfort. Divine Presence. Eternal Truth. Transcendent Compassion. Oneness. From the other side of my life, it seems not so much that I gave my heart to the Lord, but that the Lord gave his heart to me. From this awareness, neither my failures and doubts, nor the cynicism of a liberal arts education have ever been able to shake me.

Thank You, Jesus

2006-02-27T00:36:00.000-05:00

Bobbie, Georgia, Erin, Daisymarie, Barbara, Deb and Jennifer and silent others

You have been Christ to me,
anointed my head,
been daughters of consolation.

Clouds lifted with your prayers.

I felt you,
there in the room,
coaching me
to be fearless,
relax into story.

Did you know I would laugh a lot?

The women stayed with me,
even though I had material for three talks.
A series.
A women's retreat seminar.
Didn't cover half of it.

Jesus showed up.
And I was glad.

C.K.

This is how I started, just so you'll know how it went:

Legacy of Love:
Lessons in Laughter, Longing and Letting Go

I had a car accident this week. Again. I’ve had four or more such accidents (not all in recent memory). All in horrific weather. All when I was distracted by too many demands. No one gets hurt in these accidents, mercifully. But I’m thinking about giving up my licence. It is just too much. This week’s incident plunged me into a little spiral of depression...that is a genetic legacy in my family. I’ve worked hard to fight against my genes. I take my medicine. I’ve been in therapy...all creditable therapists have been in therapy. But when something negative happens, the pull to sink down under adversity is strong. That is my genetic make-up.

Fortunately, I have an emotional and spiritual legacy from my family of origin. The legacy of laughter. My grandmother was a great laugher. And my father. And eventually, perhaps even as I talk to you tonight, I will see something funny in what happened this week.

Indeed, there was...something funny. When I got out of my car, the woman who hit me apologized. We fell into one another’s arms for mutual support and I kissed her, twice, saying everything was fine. This, dear friends, is part of the legacy of gender. Men would never do this!!!

And so on.

The Show Is On

2006-02-23T22:59:00.000-05:00

Do you painters out there ever get the desire just to scribble...or to splodge gobs of paints and mess it about with your hands? Kind of a release, isn't it? A sort of silent howl. Every once in a while, I just have to do this.

I don't know why I decided to publish this rant on Canadian politics. Politics are not what I am about here. Sometimes, I just can't stand to edit a word. Maybe that's it. Even though I know that editing is half of the job of writing...more than half, if truth be told. I'm leaving this rant up for a while because the cbc decided to print a letter by someone who felt that increased military spending would make a safer Canada. And I worked so hard to get all these metaphors just right!!! He he.

Okay, Canada has a new government. How long ago did Thatcher star at Downing Street? Well, Canadians, in their wisdom have decided to stage their own version of "Conservatives on Parade," even though we have seen the play in more than one country, and know it to be overpriced, and less than entertaining.

They say the production will cost $5.3 billion. (Link to cbc online, click title)
Why $5.3 billion?
Why not $7.3?
Or $10.3?
Why $.3 added to a sum greater than imagination?

This number is a rabbit in a hat, dragged forth by the ears to give the illusion of precision. Of course, military expansion of the magnitude proposed by our new government will cost in excess of $5.3 billion dollars.

But the money is nothing.

Does a weary Canadian audience know this? We should. We have been told. There is an elephant waiting in the wings which will push the cost of this show overbudget. Can we afford this?

I project that closer military ties to a Republican America will cost us, minimally:

our role as trusted peacekeepers
our individual voice in the G7 and the United Nations
our remaining neutral air space
our right to form opinions and shape military policy which differs from those of our neighbours to the south
the lives of more Canadian soldiers

In my view, the price of this ticket is too high

I had another accident

2006-02-23T00:24:00.000-05:00

In her post of January 18, 2006 Deb http://abiding.typepad.com/ reflected on alcohol and the fact that for some it is an enemy which is "cunning, baffling and powerful." I started a post about depression and how, for me, it is "cunning, baffling and powerful". (There is a strong connection to alcoholism, of course, since many alcoholics are primarily depressed and use alcohol mistakenly to silence the dragon within.) Mood disorder. Sneak thief of blessing. I never finished the post.

I haven't written much about depression here. Not because I am ashamed that I suffer from this particular blight, but because I use my blog to help me focus positive spiritual energy. I summon my effort of will, to reflect and pray, to ask for prayer, to tell stories. But lately, despite the birth of wonderful baby Megan, despite manifest answers to prayer for baby Robbie, despite my daughter Barbara's finally finishing her course and landing a job, I have felt the pull of the old enemy. The familiar vortex of despair.

Now my Aunt Jean, who reads this from time to time, doesn't like me to be negative. She is my surrogate introjected superego (a new category of psychobabble), now that my mother has passed quietly beyond her noted ability to quote scripture to me. "The rain falls on the just and the unjust." "Rejoice and be exceeding glad for great is your reward in heaven." Aunt Jean doesn't quote scripture and she once, in a fit of hyperbole, told me that I wrote like Henri Nouwen. That should be enough to kick depression square in the butt and set me up for years of productivity. You can see why I might like to keep on the good side of Aunt Jean.

But I have to confess to an emotional slump which was not made better by the fact that this week I HAD ANOTHER CAR ACCIDENT. Once more bad weather played a huge part in it. As a matter of fact...I have had at least four car accidents in bad weather. Extreme weather. Half way to the north pole weather. Heavy snow. Icy conditions. Freezing rain. Snow covered roads. My mother would say I should rejoice and be exceeding glad that no one was hurt seriously in any of these collisions. However, one accident sent me to hospital with severe depression. And I am wondering if depression plays a role in the accidents before hand. I am wondering if I should give up my license. I may not be able to afford my insurance premiums. And, I am clearly unsafe when I am distracted and the weather is bad. Blowing snow is hypnotic to me. Am I driving in a trance or what???

To tell the truth I am hopping mad at myself. And angry at the slings and arrows of outrageous forture. Over which none of us has any control at all. And the kicker is. I have to talk to a group of women this weekend. I don't know if I can keep Eeyore out of my voice. I don't know if I can stand and deliver.

So this is to ask for prayer. To overcome this bleakness of soul. To find peace. To discern a direction for the future with respect to driving. (Lessons? Only drive in fine weather? Never drive when distracted? Walk everywhere?)

Some Things Are Worth Waiting For

2006-02-12T21:59:00.000-05:00

The much anticipated birth of Megan Alexandra was accomplished with much grace on Monday, February 6, 2006. Some are calling her, Megan the Beautiful. Others, Megan, the Magnificent. She has long legs, fingers and toes like her mother and is beautifully behaved...cooing, snuggling and nursing on cue between long bouts of dream filled sleep.

We don't know if she came early or late, because 'due' dates were conflicting. The waiting seemed like an eternity to those who marked the weeks before her birth. We always, wonder, don't we, if a child will be born complete, well developed. Whole. Even in these miracle days of ultrasound, it is never a given that all will be well. And when we have experience of infant death, infertility, miscarriage, and birth anomalies (and who amongst us is untouched by these things?)...we worry and wonder.

At 8 lbs. 1 oz. and 23 & 1/2 inches long, she was surely 'full term,' and healthy. Of my four grandchildren, she was the only one to come out screaming her rage at being in a cold, bright world. She had just a bit of her second cousin Kathryn's fierceness at birth, that echo of Great Grandpa 'B' which foretells strong character and creativity. However, for now, we won't lay any expectations on her.

I found Megan's birth to be miraculous!!! If a woman can be absolutely beautiful in labour and delivery, then my daughter Sarah was beautiful. In the zone. Focused. Radiant. Tired but fulfilled. Megan's father and Nana were superfluous to the event, although Megan will no doubt be told the story of how we were there. Overawed bystanders.

So dear readers, my fourth grandchild is here. Four in four years!!! They are all individuals and we look forward to seeing them grow in grace, learning tolerance and tenderness, compassion and courage, faith and forgiveness. So be it Lord.

Four Things

2006-01-31T10:21:00.000-05:00

Okay, so what goes around, comes around. The one blogger I am tagging to complete the four things exercise in her blog is Barbara Harris at http://everywhichwayofbarbara.blogspot.com/ William tagged me, so here are my lists:

Four jobs I've had:

teacher
pastor
family therapist
hash slinger (my very first job in a greasy spoon called Ashton's where the local guys from the car wash came over to ogle and my boss, who weighed 500 lbs. bellowed orders from his private booth and liked his dozen eggs sunny side up and his pound of bacon crispy)

Four movies I can watch over & over:

Amadeus (Solieri is my alterego, and I find a judicious review of this movie from time to time brings me to my knees)
The Secret of Ned Divine (There is nothing like a straight English comedy, set in a charming place, with a cast of character actors who are aging energetically and without benefit of cosmetic surgery.)
Simon Birch (because it was filmed in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia and is funny, compassionate and transformational all at once. And because the wonderful Anglican church featured in it was torched by teens a few years ago, and I can see the original in this movie.)
Dead Man Walking because it is so complicated theologically and so brilliantly acted. I wonder if actors are touched spiritually by the material they work with?

Four Places I've Lived: (only four?)

Fond des Negres, Haiti
Springhill, Nova Scotia
London, Ontario
Winnipeg, Manitoba

Four TV shows I love: (I added House and Monk because good television can be produced in the United States. If you haven't seen This is Wonderland, with its wonderful Canadian cast, script and setting, do it now.)

Masterpiece Theatre
Mystery
How Not To Decorate
This is Wonderland (plus House and Monk)

Four places I've vacationed:

London (U.K.)
Iqaluit (Inuvik, Canada)
San Diego
Outer Banks, East Coast USA

Four of my favourite dishes:

Baked Brie with cranberry sauce or peach chutney
Spinach Salad with pears and candied walnuts
Salmon lightly poached with lemon dill sauce or Halibut with pureed mango
Foamy Lemon Pudding (the best, the lightest dessert to follow fish)

Four sites I visit daily:

Northumbrian Community
CBC news online where I have been privileged to have once written the "letter of the day" and where I am constantly tempted to reproduce my minute of fame.
Henri Nouwen
sorry, only three

Four places I'd rather be right now:

Home, even though waiting for the birth of a new grandchild in Brampton is exciting
The Hebrides (yes, in winter)
Any Greek Island
St. Augustine (for another little jolt of American history)

Okay, so I lied

2006-01-27T00:58:00.000-05:00

So I lied. I don't really want to write a book. If I did want to write a book, I would already have written it. I would have:

found an agent
selected a subject
chosen a title (from the hundreds of great book titles I've concocted over the years)
submitted a proposal
or answered Xlibris affirmatively
paid my money to self publish
paid my dues (Have I not done this yet?)
turned my back on seemingly more important things (as Frederick Bueckner does)
edited my last post more carefully

The ether is full of dreaming these days, and much consideration of what we truly want out of life. Here, in part, is what Cindy said on Tuesday, January 24, 2006: (click on Quotidian Light in my links to connect with Cindy's post.)

Thinking Out Loud: On Knowing What One Wants

This week I received a rejection letter for my last submission. There was once a time when I would have been devastated. I hardly even blinked when I opened this one. It's not that I've become immune to disappointment through Rejection Letter Repetition so much as that I've made a discovery in the past year--publication doesn't seem to be what matters so much anymore...I thought I knew what I wanted.... And to some degree I evidently succeeded. Why, then, the definite diminishment of desire instead of an increased wish to continue?

We yearn for something, set ourselves to accomplishing or acquiring it, and then stand befuddled, holding it in our hands, staring at it as if to ask, "How did I get here, and why did I think I wanted this?"...

So I've got to give this more thought. I, like Cindy, am perplexed about what I really want. And what does it mean, anyway, Psalm 37:4: "Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart?" Since I am a little foggy about the desires of my heart, perhaps it is time for a clear call to "Delight in the Lord." Now how do I do this?

Dream

2006-01-24T07:42:00.000-05:00

There has been a veritable barrage of TV programs on dreaming. Tempting topic. Irritating too. It seems no two specialists agree about dreams. One says dreams mean nothing at all. Another says they relate to unfinished business in our lives. Others claim that repetitive nightmares arise from unresolved stress, or sudden acute stress in our lives. Still another expert connects mental illness and dreaming by mapping psychotic brains, and matching them to the brains of individuals in REM sleep. Even Dr. Phil was on the topic today, dealing with three nightmare plagued individuals who suffered from night terrors, sleepwalking and sleepfighting, and, would you believe it, sleepeating.

I enjoy working with dreams. I am the family dream consultant. Got started as a kid. Hooked on all those dream stories in the Bible. Intriqued by how God revealed plans and purposes through dreams. The Bible is a veritable pasture for dream grazing. It's my major inspiration for dream interpretation. I don't use dream books, which clearly conflict with one another. I have my own theories, supported by experience and some specific psychological knowledge, to say nothing of my work in the field of altered states as pioneered by Stanislav Grof. Don't rush to your local Bible bookstore for Professor Grof, gentle readers. Enough said.

I don't know whether it is reassuring or disappointing to discover specialists who make their bread and butter from ideas which I stumbled upon, quite independently, exploring and manipulating my own dream life. We've arrived at similar conclusions from different angles, of course. They were doctors experimenting and I was just me, reflecting on my own dreams.

Which is why, at first, I couldn't relate to the current Globalgirl topic: "Dream". (Click on title above for link.) Dream. As in: imagine, envision, wish, aspire. Another take on the word altogether. I've always dreamed, grandiosely, that I might pioneer something, have an idea first, market it and make enough to endow a few charities and live comfortably for the rest of my life. I dared to dream at a Path Workshop in November, 2004. While some of my dreaming turned into plans which have been acted upon, other dreams lie unfulfilled. To be expected, you say. Yes, well my lofty expectations have frequently gotten in the way of fulfilling my dreams. And additionally, there are times I feel, that at my age, I should stop dreaming and settle.

So it is with some trepidation that I dare to dream here, once more, in the public space of my own blog. Which is written under my REAL name. And believe me, this is one post which I wish could be anonymous. Because if I write a dream, then I am held accountable. To God. To you. And anyone else who reads this. I am accountable for working towards these dreams. Sort of like New Year's Resolutions. Or prayer. Mmmm.

Here is my partial response to Idelette McVicker's "Dream" quiz from the January Globalgirl Ezine.

1. Three places I'd love to go: Bangladesh to visit my friend Elizabeth; St. Petersburg to fulfill the longing inspired by an undergrad Russian history course; and Home (The British Isles) with my husband to explore the lands of our forebears.

2. Three things I'd love to do: a pottery course; dance without shame in public; swim well enough to enjoy swimming as exercise.

3. Three things I'd love to accomplish: finish the endless Quilt Project; really, this is silly...my three things are One. Write a book. Write a book. Write a book. So?

4. Three skills I'd like to acquire: a fearless mind; a more tranquil spirit, and the ability to access most of the capabilities of my computer and cell phone. Could these three be related?

5. Ten things I'd really love to have: (Materially? I've got so much. But I'll make a stab at this.)

no debt
access to a car with a spotless interior
clothes which washed themselves (too fanciful?)
a big pile of river rock, another of well composted manure and topsoil, and a third of mulch for the garden in the spring
no visible TV in the living room
a fuzz free face
all that new baseboard moulding in the garage, painted, caulked and installed magically by elves or some helpful relative or friend
a small, soft sided hot tub for my aging bones and Rob's wonky back (now that IS material) Where could I put it?
clean ducts (furnace not tear) and less dust
fewer books or more shelves

Now, it is quite obvious that most of these things are easily attainable, given my lifestyle and means. If I washed clothes less often, it would be almost as if they washed themselves. I can plan the debt elimination, order the garden stuff, keep cleaning the car myself. It is mostly do-able. But if any of you have ideas for a fuzz free face that does not include ten years of electrolylsis, I'd be happy to hear from you.

Thank you Idelette for the dream questions.

Journey of the Heart

2006-01-14T03:21:00.000-05:00

Some decisions we make on a whim. Some out of necessity. If we hadn't booked our tickets five months earlier, we would never have gone. Plenty of excuses to stay home. But this journey was both a whim and a necessity. Time away from work and crisis. Time for us. Time for relationship. Time for sharing the things we enjoy together. Moments of the Spirit. History. Discovery. Nature. The creative unknown.

Why San Diego? Heard it was a wonderful city. A hop from Vancouver. Best climate in North America. Great zoo. Not too big. Spanish-full. Close to Mexico.

It was...although not a hop from Vancouver...all the other things and more. Just the kind of place to relax and be together and count our blessings and laugh that we are getting old. Laugh at ourselves. Laugh, full stop.

Thank you, all of you who prayed for me over Christmas, and for my grandson Robbie during his recent surgery. We recover. God is Love. And Grace. And Goodness.

We are richer than we know.

The Nearly Final Christmas: Recipe for Lowering Stress in the Nick of Time

2005-12-27T00:44:00.000-05:00

Okay, so mostly it is my own fault. The kitchen reno had gone on forever, (yes, yes, pictures are coming soon,) and I was determined to have some order in that holy of holies for Christmas dinner. I had been shopping for so long that some people had several gifts too many. Twenty-six individually wrapped parcels, with seven more for the personal care workers who help my mother bathe and dress, had been delivered to the Villa. Two candlelight services were in the offing. I had joined Rob on "kettle" duty as a charitable act towards him and for old times' sake. Various bouts of sickness continued to plague family members. Robbie's christening took place, after having been scheduled and cancelled twice before. And I was losing it. Crying on odd shoulders. Snapping at family. Wanting to fall to the floor screaming. Thinking negatively.

Very negatively.

I knew the signs and those of you who have been down this road know
them also. I called my doctor. This was the verdict three days before Christmas. "Take more &*%$# and go more easily, or be hospitalized for four days over Christmas." Then he prayed with me. Bless him.

I have to admit that hospitalization seemed preferrable to the heaps of work left in front of me. Nevertheless, I swallowed my pills and carried on. I slept as much as five hours in the middle of the day and did what I could when my energy was higher.

This is my recipe for lowering stress in the St. Nick of time. Once again, the items are in no particular order.

1.) Forget the minutia of decorating. No snowy villages. No elaborate manger scenes. Put a small tree on a table with a long cloth, light a few candles and sit in the near dark.

2.) Order baked goods from a good bakery instead of being hospitalized, and make your partner or a friend pick them up on Christmas Eve in the morning.

3.) Limit the time, especially the meal times, that all three grandchildren and their parents will be in your house together. Let an adult child play with the children. Hold the baby yourself, in a darkened quiet room, if possible.

4.) If some gifts aren't wrapped, so what? Just put them under the little tree.

5.) Let someone bring good cheese to go with bread, crackers and fruit.

6.) Cut down on the number of vegetables served with Christmas dinner. The usual 8 or 9 vegetables are not necessary. A squash with a little water will cook very nicely in the slow cooker while the bird is doing.

7.) Scrap the traditions which have seemed so indispensible for years. No midnight smorgasboard on Christmas Eve, after the Candlelight Service. No Christmas morning brunch. Let them eat toast.

8.) Wear comfortable older clothes.

9.) Use stuff already in freezer or pantry:

instant stuffing
frozen broccoli
salad in a bag
sparkling drinks

10.) Open presents slowly over the day. Spread out the pleasure. If your mother has some memory problems, she will enjoy looking at her gifts several times and they will give her the same happiness each time. And you can enjoy her smiling.

11.) Let dinner be late. This saves the panic of preparation in the morning when your energy is at its lowest. It also increases the possibility of guests volunteering to peel veggies, set table and make gravy, and decreases the chance of someone yelling the inevitable words, "Board games anyone?"

12.) Never mind that the French doors and kitchen windows need cleaning. It is dark on December 25. No one will notice.

13.) Let others take pictures.

14.) If all the bathrooms were cleaned well before Christmas, let family clean for themselves, or not.

15.) Leave the computer alone, especially if your son-in-law is taking it apart and putting it back together again.

16.) Refuse to do more laundry.

17.) Refuse last minute shopping. Enough is enough.

Hope you all had a blessed Christmas. I had a low key, peaceful time, and will be recovering nicely somewhere warm in the near future.

Christmas Prayer for Our Children

2005-12-20T23:27:00.000-05:00

Delight. Innocence. Tenderness. Hope.

Rachael

Christmastime's
for children,
innocent as Bethlehem's babe,
anticipating discovery,
larger worlds waiting.
Once, too,
our infant selves,
untouched by Life,
held promise and potential.

Fulfill your Word, Lord.
Bring in the lion with the lamb.
Keep our children safe from battle.
And since by virtue of humanity
they'll, in due time, grow,
give them clear minds and large hearts.
Let them love without prejudice
and labour without resentment.
May they carry into age,
the unspoiled dreams of youth,
and stand before You at the last,
complete and unashamed.

Confidence.
Expectation.
Vigour.
Humour. Spencer

Mastery. Pleasure. Strength.
Awareness.

Robbie

Yuletide Sights and Sounds Synonymous

2005-12-13T09:03:00.000-05:00

Ah, the strains of brass band playing and Christmas. Sounds Synonymous. Many of my loyal readers, will know that Rob and I served with The Salvation Army for many years as ministers (officers) in congregational and youth work. Our reconnectedness with The Salvation Army has increased over the last two years as Rob has worked in Pastoral Support for officers serving in Northern Ontario and Metro Toronto. While he has been known to solo on the E flat tuba at Christmas kettle stands of long ago, he has preferred guitar in more recent years. Here is an accounting of his experiences while offering support at Salvation Army Christmas kettles this year:

Being in Toronto, and having no scheduled visit for three hours, I volunteered to sing at a Christmas kettle for a Salvation Army officer friend. I truly love doing this but, being older than when I was in my prime kettle singing days, there were also a few surprises and unanticipated wrinkles.

My friend kindly set me up in the exit half of the vestibule at Walmart. Lots of activity – though the loads of parcels in the hands of those going by did present their natural charity with a problem. Their only having two hands meant that many of those who would otherwise have given generously, accelerated their pace or slid by along the opposing wall when in kettle range.

Undaunted, I took out my guitar, raised my music stand, put up New Christmas Praise (red and green), and let her rip. "A starry night" - great kettle song. I was briefly lulled into deep Christmas mystery before reality dawned.
Having read the Army’s latest protocol for kettle security, my friend had been most diligent in assuring that "Kettles must be secured to the kettle stands". At 58.65 years of age, I am not what once I was. A wiser man might have checked the current routine for rest stops, before starting. Three hours loomed. Could I manage a washroom break by lugging guitar, music stand, music, kettle stand, kettle and handouts with me?

I would have approached the Walmart greeter/security guy – but he was a scary sergeant-major type (military, not Sally Ann, who, we know, are all kindly and sympathetic). Moreover, he was busy with ensuring that everything moved smoothly at the front of the store – bringing in abandoned carts – a "tsk! tsk!" look on his face. What would he think of a grown man who hadn’t figured out a way of getting a bathroom break? Besides, he was also regularly called upon to chase down the poor souls whose improperly demagnatised purchases activated the exit alarm. The hapless and dazed shoppers were tracked down and hustled back so that bags and purses could be examined, and their contents compared against the sales slip. Meanwhile, I sang "O Holy Night".

Rediscovering an exhaustive Christmas repertoire was a joy, although I hadn’t played guitar for months. Ergo, no comforting callouses on ends of string fingers. Instead, my digits became so sore that I couldn’t play two consecutive pieces in the same or even related keys. Since C, G, and F are popular song key settings, I was in trouble. Transposition was called for – songs in G became songs in E, songs in C became songs in A or D. ‘Twas a blessing folk went by on the run, or surely they would have wondered why a man was singing every carol either too high or too low.

It got a bit lonely and demanding. Nonstop singing taxes even my iron voice. I soldiered on. At half time, the greeter guy accosted me with, "Bit of a long shift, isn’t it?" I couldn’t really read whether this was from compassion, carol fatigue, or discernment that I was now playing everything in F# minor.

Then, respite. Venturing into "Angels we have heard on high," I was getting to the Glo-ow-ow-ows, when suddenly there was with the soloist, a multitude of the earthly host, praising God and singing "Gloria in excelsis deo." Glory to God in the highest. Three young mothers with lilting Carribean-Canadian voices and five little children had gathered in my corner. Singing heartily, they proceeded to unpack from a huge box a newly purchased baby stroller/ buggy /car seat /carry bed / bassinet /ice dispenser, and to assemble it from constituent parts, right there. As they worked, we choired "Mary’s Boy child", "The Virgin Mary had a baby boy", "Silent night" (their request) and others. It took them about five carols to get the stroller fully assembled and place one child in it, ready to go.

Then the eldest of the children, a sweet little girl of about 5 asked, "Do you know any songs about Santa?" So off the ladies and children went, singing "Santa Claus is coming to town", into the darkening night. What angels they had been for me! I missed them terribly. While they were there I had certainly felt peace on earth, good will toward humankind.

I flew on, solo. After the three hours, my officer friend retrieved the kettle. I packed guitar, music and stand in the car, and headed back to the Walmart necessary. At my final exit, the greeter guy muttered "Very good". Was this reference to my leaving or the concert?

Next day found me kettle singing in Bracebridge. At the end of the shift a father and his young son approached. "We’re your relief", they said. Having not yet read the Army’s memo on security, I took them at face value, thanked them, and we chatted as I packed up gear. With no apparent connection to the Army and living in rural Rosseau, they nonetheless, thought it important each Christmas to do a shift of kettle standing. The rest of the family, mother and daughter, were in Huntsville doing the same thing. The young boy had even invested in the effort by bringing a bag of candy to reward donors! My heart was touched at the intentional way in which this father and mother were impressing into their children’s characters the importance of giving, and supporting worthwhile causes.

Got a few more shifts coming up. But already my Christmas has been "made".

P.S. Three notes:
1.) Nobody was actually caught shoplifting –everybody checked out, and at some points people proceeded into the exit vestibule with their sales slips in their hands, showing them to him as they walked by – like a RIDE check or something. This greeter guy was good.
2.) The mothers left the large box and all packing material in the vestibule which really unmade the greeter’s day.
3.) Callous is forming on ends of appropriate digits. Can more kettle singing be far behind?

Robert Knighton (guest blogger)

The Prie Dieu

2005-12-10T09:49:00.000-05:00

Amongst the ever changing furniture at Dawsonwood Cottage is a piece more often found in a chapel. A Prie Dieu. It stands in the corner of my room, inviting me to prayer.

This morning at five, I awoke, still exhausted from an all-nighter of carpet cleaning and present wrapping the previous day. I looked at the Prie Dieu and knelt in my heart and felt Divine Love cradle me. Mentally I wrestled against an urge to 'task' my devotional life. Love rocked me gently, soothing my compulsions. I slept.

The Prie Dieu was my anniversary present this year. The most unusual present received this side of a monastery, you think? Our relationship is something reminicent of Abelard and Eloise. We courted by snail mail in the days before text messaging and email. Some of you will recall that we still do write letters to one another (click on title or link for my Anniversary letter to Rob).
http://dawsonwood.blogspot.com/2005 2005_10_01 dawsonwood archive.html
Rob, showing his early theological bent, wrote me poems in the style of John Donne, his favourite poet. I must admit to being mystified quite often by Rob's poetry, mixing as it did, human and divine love in a tight archaic form. Being mystified, I find, is often as good as understanding. I can't remember what I wrote, but I don't think I was funny then, and those priceless letters were tossed in a fit of purging during one of our many moves. We were both serious lovers.

So, this morning, the Prie Dieu stands as symbol of relationship, human and Divine. Place of comfort and devotion. Place of Love. Place of Rest.

Peace to you all and Rest.

It's the map...dah, dah, map...dah, dah, map

2005-11-27T01:53:00.000-05:00

Being a visual person, the map idea, stolen from Cindy, seemed really good to me. And I am surprised I managed the negotiations to set one up for Dawsonwood. Go to http://www.frappr.com/friendsofdawsonwood. Sign in. Come on you who lurk here. Humour me. Send a picture, a word. You sign in with your email, which won't be used for anything else. I trust the process. And I trust Cindy, who is brilliant and not frequently given to frivolity.

Guest Blog

2005-11-25T19:19:00.000-05:00

Sunday, November 20, 2005

Here is an insirational blog from LoveBarbara. Barbara's link can be found by clicking on the title above. I really identify with a lot that she writes, and this is not just because she is my daughter.

Fear can haunt me, too. All those things I can't control about the future are frequent companions. My prayer: "Dear God,
Let faith answer." Amen.

So here is what Barbara says:

"Fear knocked at the door, Faith answered and nobody was there."

This is a quote often said at my meetings. I am not sure where it originated from, but it is a quote that has worked for me these past few months while I haven't been well enough to go to them. When I first heard this said I thought it sounded crazy, I didn't get it. I get it now though. When I am fearful, I am pushing faith out of my sight and out of my thoughts. For me, fear comes in many forms. Fear of more illness, not only of myself but for the people I love. Fear of abandonment, financial insecurity, not knowing what lies ahead in tomorrow, fear of yesterdays' skeletons falling out of the closet and so on.

When I focus on fear, it rules my life. It tears away ambition, kind actions or thoughts. It creates resentments, jealousy and anger. I begin to doubt my life, my friends and my family's intentions. It can change how I feel and react about most things, which under normal circumstances would not bother me. It throws me in a deep, dark well with no way out. The incessant droning of negative thoughts drives me mad.

Then it comes. Like a gentle wave, or a soft breeze. Renewal of faith. A phone call from a friend in the program, a kind word, good news from the doctor, relief of symptoms left over from an illness, ability to hold my children, laugh, cry, accept and feel at peace with what is going on around me. Faith answered when fear was pounding down my door.

This is my life lesson. Everyday I need to remind myself that God has laid down his plan for me that day. All that is required of me, is to ask God for acceptance, courage, wisdom and especially the strength to carry it out. Today, I have a choice. It can be a good day, or a bad day. I can choose to look at my yesterday's as failures, or lessons. Tomorrow is too uncertain for specific plans, but for today I know God will give me the strength to endure as long as I am willing to ask for help.

This is a piece of prose read at most of my meetings, it helps me when I feel overwhelmed. I wanted to share this with anyone who is interested. It has helped me many times to stay in the now, in today. As Ray Charles delicately phrased it "Live everyday like it's your last, because one day you'll be right."

Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
author unknown

"There are two days in every week about which we should not worry,
two days which should be kept free from fear and apprehension.
One of those days is Yesterday, with it's mistakes and cares it's faults and blunders, it's aches and pains.
Yesterday has passed forever beyond our control. All the money in the world cannot bring back Yesterday.
We cannot erase a single word we said we cannot undo a single act we performed.
Yesterday is gone.
The other day we should not worry about is Tomorrow, with it's possible adversities, it's burdens, large promise and poor performance.
Tomorrow is also beyond our immediate control. Tomorrow's sun will rise, either in splendor or behind a mask of clouds but it will rise.
Until it does, we have no stake in tomorrow for it is yet unborn.
This leaves only one day, Today.
Anyone can fight the battles of just one day.
It's only when you and I add the burdens of those two awful eternities,
Yesterday and Tomorrow that we break down.
It's not the experience of today that drives us mad.
It is remorse or bitterness for something which happened yesterday and the dread of what Tomorrow may bring
Let us therefore live but one day at a time."
posted by Barbara 7:03 PM 2 comments
Monday, November 14, 2005

Intentional Eating

2005-11-19T00:40:00.000-05:00

I was troubled with stomach pains. Pain when I was empty. Pain when I was full. Discomfort with spicey food. Distention with bland food. The doctor said I probably had an ulcer in the making. I was to eat small meals, several times a day. Sit down. Savour my food. Stop rushing. Eat peacefully. At table. Never eat on the go, and never do anything but eat when I was eating. It sounded easy enough.

Intentional eating. No distractions.

Do you know how often people call the pastor at meal times? When else is she home?
How peaceful is a family meal table when adults need time to share the day, and two middling girls need focused attention?
Cups of tea and boxed cookies consumed while I visited shut-ins? Surely that was not what the doctor ordered.

Mid-morning seemed an appropriate time for my first small meal in solitude. It was an effort to put aside my current book, The Alphabet of Grace. When eating alone I always read. The side of the cereal box in French, if nothing else were available. I reluctantly relinquished Frederick Bueckner, and chose herbal tea in a china cup, a tiny bunch of grapes and three dry crackers.

I sat for a long time looking at these offerings. The task of eating anything seemed impossible.

I plucked a grape. Weeping. What was this? Tears for a grape? It felt heavy in the hand. Gigantic in the mouth. More tears, silent, streaming. I would choke on this one grape and be found dead at the dining room table. The need to chew and swallow was growing. The body responds with saliva when food is placed in the mouth. It’s natural. But it is one of the things you don’t notice when you eat on the run.

Something holy was happening. A singular sacrament. With an effort of will, finally, I bit into the grape. Brought body, mind and spirit to the task. Felt its skin. Tasted its juice. Saw its deep purple colour in my mind. Sensed the other half dozen grapes waiting on the plate would be a surfeit of blessing. Reverently, prayerfully, I swallowed the grape.

What a struggle food had been for me all of my life. Too much. Too often. Too hurried. With a flash of parallel insight, I saw my whole life as a banquet, consumed but not savoured. Awash with tears, I choked down the grapes, the three dry crackers and the tea. There was a necessity to go through this ritual. To taste and see.

The intentional meal was a life altering experience. I marked it by writing a poem and offering that poem to Frederick Bueckner, in my first ever and only fan letter. He wrote back, by hand, some time later. And I still have the poem.

Eucharist

Life is a large grape,
hard to swallow whole,
tough as chicken,
big as a balloon in my mouth,
but insignificant enough
to make the necessity of chewing it,
an embarrassment.
The task's to get it down.

What holy hesitancy is this
to bite, bear down and masticate,
chew it up with clenched teeth,
let the juice run down over my chin,
empty myself of saliva in the living of it?

I distract myself from my devouring,
read a book,
write stories in my head,
dangle from the chandelier,
observing.
I have managed half a lifetime of grapes
in this manner,
some sustenance,
no substance at all.

Now this one grape,
marble-large,
commands me to taste it,
know it for itself.
I fasten on it,
will not let it go until it blesses me,
my first and last supper.
It bleeds between my teeth,
and I weep my grace,
anger and reverence,
humiliation,
humanity,
and glory.

C.K. after Frederick Buechner

Antidote to Anxiety

2005-11-13T23:19:00.000-05:00

One of the antidotes to anxiety is a thankful heart. Tonight I am reminding myself of the things I am grateful for.

God,

I am thankful for a roof over my head,
and not just any roof but a solid, newer, softly spreading roof,
with broad eaves.

I am thankful for a tolerant, understanding, forgiving and kind husband.

I am thankful for answers to prayers:

Robbie's health and his continued growth and development; his constant urge to stand up and push with his legs and try to walk; his ability to shake off this cold without a visit to the doctor's.
Spencer's silly antics, loving heart and fast feet. For his energy, his friendliness and tender feelings. For his passions for mechanical things, his boyish playfulness.
Rachael's voice, her growing ability to communicate the subtleties of her feelings, her observations of the universe (when seeing the moon behind fast moving clouds..."Oh, look the moon is flying home.")
Sobriety in my family, hard won and stalwartly maintained against all odds.

I am thankful for:

Humour. For the ability to laugh out loud when my cell phone set off a thrum in the organ...even played a note all by itself, before it rang in church this morning! Wrong number.

A place to write this stuff...here.

People who read it.

The passage of time which heals all wounds.

Being understood.

Enough money for now. Enough money to give to others.

The joy of words.

Prayer.

God's love experienced in peace and in turmoil.

New handles to replace the one's Rob constantly fixed with crazy glue on the old Toyota. A detailed cleaning on the same motley vehicle. It looks like new.

A kiss.

Being treasured and appreciated by a loved one.

Seeing my mother enjoy my grandchildren at play.

Robbie pretending to be a frog and laughing. Rachael being a friendly tiger. Spencer talking to me basso profundo on the phone. "Love you."

Good sons-in-law. Dylan helping Rob take the paddle boat out before the river freezes over. Jeff helping me with my cell phone ignorance.

Daughters who are good mothers.

Roses in November.

A good book at bedtime.

Email.

Clock chimes.

The end of a day.

For all these blessings and those not named here, I am grateful. My cup runs over and I can face the future with less anxiety knowing that I am so richly provided for in this day.

Amen

Kitchen Renovations Z to A

2005-11-09T00:09:00.000-05:00

Okay, so everybody knows there is a right way and a wrong way to do everything. Let me tell you, with these kitchen renovations you can work magic in any direction. Start with Z and work through to A, or do it the other way round, more conventionally. Either way, the results are sure to command another reno in a year or two.

Z. Assemble fabrics you really like in large amounts when they are on sale and keep them for as long as possible before beginning the project.

Y. Pull down the overhead cupboards, leaving a shortage of storage space. Buy a couple of overpriced painted black pine bookcases to make into a faux armoire.

X. Smash the microwave moving it from A to B. Rob a bank. Buy a new one.

W. Take off a little wallpaper. Fade fast.

V. Prime a few cupboards. Decide to use STP and sand the cupboards first the next time.

U. While taking off the doors of cabinets would be a good idea, do them in place. Dab paint on the hinges and hope no one notices.

T. Hack off a little more wallpaper.

S. Cover some crumbling wall in beadboard.

R. Reline a few drawers and refill them. Throw out one or two things.

Q. Use the odd tea towel for a paint rag. Notice the pile of tea towels is growing precariously small.

P. Clean out the fridge if it smells.

O. Scrape off a few more shards of wallpaper. Bits of wall may come off with the paper. Daub on some crack filler.

N. Take the window screens into the shower with you for a really good clean. This is an amazing time saver.

M. Paint a bit of window trim. Hope no one sees the excess paint on hardware bits.

L. Clean freezer if something still smells.

K. Do a second coat on something.

J. Get a special tool for scoring old wallpaper. Soak walls and floors with warm water and wallpaper stripper. Scrape off the grease which has loosened up under the stove.

I. Clean sides of stove while they are exposed.

H. Put a few new handles on a couple of unfinished doors to see how they look.

G. Line a shelf or two.

F. Scrape off a bit more wallpaper.

E. Disconnect ambient lighting. Show off. Buy new fixtures. Check them out it the space. Take them back. Get more. Take them back. Do this for as long as it takes to get the fixtures right. Beauty is in the details.

D. Order counter top on the pay next year plan. Pretend you know what you are doing when the guy comes to measure the space.

C. Scrape off a bit more wallpaper.

B. Ignore family, friends and blogging for weeks on end.

A. Get a cold.

A. Do not let this stop you from continuing with the project. Advil Cold and Flu medicine should keep you just well enough to scrape off more wallpaper.

B. Don't forget to get the paint off your hands before going to church, but look as dirty as possible when on an outing to Home Depot or Northern Buildall. It's expected.

C. Buy new baseboards and hope someone else will put them in.

D. Get a more handy partner.

E. Scrape. Scrape. Scrape. And Pray.

You could start these directions in the middle and work out to either end and the results would still be stunning.

For All the Saints

2005-11-01T09:01:00.000-05:00

November First. All Saints Day. One of my favourite days in the church calendar. It was of little importance in the tradition in which I grew up, which paid no notice to the movement of the church year, that dignified process from the Sunday of Christ the King, through Advent, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost and so on.

Much more importance was given to November 11. The lonely tones of The Last Post. The two minutes of silence. (An eternity to a child with frozen feet, and an inability to see anything but trousered legs and the bottoms of women's heavy winter coats.) A brass band pondering Abide With Me . Pipers lamenting. Slow and measured steps. The laying of wreaths at The Cenotaph. (Cenotaphs and Pyramids were about the same thing in my mind then...and when you think about it, I wasn't far off the mark.) Poppy wearing. There were huge crowds of still young sainted veterans, amongst them my father, who always refused to wear his medals, despite my mother's pleading. He was ever a self-effacing man. No doubt we honoured a few sinners too, both living and dead, who were also beloved by man and God. It escaped no one's notice that their courage had preserved the way of life we were privileged to enjoy.

But All Saints Day a few brief days earlier. Hard on the heels of Hallowe'en. It had passed without note. Not so now.

My list of saints has grown extremely long in the last years. And this year my heart has been deeply moved by the recent loss of two friends, both men, still in their prime. One was a lifelong friend, who with his wife, was generous of heart and lively of mind. He was, in Nouwen's terms a "spiritual strategist," someone whose visionary planning raised millions of dollars for charity and for the major educational institution for which he was head of planned giving. The other was a "quiet" man, with a pastor's heart, whose steadfastness in sickness and suffering brought him much admiration. He was my parents' pastor when my father was dying. He was at Dawsonwood Cottage the day they brought us a hospital bed and he helped Rob set it up in the dining room. On the day my father died, he dismantled that same bed, and trundled it out to the garage. A practical christian.

I copied this from Henri Nouwen (click on title above for link) and saved it for November 1.

The Garden of the Saints

The Church is a very human organization but also the garden of God's grace. It is a place where great sanctity keeps blooming. Saints are people who make the living Christ visible to us in a special way. Some saints have given their lives in the service of Christ and his Church; others have spoken and written words that keep nurturing us; some have lived heroically in difficult situations; others have remained hidden in quiet lives of prayer and meditation; some were prophetic voices calling for renewal; others were spiritual strategists setting up large organizations or networks of people; some were healthy and strong; others were quite sick, and often anxious and insecure. But all of them in their own ways lived in the Church as in a garden where they heard the voice calling them the Beloved and where they found the courage to make Jesus the center of their lives.

Thank You God For All The Saints.

Rain on the Just

2005-10-28T23:55:00.000-04:00

Dear Readers,

You may have noticed that I have been at a loss for words lately. Passing strange. Not a one has entered my head. At least none fit to print. My silence occasioned a phone call from a friend in Winnipeg who reads Dawsonwood, and who had begun to wonder if I was ill. I can't tell you how much I appreciated that.

So, first things first. Robbie is fine. His new dose of medication is working much better. He has incredible upper body strength and can grip my arthritic fingers with enough force to make me gasp. He manouvers all over the living room and is disappearing around corners and opening seemingly impenetrable cupboard doors fastened with giant magnets. He loves ripping up phone books and magazines. He is taking to reading, as this photo shows and he has something of the little professor about him, I think.

Rachael and Spencer, my two older grandchildren, are looking forward to Hollowe'en with keen excitement. Spencer is going to be "a scarey pirate with bones" and Rachael, with all of the costume angst of diva is going to be variously, a dalmation, a poodle, Dora the Explorerer or Princess Ariel. Robbie may be a pumpkin if he goes out. And next year, AAAAgh! there will be four of them decking out for "Trick or Treat"...or as they say mysteriously in Winnipeg "Hallowe'en Apples." (So what regional variations to the Hallowe'en door cry have you noticed where you live...a propos of not much?)

My daughter Barbara has had a wretched bout of mono and I have been looking after Robbie daily from 7 a.m.. While purportedly looking ten years younger than my actual age, suffice it to say that I am not as young as I once was. I haven't had the energy or will to do much writing...and truth be told, it is an effort to hang on to the mostly positive outlook I like to maintain in these posts. Not that I am above a rant or two. I don't have the strength. The mono has strained, but not swamped the ability of this family system to cope. It was inevitable after a year and a half of high stress, Barbara's immune system would cave in. But I would like God to know that it has rained enough on the just of Muskoka lately.

I had a little weep in church last week. Someone was wanting to know what happened to about a dozen dollar store bud vases. Yes, this is the kind of thing which can happen even in a church with six people in it. Somehow this hadn't really registered on my radar as important. I felt so helpless about the bud vases. I was even more helpless when it was noted that the emergency church telephone was missing, although I have a hunch or two in this regard. Everything is relevant.

The rain falling on the just in Muskoka is nothing to the rain falling on the just in Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Florida, India and Kashechewan on James Bay in Northern Ontario. The world seems to be awash with displaced persons, the dead and the dying.

I don't have the courage to watch the news lately. Compassion fatigue. The numbers are meaningless to me...1,000 here, 1,000 there...more. This many dead. That many homeless. Pictures of bodies. Rubble. Water. Wind. God In Heaven. What are my little woes compared to all of this?

And still there are places where a child will say, "Daddy, I want to be a martyr. Can you get me some explosives?" And still there are offices where leaders say, "Git 'em." As if the rain falling on the just and the unjust were not, of itself, a sufficiency of suffering.

Bless you all, wherever you are, whatever personal and collective deluges overwhelm you.

Now I lay me down to sleep,

I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

If I should die before I wake,

I pray the Lord my soul to take.

Chipmunk Feast

2005-10-19T22:41:00.000-04:00

Autummmmn,

Mmmmmn.

Feast for Ommm,

Yummmm.

Anniversary Week

2005-10-15T20:08:00.000-04:00

The Garden in Autumn C.K. 10.15.05

October brings birthdays and anniversaries. My mother turns 87 tomorrow. On that day also, my niece will turn 28 and my daughter Sarah and son-in-law Jeff will celebrate their sixth wedding anniversary. I have passed my birthday, spent in the midst of a funeral for a close personal friend. Perhaps this is what has given a perculiar melancholy to the celebration of our wedding anniversary this week, also. There is a renewed determination on our parts to make each day count, to take nothing for granted. Our muted celebration last evening included a leisurely walk to and from a local bistro where we enjoyed the prix fixe menu and much rich conversation about our individual weeks.

Some of you, who remember that the documentation concerning our wedding had been lost for a couple of years, will be happy to learn that this precious certificate was eventually located by officialdom in government records. (Click on title above for post from last April...funny.) So, do not concern yourselves that Rob spends several days a week out of town doing pastoral support. We are still married. I run Dawsonwood, care for my mother and support Barbara and her family, as frequent readers of this blog will have discerned. I also write. This week I wrote my husband a letter and this is the expurgated version of this text.

Dear Rob,
Friday is our 38th wedding anniversary...

You are the best part of this life-long marriage. Your commitment has kept us going when I have been ill with depression, when I have been weary in well doing, when we have grieved together, and even when medication has failed to control my anxiety and mood disorders.

It is amazing to me that you still find me attractive after all these years. And yet, when I look in the mirror today, I do not hate what I see as I once did. Isn't that a miracle? It has taken the best part of thirty-eight years for your vision of me to sink into my head.

These were things I loved about you from the beginning and still love: your wonderful voice, speaking and singing, your soulful eyes, your keen mind. I enjoy talking with you about life and God as much or even more than I did thirty-eight years ago. The passing of years has deepened our understanding of what it means to love God and eachother. Are we just beginning, after all this long time, to love the essence of eachother, in ways which were clouded by early passion and exceptionally high expectations?

Because we have come to understand that we cannot fulfil every need of the other, we have become comfortably independent. I want to continue to grow in my art and writing, even as you develop your skills as a spiritual director. These differences give us something to contribute to the spiritual growth of the other. Our strength has always been our ability to talk with one another. Your strength is that you have learned, when I am upset, just to listen and not try to fix anything. Having taught you that skill, painfully over the years, not knowing myself what I wanted from one minute to the next, I now wish I could be this way in all my relationships...just listening and not trying to fix anything.

The most amazing development over the last year and a half has been our growing common dependence on our relationship with God and our willingness to pray, even when God seems distant. This reliance on faith in difficult times is something which we share, though we might not always hold every political, ethical and theological notion in common. We believe that there is a Prime Mover, a Great Lover, a Source of Being. We believe that humans can have a relationship with the Source. We believe that that relationship makes a difference.

I want to start our 39th year with renewal...I want the kindness you have given me in my weakest moments to be the hallmark of our daily walk together.

I know that over these last few months you have been particularly taxed with worry over your new job and whether or not you will be able to do this Herculean task, and how you will do it. I celebrate with you that you are finding answers to prayer already...I admire, as I always have done, your ability to find ways and means in situations where others despair. This is a great gift of God in you and it is so exciting to see this finding fulfilment at this stage of your life.

I would have written this letter literally in ink, but I can't write as fast as I type and think. This way is better. You can file it somewhere and reread it and remind me of what I have said, if you think I need reminding.

I am glad I married you. We were impossibly young. We didn't know what marriage entailed. I was living in a romantic daydream. You were unaware of and confused by my needs for active companionship and gentle affection. We had not developed our God-ward capacity, even though we were so inclined. We were babies in faith as in life. Isn't it a miracle that the sufferings of life have toughened me up and softened you down, so that the incorrigible romantic and the logical philosopher can meet now on equal terms? I look forward to the best which is yet to come.

Love, Connie

Music Has Charms

2005-10-12T23:07:00.000-04:00

Music has charms to sooth a savage breast.

William Congreve
(1670 - 1729)

Or beast...if the movie, "The Story of the Weeping Camel" is to be believed. And it is!!! Those of you who do not watch subtitled movies will have missed this one. A rare docu-drama in Mongolian with English subtitles which are hardly necessary. The dialogue is so spare and the acting so clear as to make the story self-evident in any language. I was deeply moved by this tale of a first time mother camel who rejects her colt after a protracted and painful delivery. I was astonished at the simple yet elegant lifestyle of the camel herders of the Gobi desert. I was appalled to see the encroachment of Western inelegance (in the form of televisions and motorcycles) on the rythmned, mythic lives of these hard working people. And I was delighted by the climax of this movie as ancient music is used to aid the new mother to surrender her love to her nursing colt. A must see.

Another 'foreign' film to plomb the redemptive, healing power of music is Les Choristes, this time a French film shot in (Yahwehsisters, yes) Bulgaria! A heartless, punitive school for so-called 'wayward' boys is blessed by the coming of a teacher with an open heart and a flair for music. The sound track alone is worth a listen in this new classic film.

See it. See them both. Hollywood is not the centre of the universe. Films of superb quality are being made the world over.

This is the first in a periodic series of film reviews by Sister Maryconstance, director of cultural pursuits, Dawsonwood Cottage.

A Miracle

2005-10-11T01:35:00.000-04:00

To those of you who regularly tweak you blogs, this small improvement will seem laughable. But for me it is miraculous, a triumph over computer mind fog, a victory for persistence! I have managed to edit my links list properly! Many thanks to those who over many months have attempted unsuccessfully to teach me about this and other elusive blogging skills: Deb, Lisa, Bobbie, to name a few.

It took a few spare hours at the end of an exhausting Thanksgiving weekend. Several members of the family were ill. The green veg turned to mush. But I have a Links list!!! Now if I could only discover how to call it something else, like so many of you have done. Friends. Wayfarers. Lightbringers. Connections. That would be a quantum leap indeed.

LoveBarbara

2005-10-10T00:56:00.000-04:00

Dear Friends,

My daughter Barbara who has appeared in my posts as 'Robbie's mother' and sometimes as herself, now has her own blog. You can find it by linking through the title of this post...just click on "Love Barbara". I am thrilled that this has happened. Pleased to see that blogging will be a form of therapy for her, as it seems to be for a lot of us. Take a look at what she says about setting high expectations for ourselves and others, and the fact that unrealistic expectations may then lead to resentment and bitterness.

Love,
Connie

Playing God 5

2005-10-01T19:55:00.000-04:00

This is the last in my series of posts about enacted prayer. And yes, I got to "play" God.

I was fascinated to find out if enacted prayer would work in our small rural congregation, a congregation where we have been, in the main, the youngest people attending for the last 16 years. I wondered if the blessings of enacted prayer which were palpable in a large congregation of young adults could be perceived in a small congregation of seniors. Sunday September 11 provided the opportunity, falling as it did on the fourth anniversary of 9/11, with the concerns around the devastation of hurricane Katrina still heavy on our hearts. No one in the congregation had any preparation for this. I was relying on their good-will and the power of God's Spirit.

I explained briefly what I was going to do. Instead of saying that I was "playing God" it just seemed appropriate to say that as we worked I would be discerning the mind of God for these situations, and that individuals would be chosen to represent (rather than PLAY) the various persons around whom we would be focusing our prayers.

I picked a lovely older couple to represent those who had lost loved ones in 9/11. They sat in chairs, opposite one another just in front of our low platform. A strong, tall man represented firefighters. An ex-school principal stood in the pulpit to represent government. A woman of great heart who has been widowed represented refugee victims of Katrina. Another woman with a mischievous child-like spirit became a lost child, folded into a heap on the floor. My husband, without his robes, represented aid workers. That was all we had room for in the front of our little church. I prayed and began to move about amoung the "actors."

I worked with those representing 9/11 first. Gesturing them to stand. Bringing the fireman closer with arms and face raised heavenward. The grieving couple linked hands. I remembered how often people who lose a child end up divorcing because they cannot bear the pain they see reflected in eachother's face. I held them in my heart. I helped them lift their eyes to heaven.

Then I worked with the Katrina 'actors'. My husband used his clerical gown to tent the homeless woman. (We hadn't rehearsed this. It was just given in that moment and it was powerful.) The indifferent posture of the government official was changed to reveal compassion and concern. I comforted and lifted up the "child" and danced with her and then went to find her mother, with whom she was reunited. We danced as three in the narrow aisle of the church. When all eyes were raised Godward, I said, "Amen," and sealed the enacted prayer with a sentence of spoken prayer.

Five...ten minutes...that was all. A powerful pastoral prayer.

It was impossible not to be moved by this. "Players" who had been hesistant to be part of the scene, gained confidence. The "child" talked to me about how really very much of a refugee she was in her real life. Then she donated a box of worship tapes to be sold for the Katrina relief effort!!! ($300.00, NO TAX, NO OVERHEAD) The fireman, a shy man, spoke of how he could feel in his heart just how he should move to comfort the bereaved of 9/11. He is a man of compassion and this role brought out the best in him. It was really real!!

We'll try this again. Perhaps on Christmas Eve as part of our annual Christmas candlelight service. The church will be packed and we will do an enacted prayer which will help us to focus away from materialism and onto the true meaning of Christmas. Maybe. Or perhaps God will give us another prayer request. Whatever we pray for, I know there will be answers. We live in exciting times.

Playing God 4

2005-09-22T19:51:00.000-04:00

If you have been following the story of these posts, you will remember that I had asked for enacted prayer on behalf of my grandson Robbie. Some of you will also know that Robbie has a considerable medical file compiled on his brief life.

In the beginning, his mother was told she would not carry him to term. Robbie confounded every expectation and made his entry into the world, last January 17. There was a preliminary diagnosis of I.U.G.R. (inter uterine growth retardation), a result of abruption of the placenta. He had survived to full term with about half the food supply a normal infant requires! He weighed a meagre 5 pounds and looked, for a full time baby, like a starved waif. Strong will in this little guy, right from the first. He was immediately hooked up to tubes for feeding, and wires for monitoring, and tucked into an incubator. Anxious start. But Robbie is nothing if not determined. And he was determined to live.

Additionally, Robbie had a small, common, birth anomaly which will be corrected by plastic surgery. However, the onset of asthma, this past spring, was very worrisome. At times he seemed so frail. It took multiple trips to the doctor, and several hospitalizations before a diagnosis was reached, and appropriate medication was prescribed. At the time of the enacted prayer, I was concerned that Robbie would once again be hospitalized, with all the attendant disruption of routine and deep concern which this would bring. That did not happen. He had a cold. He survived the cold. And he has gone on to have further sniffles without hospitalization. He has even hatched two razor sharp teeth.

I came home expecting to hear more good news about Robbie. Perplexity. Robbie's mother burst into tears as she told me that he had been diagnosed with yet another health concern. For months, she had been trying to get his doctors to take notice of the way he held his head, and the shape of his head. They delivered platitudes. "His head shape will improve over time." "Just let time pass. This will correct itself." I had been with his mother on several occasions when her concerns were minimized or dismissed. Now, she informed me that the condition had been noted as 'serious,' and physiotherapy and occupational therapy prescribed. It even had a name. Torticollis. Wry Neck. Should these mechanical manipulations not correct the condition, Robbie would have to undergo surgery to release his neck muscles, with possible cranial-facial surgery in years to come.

How was this an answer to the enacted prayer, I wondered? I felt a little deflated, but I was not dismayed. A general feeling of calm continued when I saw Robbie himself. Over the ten days I had been away, he had grown. His head looked better to me already. He was beginning to hold it up straighter. He was trying to sit up. Over a two week time period, his parents worked with him on his exercises. We all played rigorously with him to stimulate his awareness of the left side of his body. His strength steadily increased. On one memorable afternoon, he rolled efficiently to the left. Excited by the discovery of a new skill in his repetoire. he continued to roll to the left about ten more times in succession.

It was clear, that on his second trip to the psysiotherapist, he had outstripped her every expectation. He was sitting better and displaying awareness of his need to adjust balance to prevent himself from falling over. He was swimming all over the mat, moving confidently to find toys. The therapist had trouble keeping her jaw from dropping open as Robbie displayed his exponential development.

This has continued. Within a few more days he was trying to pull himself up to sitting from a recumbent position. This afternoon he made several successful attempts at this while sitting on my knee. When he accomplishes anything, he flings himself down to repeat the process and solidify his learning. I may be his Nana, but believe me he is SMART. He is almost fanatically determined to exercise his body.

Now I am not so naive spiritually as to suppose that Robbie's development would have continued to be delayed, had I not asked for enacted prayer on his behalf. Things would have unfolded in much the same way. I do not worship a God who is stingy in blessing because I weak in asking. But enacted prayer gave me eyes to see the miracle. Yes, even the miracle of the diagnosis of Torticollis. Just in time. Thank God, a diagnosis in time for exercises to have some effect.

Miracles happen every day. We only notice them when we are aware. We only remember to be thankful when we are aware. Otherwise, we go through life with a sense of entitlement and a hardness of heart which resents the normal maladies which afflict us all as human beings. Our constant bleat is "Why?" Why God? Why me? As if somehow, because we are believers we should be exempt from every suffering. But believing that God has the best interests of his children at heart is a step of faith. I think that we need this kind of faith most especially when we are tempted to despair. I think we need that kind of faith when faced with 'one more thing.'

She who has ears to hear, let her hear. He who has eyes to see, let him see. Jesus said that. I believe that enacted prayer allowed me to see my daughter and her husband and children prophetically, as God sees them. Whole, standing strong, eyes heavenward. This prophesy has helped me grasp the miracles which are moving them to this place of wholeness, despite fleeting contrary indications.

This week we made a second pilgrimage to Toronto's famous Hospital for Sick Children, affectionately known the world over as 'Sick Kids.' I fully expected the surgeon to say that Robbie was still not big and strong enough to undergo his plastic surgery. Lack of faith? Or a way of protecting myself from disappointment? Perhaps.

Robbie has more than tripled his birth weight. He squirmed and wriggled all over the examining table. He arched his back. He protested at being immobilized for examination. He is ready. His surgery is booked for January 10, 2006. Will you pray? Will you enact the healing in your minds. Visualize it. See it as true. A good result. No complications. Calmness amongst us adults. Quick healing.

Every day is another miracle day with Robbie. Since the enacted prayer, his mother switched him to soy milk formula and his mucous secretions are decreased, which helps his breathing and decreases the tendency for asthma attacks!! To night he sat up in a high chair at the table for family dinner and had mashed up squash and carrots just like the rest of us. His two baby teeth were unequal to the corn. He looked so proud of himself. "See me. See me."

We see you. We see you, Robbie. A strong young man with a bright mind and a sensitive heart, open to all the possibilities of the Spirit and living by Faith.

Playing God 3

2005-09-18T23:28:00.000-04:00

So it was, that the inimitable Rich Swingle introduced the concept of enacted prayer to the entire student body and faculty at the School for Music and Gospel Arts. For the first demonstration of enacted prayer, Rich would 'play God'. I had an intuitive sense that what would follow would be similar to psychodrama or sociodrama, something I was familiar with in my work. I was intensely interested.

Rich called for a prayer request. I felt an immediate inner response. I had just received news from home that my grandson Robbie, then seven months old, had once again been to the doctor's with an asthma attack and that his parents were taking him to hospital. I wanted prayer. I wanted it with urgency. I tried to hold myself back, feeling that this special prayer must surely be for one of the students. But when no one immediately leapt to his/her feet, I was catapulted out of my seat. I sprang into the pool of blessing.

Rich elicited information from me about my prayer request. I told about Robbie's fragile start to life and his asthma. Rich called for one of the faculty children to come up and play Robbie. A young girl came and was positioned in a lying pose at the front of the stage. Drama students volunteered to be Robbie's parents. Another faculty child came forward to play Robbie's four year old sister. It became clear that each person in this little family had special need for prayer. Then Rich called for someone to play illness. Rich asked 'illness' to put his foot gently on 'Robbie's' chest. And finally, someone was asked to play me. This was something I hadn't anticipated. My niece Kathryn came forward, eyes shining and full of compassion. I knew, of all the people in the room, no one could understand my heart more keenly than Kathryn and no one would play me better. It was a special moment for both of us as our eyes met across the width of the stage.

Rich prayed briefly that God would be in the enacted prayer. I sat to one side of the stage, my back against a pillar. The enacted prayer began. Everyone slowly moved into their roles. It was evident from their postures that Robbie's parents were sad and felt helpless. Robbie looked so frail. His little sister looked lost in the midst of something which was huge and overwhelming. Kathryn, playing me, went around trying to hold up everyone. She lifted Robbie's head, without success. She tried to raise the arms of Robbie's parents. Their arms fell back helplessly at their sides.

Tears began to roll down my cheeks unbidden. I wasn't sobbing. I made no sound. Tears just fell as I recognized the ways in which I try to hold up everyone in my family, not just those represented on the stage. Others too. The whole multigenerational mass. My own helplessness to effect change was apparent. As my tears fell, I let go of my need to control any outcome. This was beyond me.

God moved into the scene. Kathryn, playing me, took Robbie's sister out of the family group to one side and entertained her, while God worked with Robbie and his parents. First, he banished 'illness.' He removed the heavy foot from off Robbie's chest and cast illness away. He assessed the helplessness of Robbie's parents. He blessed them. He loved them. He nurtured them. He lifted their eyes and their arms toward heaven. When they themselves were strong, they were able to attend to Robbie. They stooped down to where Robbie lay, to sit by him, cradle him and love him. I felt the tension of the situation release. I felt calmness and peace. Kathryn, playing me, restored Robbie's sister to the family group. They stood closely, mutually supported, as a unit, undivided by illness, serene and whole.

The picture of my little family as portrayed on stage by this group of relative strangers was intensely touching. Powerful. I could hear people sniffing back tears from all over the large auditorium. Otherwise, there was not a single sound. The word Amen was spoken. And Rich sealed what had happened with a brief spoken prayer.

Now I don't know about you, but for me, when I have been deeply affected by God's Spirit, my mind gets very large. I see potential. I feel enlightenment. My mind is large enough to possess possibilities, but it is also numbed in some way. Regular talking, walking and even thinking are difficult. I stumbled back to my seat. I think some people hugged me. The service swirled on around me. I have no idea what else went on. I was in a different place.

And a different place was where I remained for the rest of the week. As a matter of fact, I am still resting in that special spot. Sacred space. Mercifully, mobility, speech and thinking capacity returned to me.
1.) I functioned at a high level troughout the week, and was able to be present to many different people in many different ways.
2.) I was absolutely released from responsibilty for things at home. When I placed a check in phone call to each of my daughters, they were unavailable to talk. I got my sons-in-law instead. I took it as an indication that things were well in control without me. I didn't have to hold everyone up.
3.) God's Spirit rested on me in a unique way. I felt nudged by the Spirit. Say yes. Say no. Do this. Do that. Don't do that. Try this. Say that. Don't say that. This immediate, constant, unhesitating sense of the presence of God in a minute by minute way was quite new to me.
4.) After a lifetime of wrestling with God, like Jacob at Peniel, I carried in my body a wound, but I felt continually touched by blessing. This was the prayer I had carried in my heart for years. I had sung it, pleaded and bargained for it. Demanded it. "I will not let You go until you bless me." A lifetime of this prayer. And now, in this strange way, when I asked for prayer for someone else, this blessing came. This was intimacy with God, not totally unfamiliar, but fresh and new.

So that was the first and perhaps the most profound answer to the enacted prayer. But there's more to follow.

Playing God 2

2005-09-11T21:36:00.000-04:00

Imagine the most energetic, postive thinking and committed Christian you know. Multiply that energy by two. Package it in a slight, masculine, athletic frame. Top it with an expressive, deeply sensitive, strong boned and often willfully clownish face, slightly receding hair and an invisible halo. You've got Rich Swingle, a New York actor and playwright. Rich brought his love, his talents, prayers and energies for a second time this year to the School for Music and Gospel Arts at Jackson's Point.

Rich played St. John in an amazing one man interpretation of the book of Revelation. Neatly avoiding the usual eschatological and didactic pitfalls, Rich rendered a portrayal of John's vision on the Isle of Patmos which captivated us and set us to thinking about the power of prayer, the purpose of life, the meaning of vision, the grace and love and yes, JUDGMENT of God.

Rich also played God. He taught others to play God. You read that right. Rich played God. Not for Rich the wry comedic style of George Burns or imaginative dialogues of Bill Cosby. Rich's turn as God came as he used the tool of enacted prayer to discern the heart of God. Drama students and faculty children supported Rich as he addressed our prayer concerns. Taking roles as family members, ill friends and relatives, victims of hurricane Katrina, aid workers, pastors, youth leaders and so on, the students mimed oppression, illness and distress. Rich or a designated student 'played God', moving to embrace, to heal, to comfort, to encourage, to embolden, to relieve, to sustain, to uphold, to release. I cannot find words to describe how utterly moving enacted prayer was. But I can tell you how this kind of prayer touched my life, and freed me up to do my real work at the school. I'll tell you about that in my next post.

While I'm gathering my courage for that, take a look at Rich's blog sites, his itinerary, his prayer blog and other bits by clicking on the title of this post. Rich is out west on a three week tour and will be doing enacted prayer with survivors of hurricane Katrina in Denver, Colorado. If you read back through Rich's posts you'll find pictures of students at this fabulous camp and the story of how I woke Rich up on the morning of the last day to tell him what enacted prayer had meant to me.

Playing God 1

2005-09-05T17:13:00.000-04:00

I've been away from blogging for a bit. Been working with a staggeringly energetic and talented group of young adults at The Salvation Army School for Music and Gospel Arts at Jackson's Point, Sutton, Ontario. Over the next few posts I want to share some of the things I experienced. I will be writing about prayer and the power of prayer and healing.

A lot of praying of one kind and another went on at this camp. Students prayed scripture in the Jewish manner, all at once and in full voice while circling around the auditorium. Faculty and students prayed, sang, worshipped, praised. Some leapt up and down, danced, did cartwheels and flips. Others drew prayers. Some lay prostrate before God. Others knelt in the traditional pose of worship, heart lower than head and arms outstretched. Hands were an important accompaniment to prayer. Hands raised. Hands clapping. Hands cupped. Hands joined. And feet were important too. Sandled. Sneakered. Feet in need of a good wash. Manicured feet. Whatever their condition, our feet were metaphorically bare, because we were standing on holy ground.

In the midst of all of this, on Wednesday evening, I met the mother of a girl who had been killed years before, in a tragic car accident in connection with the camp. We talked for some time before we found our common ground. My husband's cousin had been critically injured in the fiery crash which took her daughter's life. They had been best friends. I remember how we had received the news in helpless horror and were thrown to our knees. I remember not being able to find the words to pray. And now, twenty-six years later, this mother was eager to hear this year's crop of campers perform at the midweek festival. "It was a long time ago," she said simply.

I remember feeling guilty about not knowing how to pray at the time of the accident. Finally I wrote my feelings down. Now, I felt I was being given permission to pray without words. If one could jump up and down in prayer, march around in prayer, lie down in prayer, then groans, interpreted by God's Spirit, were acceptable prayer. This is what I wrote, somwhat defiantly, at the time of the accident:

I cannot pray with words.
I write with words,
but
I pray with sighs,
or thoughts
or faces.

Then I cannot be accused
of trying
to make up God's mind for Him
or of colouring prayer
with too much self.

And there are
times too terrible for tears.
A breath and heartbeat
suffice then
to bring Him near.

For P.H. C.K. Aug. 31, 1979

More on this topic to follow.

Life Is Too Short

2005-08-20T11:00:00.000-04:00

"Life is too short." This was one of my father's favourite sayings. Plus, "Do it now," and "She who hesitates is lost." The message was: procrastination leads to regret, and ultimately ruin!! Late in life, when asked if he had regrets, he said: "I wish I had gotten out to work sooner." In the 1930's young people worked to help support the family. Petted youngest of five, my father was offered university. (He got around to fulfilling his parents' dream in the 1960's.) But as a kid, he wanted to get his hands dirty. Contribute. Like his brothers and sisters. And as an old man, he wished he had started sooner!!! This from someone who worked harder than most any other two men I have ever known.

Obsessed with the brevity of time. Beneath an engraving of one of his handmade clocks, his gravestone reads, "So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom." Ps. 90:12 KJV My brother wanted us to put, "Life is too short." Funny. True. We balked at irreverent.

I'm numbering my days. Just attended a thirty year reunion of the booming Sunday School of our first pastorate. Met again the eager twelve year old, now a vigorous, greying, prosperous forty-two. And a man who finished his week of long distance trucking with a stint in one of the blue buses. He's retired, a widower, softer now, gentled down by time and sorrow. A Sunday School mom brought nearly grown grandchildren to the reunion. Her soft-featured metis face was beautiful as ever under snow white hair. Life is short.

I'm numbering days. The never ending purge of Dawsonwood continues. Sorting. Tossing. Keeping. Giving away. Going through old photos. Making up keepsake boxes for my parents' five grandchildren. Wasn't it only yesterday my parents were my age? There they are. Young looking. Taking trips to the Middle East and China. Here's Pavarotti, who they met somewhat incongruously in Beijing. Here are shards from that dig in the Middle East. Who gets that pen stand my father fashioned to display an ancient clay pot handle?? That shard is centuries older than any of us will ever be. Life is short.

Numbering days. Here are the incarnations of Dawsonwood Cottage in black and white and living colour. The house buried under snow. The garden with mini trees dug up from the wild and planted in their infancy. They are giants now. And the kitchen. Yellow. Aqua. French cafe mural. Red check curtains. Peach and green with subtle wallpaper. Infamous cluttered green plaid. It will be French again soon. French Country this time. If life isn't too short.

Days. Wasn't it only yesterday the children were small, fishing off the dock, paddling upstream? There's Rob. Supervising swimming. Playing guitar at campfire. A boy-man thin as a stick. Our girls, wee tots beneath blankets. Could it possibly have been raining? Were we singing in the rain? And here's my brother, young and handsome. Has he always worn that tidy beard? Nearly forever. Here's Dawsonwood buried in snow. Len's on the roof, shovelling. Drifts from the roof meet drifts on the ground. Life is too short.

I'm numbering my days. Perhaps that is why I stay up half the night. Redeeming the time. Reviewing my life for signs of wisdom. Finding beauty even in pictures of me. What's that father? "Too soon old, too late smart." Right.

Spent some time recently with a visitor who wondered why we only know what we know late in life. It seems to take for ever to be wise. No regrets. It is a process. The child who visioned the light of God at six, has walked in that light even when she thought it was darkness.

Teach us to number our days aright,
that we may gain a heart of wisdom. Ps. 90:12 NIV

Sleep Deprivation

2005-08-16T14:51:00.000-04:00

This 'poem' was inspired by Cindy's post of July 15, 2005 (click on title for link). Yes, I am that far behind. Part of the reason is that I am staying up all night to read, and clean out closets as well as stargaze. One night I listened to a neighbourhood orgy downriver, an unusual thing in these parts. I called the police, talked to the police and my three year old grandson was up then, thinking the police had come to the house because he had fallen out of bed. Then, of course, we were all awake and had to stay up longer to see how the cops would handle the violence. It took them several hours to set up their intervention. All has been quiet since. Not a light is showing from across the river after dark. But the habit of late hours is well...read about it:

Hunger for quietness
can be addictive.
The house at rest,
deep darkness,
wee hours
stolen from
the abyss of sleep,
aloneness.
Staying up all night
is habit forming.

But
Lunacy feasts
on too much dewy grass,
sips of silken summer air,
bites of coming frost,
the flavour of northern lights,
starsong and moonset.
Finally it renders a giant belch of
overindulgence in solitude and nightcraft.

Hangover the next morning.
Moderation in everything.
Excess in nothing.
Creativity exists in balanced appetites,
cravings held in check,
a strict diet of sleep and wakefulness
in healthful portions.

Sweet Dreams, all.

Constance 08/05

Lost in the Ether

2005-08-14T06:07:00.000-04:00

Until I began to use internet, the word 'ether' was otherworldly. Speaking of sky, life, mystery and myth. It was a spacious word, timeless. It harked back to Greek gods and forward to intergalactic travel. Grander than mere air. Poetic. Ethereal.

Oh yes, and it also reminded me of the terrible smell which preceded my tonsil operation at age six, and the lonely, terrifying hospital stay which followed. It is this ether which sticks in my nostrils today...AND THE FACT THAT WE HAVE HAD THE MOST OPPRESSING COMPUTER PROBLEMS FOR SEVERAL WEEKS. EVERY SIMPLE TASK IS A SLOW RELEARNING...like swallowing after that dreadful surgery.

I am back up but lost my emails, my addresses, my favourites and my capacity to post pictures. Thanks to those who placed comments while I was gone. I do appreciate the encouragement to keep writing and am honoured that any of you think this space is an entertaining or inspirational place to visit.

Cindy, I hope I find your address. I haven't forgotten that stimulating list of questions.

In-laws and Outlaws

2005-08-05T22:46:00.000-04:00

The Harris family has moved back home. They are officially 'out' of Dawsonwood. Their house is looking wonderful. There are a few more things to do. But the basic things: Robbie's room, the downstairs painting and flooring, the bathrooms are done. And who would have thought that underneath that mangy orange carpet was a gorgeous pine staircase, now stained and painted and shining like new?!!!

I had thought to write something funny about this experience, but find that it really hasn't reached the "funny stage" yet. My computer is lagging behind my fingers which reminds me that I, too, am tired. There are about ten loads of wash to finish downstairs and Dawsonwood guests arrive tomorrow.

But I want to say a word about my son-in-law Dylan. He has put up with whatever design or decorating ideas Barb or I have hatched...put up with our moodswings, our alternate despair and excitement, uncomplainingly (at least in front of me). He has slaved unstintingly from 6 a.m. to midnight in exhausting heat. He has put furniture together!!! I need say no more. But I will. He actually made that laminate flooring come right, matching kitchen, dining room, living room and hallways in one seamless gleam of perfection. (It looks easy on the decorating shows, folks. It is not.)

Living together is not always easy. I want to thank my daughter Barbara for all the times she bit her tongue before biting off my head. I appreciate the fact that she took my unnecessary reminders, suggestions and nudges in good spirit. Her decision to do wainscoating in the powder-room was genius. Her courage in purging and her daring in holding a garage sale right in the middle of the reno were admirable and rewarding. And she continued to pull occasional night shifts, endured the bomb scare at the nursing home, and care for her sick baby.

We grandparents did our best with child care...but we WOULD forget to take along the puffer. We let the kids stay up too late, and generally wrecked any semblance of routine they had formerly known. So now that Barb is left with the little finicky bits to finish and the new asthma routine to establish, I pray she'll continue to have the strength to do what needs to be done and joy in doing it.

The Unofficial Dawsonwood Cottage Debut

2005-07-21T22:06:00.000-04:00

Down on the dock, peace and quiet on the slow branch of the Muskoka River.

They say good things happen when you least expect them. There have been moments during the past eight months when I thought Dawsonwood Cottage would never really open. I haven't kept to my schedule. The cost of even minor renovations has seemed insuperable. The emotional trial of purging has been at times overwhelming. Occasionally the thought of hosting even one guest has sickened me. In this steamy, smoggy summer, in the midst of illness and drama, home renovations and a multiplicity of change, while my back was turned and I was busy doing other things, Dawsonwood Cottage opened itself.

In the last two weeks we have hosted long term guests (family), unexpected guests (friends), planned guests (pastoral support), invited guests from overseas no less, indirect guests (via telephone, email and blogging). The place has been a hive of activity. I am getting about five hours sleep a night. Can't remember when I had my afternoon nap.

Dawsonwood Cottage has not been at its best. Grandchildren's fingerprints dancing across windows and doors. Carpet soil hiding under footstools. Corn cobs lingering on the kitchen table. The family room groaning under loads of wash, all clean, some folded, some not. When I was younger I could never have entertained the thought of fifteen people seeing my home in this state.

Guess what? Everyone has had a good time. What has really needed to be done has been done. God has shown up, as they say. Dawsonwood inaugurated itself.

I have dished up meals in record time. Catered for the reno crew at 80 Woodward. Unfolded davenports and cots. Folded them up again. Made beds. Stripped beds. Made them up again. Nursed my grandson. Played with my granddaughter. Shared these two important people with my other guests.

It has been remarkably good, in retrospect. A time of high energy, sometimes mistaken for tension.

Those who have shared the Dawsonwood vision from the beginning have always felt that this is a healing place...this small town, small home on the south branch of the Muskoka River. A friend who plans a visit this fall has written that this is a safe place. In this past two weeks it has begun to fulfill its promise as a healing place.

I am being healed. A blog in and of itself. And Baby Robbie's asthma has stabilized here. He is visibly growing and becoming stronger every day. He has cut his first tooth, and is making attempts at creeping as he rolls and even back flips himself around the living room floor in a pool of constant sunshine.

Today our visitors were a family of four. Mom and Dad in ministry with children 6 and 4 years old. The younger child has a form of unspecified autism. Here at Dawsonwood he did several things his parents had never seen him do before. He even experimented with food he had never eaten before...quite an accomplishment for any child. He met new people and communicated with them. He was expanding his skills while we sat and talked. Babe, our aging Sheltie was his constant if somewhat reluctant companion. She was reborn as the therapy dog of her youth, finding perhaps vestigial memories of the children she played with when I worked in community mental health. Neat.

So the door opened itself, I thought, as I rocked Robbie to sleep on the balcony in the cool of the evening. I let myself down into the moment, the rest of holding a sleeping child, the movement of the swing. Surrendering to what God has given, to what is and to the best which is yet to come.

The door to Dawsonwood Cottage.

When We are Weak, Then He Is Strong

2005-07-13T01:19:00.000-04:00

Robbie, age three months

This is Robbie, six weeks ago. Now he is longer, rounder, smiles and chuckles. He can pull up to a solid lap stand. Roll over and back unassisted. Hard to believe, this cheerful, contented baby is ill. Robbie has been hospitalized twice in the last three weeks. With ASTHMA.

I am ashamed to admit I have never understood this disease. I've been rather inclined to judge it. Discount it. Blame the victims. The same way others tell me, as a depressive, to give myself a shake.

I'm learning. I'm humbled. God is at work.

Asthma is a pernicious troubling sort of disease. Worrying. It calls for all out warfare against the enemy; dust, smoke, pet dander. Omnipresent pollutants, seen and unseen, are hunted down. Clutter and dust eliminated. Older flooring exhumed. Laminate flooring installed. Ducts cleaned. Walls painted. Mould exterminated. New roof. New insulation. New windows. And the two family pets, Tisha and Pollywoggalina, have needed, sadly, a new home.

Amazingly, in just three days, things are coming together. Answers to prayer. Robbie and his family have been sheltering with us for the duration. Funding has become available.

Renovations are mammoth. My daughter Barbara and her husband Dylan tore into the task with the kind of enthusiasm only parents of threatened young can muster. They were ripping up carpet within minutes of their return from hospital.

Help has come. My brother and nephew did grunt work...getting out ancient nails and staples and uncovering a solid staircase. "We're good at destruction," they rejoiced. My sister-in-law took over child care. Contributed perspective, practicality and calm.

High heat, humidex and smog, have made this enterprize more dangerous for all. Papa Robert has suffered more than usual with chest conjestion, fatique and severe coughing. It is hard to imagine how a small baby can handle such an assault on the lungs. But young Robbie is a fighter and has lots of people praying for him.

I'm general contractor and design consultant on the job. My own father hovers in spirit at my shoulder and utters, "That stair rail has to go." And, "If you're going to do a job, do it right."

Son-in-law Dylan, a man of brain and skill, is accomplishing the impossible. The new subfloor is almost complete. Coats of paint have gone onto main floor walls. Dylan with Barb has done most of the labour. More friends and relations have surfaced to help. Dylan's brother David and friend Chris are working like a well oiled machine. Barb's friends, Sandy and Cheryl, have wielded paint brushes, cleared up, swept up and taken glee in it. Other people are promising to come as the week unfolds.

There have been miracles. Cat placement. In a world of surplus cats and kittens, who would want our excess pair? Yesterday a young couple adopted both cat and kitten. Their previous cats had died within a year of eachother, and they greeted the new additions to their family with choking tears of gratitude. Polly, they claimed, was a veritable reincarnation of their former feline companion.

And Rachael, who at three, might have resented the loss of her pets, seems to understand. "No furry pets so we can help Robbie get well," she exclaims with a wag of her imperious finger. She looks forward to the purchase a gold fish the size of a Northern pike, with twenty teeth just like her and long brown hair. "Goldie" will live in her room.

Love generates amazing energies. We are all exhausted. We misunderstand one another. Struggle. Get back on the same page of the combat plan. In our frailty, the power of God is unleashed. I am learning more about the God of sufficiency and provision, more about trust, more about the awesome capacity of all those I love.

Keep us in your prayers. With gratitude, Connie.

London Blasts: Counter Attack of Love

2005-07-08T00:59:00.000-04:00

Last night, after watching the news from London, I wrote:

Let us exercise civility in the face of barbarism.
Choose compassion, not horror.
Fortitude, not vengeance.
Courage not terror.
Let trauma teach us,
soften our hearts,
make us, not more vulnerable, but resilient.
Let our common wounds unite us, not our power.
This is our work.
We are both terrorists and victims by turn.
Only the privilege of moral choice
determines our humanity.

This morning's word from Henri Nouwen said it again:

Nobody escapes being wounded. We all are wounded people, whether physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually. The main question is not "How can we hide our wounds?" so we don't have to be embarrassed, but "How can we put our woundedness in the service of others?" When our wounds cease to be a source of shame, and become a source of healing, we have become wounded healers.

Jesus is God's wounded healer: through his wounds we are healed. Jesus' suffering and death brought joy and life. His humiliation brought glory; his rejection brought a community of love. As followers of Jesus we can also allow our wounds to bring healing to others.

No one can expect those recently traumatized by the London subway blasts to be wounded healers. They battle for their lives, count their miracles, grieve, suffer, and begin the long, perhaps endless journey towards wholeness. But those of us who have known what it is to suffer. Those of us who are informed by our wounds as well and our sins can stand in the gap for them. We can bring the understanding of pain and healing to Londoners through prayer. We can surround them with Christ's compassion. We can make the masterful counter attack of Love.

Beyond Jealousy

2005-07-06T07:52:00.000-04:00

It is time to repent. Of jealousy. A major impediment to growth in my life. Should be spelled...'gee lousy', I think. Stinkin' thinkin' as my AA friends say. So petty. So puerile. So petulant.

So I'm confessing jealousy:

Resentment of those born into conventional religious backgrounds. The so-called 'normal'. Those who didn't have to perpetually explain the eccentricities of their churches. Time now to celebrate the gifts of my unique heritage. Time to honour the struggle which has birthed in me a broader, deeper spiritual understanding. Time to let this petty jealousy go. Forever.

Jealousy of the genetically thin. Good grief. I've hated them on sight, (not you Stephanie). But I've sacrificed potential friendships. And I've spent fifty years covering up my arms. How I have sweltered for my sins!!! Having taken a realistic look at those arms, I'm wearing sleeveless tops for the first time in my life. Cool. Enough. Let my next new friend be thin or plump. This no longer matters.

Distrust of those whose business, organizational, relational and technical skills help them to forward their careers, get grants for projects. GET PUBLISHED. If any of this can be learned late in life, let me learn it. Let me find people who can help me with the things I'm not good at. Dear God, release me from reverse snobbery, the secret belief that it is a virtue to be incompetent in business. I declare this as the lie it is.

Downright envy of the rich. Crass covetousness. Special resentment of those who have money and no taste. I have achieved miracles with no money, basic skills and a good eye!!! Relative poverty has been an incentive to creativity. I don't need to drag others into the equation at all. Still, I would love to be able to afford to pay someone to paint the endless dark trim in Dawsonwood Cottage. And that's okay.

I regret that my mostly silent jealousy may have hurt my family. I've given pain to my husband, who celebrates abundance and accepts rather than regrets reality. I've provided a negative role model for my children. Let my pettiness not be perpetuated into the next generation.

Henri Nouwen's thoughts on the story of the prodigal son/daughter have been seminal for me this past week (click on title above). Here is his salutary thinking:

Jealousy arises easily in our hearts. In the parable of the prodigal son, the elder son is jealous that his younger brother gets such a royal welcome even though he and his loose women swallowed up his father's property (Luke 15:30). And in the parable of the labourers in the vineyard, the workers who worked the whole day are jealous that those who came at the eleventh hour receive the same pay as they did (see Matthew 20:1-16). But the Father says to the older son: "You are with me always and all I have is yours" (Luke 15:31). And the landowner says: "Why should you be envious because I am generous?" (Matthew 20:15).

When we truly enjoy God's unlimited generosity, we will be grateful for what our brothers and sisters receive. Jealousy will simply have no place in our hearts.

Company 150

2005-07-02T00:34:00.000-04:00

While I recover from surgery, I am taking time to catch up with myself, read a few blogs and send up a few prayers. It seems that weeks have sped by and that my spiritual rhythms have been off kilter, along with my bio-rhythms. This is what seems to me to be important tonight.

My young niece, Kathryn Ballantine, is part of a youth ministry this summer. She will be singing, dancing, acting, and teaching in an initiative to inspire other young people to develop skills in contemporary worship arts. Click on title above for link to Company 150. You'll see Kathryn's picture and bio there, as well as early posts from team members and music tracks. This is an earnest, talented and dedicated group of young people who deserve our spiritual support this summer.

My littlest grandson, Robbie was in hospital on Father's Day, the day which should have been his christening. He has recovered well and is looking, acting and sounding more his healthy self. After his shakey start in life, he has been thriving. This infection was only a temporary set-back. We are thankful for him each day, and bask in his enigmatic, wise little smile.

But even as we rejoice about Robbie, our hearts are heavy with news that three year old Katelyn Bedard has died from complications of leukemia. Some of Katie's story and her funeral arrangements can be found at www2.caringbridge.org/canada/katieb. Her parents and grandparents (my cousin Melba (Williams) and her husband Rene Bedard) have borne Katie's illness with great strength of faith and character. They need our prayers.

Yesterday was Canada Day and we are in the middle of the high holiday between the first and fourth of July, when two sister nations celebrate their births. Best wishes go out to my American friends. Can we pray that our two countries will put justice and righteousness before economic growth and power? And if this is too big a prayer for nations, can we pray for these graces for ourselves as individuals? And wisdom. And discernment. I need these gifts right now.

For all lands in turmoil,
For all families in distress,
For all people who are confused,
For those in prison, and those being set free,
For the sick, the grieving, the lonely,
Lord have mercy.
Have mercy too, on me.
Amen

Jack and Jill

2005-06-26T10:12:00.000-04:00

I am at the age when doctors advise me to take Calcium for my bones. I up my yoghurt quota, eat a bit of goat cheese on my salad with broccoli and carry on. I figure it's mostly downhill from here, and the fewer pills I have to remember to take, the better. Never had a broken bone. Never smoked. Never drank. I live in a kind of foolish haze of optimism with regards to my health.

Still, I wonder if there is a kind of pre-senescence after menopause. Like puberty but the reverse. An awkwardness. As things begin to fall apart.

I had a fall on Friday evening, while I was out gathering flowers for Dawsonwood Cottage. It was one of a singularly tedious string of mishaps this week...the bruised finger caught in the door, the brush fire flash which trimmed my eyelashes, the ugly abrasion from my miscalculation of the distance between my body and the open refrigertor door.

So the fall. The steps down to the waterfront are supposed to provide a gentle descent, but I twisted my ankle on the last one and lost my balance. I flew sideways through the air. Heard a crack as the side of my face hit the trunk of an ancient birch and landed squarely in a patch of Tansy, with my head inches from the water. My legs flailed vainly in the air.

There was a moment of panic before I realized..."I'm okay." In that moment, there was a surge of doom and gloom, self-blame and more than a tinge of resentment at my undignified position in the Tansy. "My face will be permanently deformed." "I should have taken that calcium. I have a broken hip." "Are my teeth okay?" Then and only then. "Good grief, I'm perfectly okay."

"Why doesn't anybody hear my screaming?" And. "How long can I lie here upside down in the Tansy before Rob notices I'm not in the house?" More hollers. More screams. Dusk descending. No gallant rescue.

I hauled myself upright, not an easy task when one is head first down a 45 degree incline. I dusted myself off. I stepped gingerly back towards the house, gathering bits of bouquet which had been jettisoned in all directions.

Now this it is hard to believe. I should have had mild concussion at least. A few bruises. A black eye to boast about. A contusion on my face where I hit the tree. Nope. This is the sum total of my injuries: A tiny scrape on my ankle along with a nearly invisible bruise. A few Tansy scratches on one knee. A gentle soreness of muscles as if I had been weeding too long.

And a miracle. I went into that tumble with a major overbite, but I swear that as a result of my face hitting the side of the tree, my teeth form a better bite than they have been able to accomplish in the last thirty years! The whole thing was like a violent, unexpected chiropractic adjustment! And because of that miracle, I get no sympathy. Minimally, I should get commiseration for the post traumatic shock.

My brother claims the fall has healed me. He claims I won't need the scheduled gall bladder surgery next Thursday...the fall having corrected all that ails me. Am I to be denied even a get well balloon and a card?

Having no broken bones to show for my mishap, I am confirmed in my reluctance to take Calcium. Obviously, my bones are made of iron and my head is stainless steel.

Still it is a salutary event. I am in decline, beginning the relentless disintegration of later middle age. I need to watch where I am going.

Interview From Stephanie

2005-06-13T18:58:00.000-04:00

Stephanie (click title above for link) had an interview on her blog and suggested that if anyone else wanted to be interviewed that she would do the same. I went for it. Here's the format:
1. leave me a comment saying "interview me"
2. I will respond by asking you five questions, selected for you.
3. you will update your weblog with the answers to the questions.
4. you will include this explanation and offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. when others comment asking to be interviewed you will ask them 5 questions.

So here are my questions from Stephanie:

1. What feminine characteristic of God do you see most clearly today?

Mystery. It has been hot and hazy down our way these past few days. When sun shines, earth steams. Pollen count is high. The river is covered with a yellow veil, carrying fertility downstream. When the clouds roll in, the air is heavy, pregnant with rain.
These are days in my life when I see through a glass darkly. I hold the miracle of baby Robbie in my arms. A mere four months ago we wondered if he would survive. Now he's triple his birth weight and healthy. I am blessed by his being in the world. Still, I cannot know his future. I live with uncertainty, as do we all. The endless shrouded mystery of birth and life and aging and dying.
My mother is failing once again. Her death may come today, or a week from now, or six months or six years. She reaches into the past for her parents and siblings, all of whom are long in heaven. My mother forgets this and wants to contact them. I wonder if they are calling to her from the other side, coming close to her as she lingers here. Such are the mysteries, the feminine face of God...the beginning and end stages of life, the unknown vastnesses of birth and death, which I, as women before me, patiently attend.
There is an anticipation that the heat wave will break with a tremendous exhibition of power: thunder, torrential rain, wind. God may be felt in earthquake, tornado and fire. But for the moment, my world is heavy with Mystery and I must content myself with waiting for revelation.

2. you have a depth of knowledge that amazes me. What lit the fire for you to accumulate this depth of understanding in life?

Suffering. The fact of suffering is not easily answered by fundamentalist theologies. My own infertility challenged the pat notion that if one is good and follows the rules, then God will respond by showering blessings in just the way we demand. It isn't true. Rain falls on the just and the unjust. Faith is accepting the reality of God in the midst of uncertainty, misfortune, and suffering.
So, I began a search for God which went beyond 'walking the aisle' and 'accepting Christ as my Saviour.' I had done these things as a young child. And God was calling on me to minister to others who had done the supposed 'right' things, and yet had experienced broken marriage, mental and terminal illnesses. People who were cut off from significant members of their families. Who were confused in sexual identity. Who were other. Who were lonely. Whose children became addicts, attempted suicide, ran away. People who had been sexually abused as children. Who had suffered the indignities and atrocities of war. People who were abused by the Church and handicapped by rigid and unproductive ideas about God. In order to walk with these people, I had to develop an understanding of God which which encompassed their present circumstance and suffering and offered hope. In doing this, I was led out of Law and towards a deeper understanding of Grace.
Suffering lit my fire to find a living, breathing God. A God Who Is Here and Now. In the suffering place. In the place of Joy. I read voraciously. I observed human nature. I watched and listened for God everywhere, and I still do.

3. What is different in your life since you took the Path at Linwood House last year?

Beauty. Permission, even vocation, to express Beauty. At Linwood House, I came out of the closet. Forget about Truth, for me, although I respect those who seek it and long for it. Give me sunsets not prooftexts. Give me crocuses not religious conventions. Give me Beauty.
Truth is Beauty, for me. Not of course, an original thought. But freeing. In the world I inhabit, where pain meets me in the faces of those I serve, it had always seemed a little self indulgent to love beautiful words, to admire beautiful things, to tremble at beautiful sights and sounds, to want to create beauty in a vase of flowers, on a canvas, in a poem. But I do, and always have, secretly, covertly. And yet Beauty is a transcendent aspect of God. It lifts us to the Eternal.
Once, I worked with a woman who had lost her twenty year old son in a horrific traffic accident. Her grief was profound and palpable. She was haunted by a vision of her son's crushed car being hauled away in a pile of other wrecks. As we worked with this traumatic image, I asked her to imagine her favourite flowers for a healing visualization. Her flowers were white roses. I asked her to begin to deck the destroyed cars with roses, one at a time, and then in their hundreds, until she had covered the wreck of her son's car with this beautiful tribute. She did this, and added a cross of flowers over the tailgate in her mind. She repeated this whenever the image came to haunt her, and slowly its horror lost its grip. In the spring she planted an all white memorial garden at her home to honour her son and to mark a step in her healing journey.
I thought, for several years, this intervention was a fluke, a sort of fleeting moment of inspiration, which just happened to work. But now I'm out, I see the truth of healing in Beauty, and how it is at the core of what I do.
Beauty can be present in hazy, humid weather. It can be part of the healing of great loss. It is not an accessory but a necessity. In the deep, safe Beauty of Linwood House I received encouragement to claim my love for Beauty and my intuitive sense that Beauty, in all it various forms can heal. I am called to be a lover and creator of Beauty in the world.

4. What challenges you most about blogging?

a) Technology. Without a doubt. My struggle with technology continues to hold me back. But I blog on anyway.
b) Staying true to myself. I tend to wander off topic sometimes in my comments. I try to be erudite. Clever. I sometimes speak in borrowed language (I do not mean plagiarize). I mean a voice not my own. I come from my head and not my heart...well, really in truth to myself, I want to come from both. At my worst, I try to be logical. In fact, I try too hard altogether. Being true to myself means letting love flow out and language come as it will, almost bypassing thought and effort.

5. If you could see one lie about women in the Body exchange for truth in your lifetime what would that be? (There may be many but is there one predominant one?)

Recognition of Prophetic Voice of Women. I think that the Body has generally accepted women when they have the gift of helps, tolerated them when they have the gift of teaching, and patronized them when they have the gift of prophesy. This is demeaning and a lie. Women's prophetic voices have validity, all the more because they express things differently from males in the Body. We need that difference.
Science has shown that the connectedness between left brain (intuition) and right brain (logic) is more fluid in women. Women cross back and forth between these aspects of thought with greater ease than men. I believe this gives women a special facility in speaking prophetically, and I believe that the Body would be greatly enriched by listening carefully rather than dismissing the voice of women. I believe God is calling young women and older women to speak out on issues of justice and righteousness, polity and politics. The woman as prophet is not without precedent biblically. I think her time has come in this twenty-first century and I hope I live to see this happen.

Thanks for the great questions, Stephanie.

#%@&

2005-06-12T23:01:00.000-04:00

Help!

The more firewalls I get, the more persistent and perverted the spyware becomes. My blog has been targeted somehow. Is nothing sacred???? Don't know if reading this will corrupt you. I suspect not, since I am avoiding the words which seem to have attracted notice. Two of them appeared in my masthead. Had to edit at the cost of language clarity and symmetry.

But...seems I can't use simple words like l-ve, fr--ndship, g-mble or even less common words like enigm-tic. Pop-ups having to do with l-ve, fr--ndship arrive with inexhaustible regularity. You can imagine how perverse those are. My blog about G-mling at Home Depot...innocent in and of itself seems to have attracted the most lurid, cheap and sensational on-line c-sino -ds. I have no idea what comes up because of the word enigm-tic. I've started to delete blogs and that seems less than satisfactory. I feel like a member of the underground trying to keep clear of the Naz-s. Don't want to spell in full for fear of inviting white s-premic-sts. Which obliquely suggests to me that the word enigm-tic is targeted because of Enigm-...you know, the famous WW11 decoding device. My blogs are certainly going to look like cod- if this goes on much longer.

It seems our combined household computer knowledge is insufficient to the g-rgantuan task of keeping our computer clean. The last tr-p to the pro shop deleted Bloggerbot, something I value. I know. I know.

I am too left brained for this task. Left, closest to the H-art...non-linear, divergent. People get this wrong all the time. They think left and right brain equals left and right politics. Wrong. See what I mean? How can a person like me really exist in the twenty-first century?

Anything underlined in this blog will instantly connect you to something neither of us asked for. Go directly to j-il. Don't cl-ck. Don't pass go. Do not collect two h-ndred d-llars.

I'm going to have to go back to pen and -nk.

Scribbling in the Dirt

2005-06-09T07:06:00.000-04:00

One of my favourite sites for meditation, continuity and connectedness is the Northumbrian Community. (Click on blog title for link.) There I was reminded once more of this story from John 8.

v. 3ff. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, "Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?" They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him. But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her." Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?" "No one, sir," she said. "Then neither do I condemn you," Jesus declared. "Go now and leave your life of sin."

Love it. The drama. The details. The denouement.

I love the way the crowd creeps away...the older ones first. What an interesting fact! It gives this account such a ring of authenticity. Perhaps the elders had a sharper remembrance of their sin. Perhaps, to give them credit, they acted responsibly in leadership with their tacit confession.

And of course, that enigmatic writing on the ground. There's been much speculation around what Jesus may have written. I dare to suggest...NOTHING AT ALL. He was scribbling, if you will. Making bubble letters of "The Law. The Law. The Law." Gaining time. Time to think of a just answer to the trick question. The religious leaders counted on a knee jerk response. But Jesus wasn't much given to impulse. He doodled and dawdled. The doodling provided distraction. It diverted the attention of the hostile crowd from the imperiled woman towards himself. Which is precisely what he does with all our sin. "Don't look at the sin," he was saying symbolically. "Look at me." And in that climate of acute shame, his lowered eyes and thoughtful mood, detoxified the intensely shaming focus on the woman. As it does for us all.

And so he mesmerized the crowd. Trick for trick. His doodling had a hypnotic effect and his answer, when it came, paralleled his actions in paradoxical complexity. "Let the one who is without sin, cast the first stone." And he let the people slip away as he lowered his eyes, and scratched in the dirt. He would not shame even the judgmental and the overscrupulous with his intensely truthful eyes.

I like to think Jesus tact, his averted gaze, calmed the woman, fascinated her. This moment was the beginning of her healing, providing her with respite before certain doom.

Jesus was never contaminated by sin or dirt. Healing a blind man with spittle mud. Washing his disciples dirty feet. He was earthy. He valued the essence of this basic life element. Dirt. Perhaps his actions signalled symbolically the mortality of us all. We come from dust and to dust we will return. Who is without sin?

There is something childlike in this picture. Something pure. Playful, even, were it not a life and death situation. And we could almost believe Jesus discounted or trivialized the sin, if it were not for his challenge to the woman. "Is there no one here to condemn you?" There is an implication in her remaining there alone. She is the one who condemns herself. As we all do. All too frequently. He takes the matter seriously. "Neither do I... Neither do I. Go, leave your life of sin."

I think I'll give myself some time this summer to doodle in the dirt. Fill a sandbox. Make mudpies. Dig deep with my grandchildren. Paddle about with squishy lakesilt between my toes. I shall think of the freedom of living without condemnation. I shall celebrate healing and forgiveness and acceptance and love. I shall distract myself from my own legalism, from obsessive guilt, from judgment of self and other.

I will take a dust bath of grace. And give myself time to think through the tricky questions, and revel in paradox. There is no condemnation.

The Ancient Lamp In My Hand

2005-05-30T18:30:00.000-04:00

This lamp is sacred to me. It connects my microcosm with antiquity and eternity. It lifts me beyond time.

An object at once both common and rare, the equivalent of a candle in a modern home, it is found in abundance in every Middle Eastern archeological dig. My parents bought two such lamps as registered artifacts when they participated in an educational dig. One lamp was perfect, soft orange clay in colour and possessing its handle. One was this lamp. It was not in a spirit of preferring one another that I chose this lamp. I had fallen in love with the lamp which showed most clearly the marks of its use. My brother received the perfect lamp.

It was a lamp like mine, which Jesus warned the disciples not to hide, but to set out where all could see. It was a lamp like mine which the virgins in the parable carried to the wedding feast. One can understand why it was so important for the women to carry extra precious oil. Just a few drops fill the lamp.

The flame is smudgy, reminding me of incense, of prayers going heavenward, of praise and cleansing. I wonder if some ancient residue of oil has survived. Could I be mingling my twentieth century prayers with the practical thanksgiving of some first century homemaker?

Let it be so. Let there not be a limit to prayer. Let it flow backward and forward through time and across the barriers of space and limitations of place. Let there be Light.

The Two Thousand Year Old Lamp

2005-05-19T07:51:00.000-04:00

This morning I lighted a lamp. An ancient lamp. More than two thousand years old. A tiny lamp, small enough to cradle in the palm of my hand. A lamp blackened by age and fire, its finely incised decorations still visible despite millenia of burial and abuse. A broken lamp, showing a rust red scar where the tiny handle had once been. I lit this lamp.

I thought of all the years I had delayed lighting the lamp. Putting it off until some special day, some day worthy of marking. And how at that moment, on a perfectly ordinary morning I was rekindling a flame long dead. It was an act of ritual devotion. A greeting to the morning, to opportunity, to hope, to life, to Spirit.

I celebrated the unknown hands, the women, who had held this lamp in just such a way, and tended its wayward light. I saw how it must have looked, tucked into a crevice in the hardened dirt walls, illuminating the inner space, where family met perhaps to rest at the passing of a long day. It cast long shadows to my present.

Since it first came into my possession, I have waited a mere quarter century to light the lamp. Trembled at the prospect of a burning bush experience. Delayed. Procrastinated because the thing required some work, some preparation of wick and oil. I might not do it right. It might not light afterall. Now in the afterglow of Pentecost, I have simply lighted the lamp.

Scent of sandlewood oil rose in the warmth of the flame. I was one with scent and lamp and flame. New beginning. New and Ancient Presence. For a brief moment. Then the light flickered, flared, faded and died. I felt a brief a sigh of disappointment, then determination to light the lamp again. And again. And again. Until I get it right. Morning and Evening I Will light the Lamp.

Clear Conscience

2005-05-18T05:18:00.000-04:00

THE LITTLE PERSON IS NOT POWERLESS. WE CAN BE HEARD. Write. Write. Write.

Canadian politics does not capture world imagination, my dear American friends. We can barely control our own apathy. However, at present, the government finds itself in a minority position in the House of Commons and the opposition is threatening to 'bring it down.' Most Canadians want government which works. Something is clearly not working in Ottawa. The balance of power is held by three independent members whose votes are endlessly courted. A member of the opposition crossed the floor yesterday...so the imminent threat of another election has been stayed. However, before that happened I ranted off a letter to the CBC. It was chosen as letter of the day for May 16, 2005. Click on the title above to read my letter in context, or read it as is, below:

LETTER OF THE DAY | May 16, 2005

"We need honour, loyalty, the courage to admit mistakes, the vision to correct them. We need politicians of principle. We need parties that will work together for the common good of the people."

Mr. Kilgour thinks there is a clear consensus for an election. It appears, since the votes of the independents are needed to bring down the government, that Mr. Kilgour, and not the people of Canada, hold the power to bring about this decision.

This is Mr. Kilgour's fifteen minutes of fame. Does self-interest or truth motivate him? Will he be returned in this now seemingly inevitable election?

WHAT WE NEED IN CANADA IS NOT A CLEAR CONSENSUS BUT A CLEAR CONSCIENCE!

We need honour, loyalty, the courage to admit mistakes, the vision to correct them. We need politicians of principle. We need parties that will work together for the common good of the people. We need politicians who will set aside narrow personal interest for the sake of fairness and good manners, as Ed Broadbent did in his recent abstention.

Canadians are tired of the behaviour of politicians. We are ashamed of the carping and sniping across the floor of the house during question period. We are exhausted by inquiries that drain the public purse and produce, not justice or improved policy, but endless posturing, rhetoric and constant national anxiety.

We are quickly becoming a neurotic nation, twitching and writhing in our own endless self-examination and bearing the collective shame of our elected officials.

Where are the clean hands and pure hearts?

Amongst the BQ, who if elected to power, would set as a first priority the dismantling of the nation? In the compromising Conservatives, who in their quest for power are willing to sacrifice social programs that define our national identity? With the fratricidal Liberals whose only possible defence in the present situation is ignorance? With the NDP whose idealism has grown weary in waiting and whose only hope of influence is functional minority government?

Mr. Kilgour please, not consensus but conscience.

If we must have an election, then let us have the courage to fight it based, not on the performances of past governments, but on the reform of parliament itself. Let the self-righteous remember their own follies and the dishonoured their higher goods.

Let us have humility and grace and an honesty that goes beyond facts to intentions. Let us have clear consciences, and a moment of silence.

Connie Knighton | Bracebridge, ON

Now I Know Why They Call It Bile

2005-05-15T12:22:00.000-04:00

It's bile to rhyme with vile.

I've been feeling off for some time now. Had periodic bouts of what the unfeeling call the 4F disease: female, fat, forty, flatulent. Heart burn. Pain in the right upper abdomen. Biliary disease. Gall bladder. Things escalated. Now its acute long lasting unrelieved pain radiating into the back, low grade fever, chills, nausea, vomiting. I diagnosed myself and went into the doctor for confirmation. I have always found this the best way to operate. Saves time. Saves mistakes. Saves unnecessary tests.

I have seen the little 'pearls' in the ultrasound with my own eyes. There is no doubt. Except, when it will come out. I should hear about that soon. Too bad I'm not an oyster.

All of this, of course, has caused me, word lover that I am, to consider the traditional uses of the word 'bile.' I fully understand how this word came to mean "ill-temper or peevishness." Like the word 'spleen' and other visceral metaphors, bile found its secondary meaning through the ancient attribution of temperament and character traits to bodily functions. Believe me, there is some truth to these superstitions.

I have been increasingly irritable, easily aggravated, impatient, negative and jolly well angry as the weeks have passed. That is why I haven't visited some of your blogs recently. I may spit out invective when I mean to be kind. I may blurt unthinkingly. I may criticize. Blessing is far from my lips.

Now is it chicken or egg? Did my melancholic and choleric leanings foment the disease? Or did the disease create my distemper? Is this vile mood something I should repent of immediately, or trust it will disappear when the surgeon cuts out the offending organ?

Spare me your pity.

2005-05-04T21:18:00.000-04:00

Daughter #1 and family

Here's another set of blessings.

For a pertinent anecdote of how God is at work in my life see: Sneak Preview (below).

Sneak Preview : As In A Mirror

2005-05-03T01:07:00.000-04:00

We had a sneak preview of heaven last week. Rob met a man from the past. Someone we had worked with when he was a teen. Someone we had not kept in touch with over the years.

We had found our work with children and adolescents rewarding but somehow incomplete. Unpredictable work. Often unappreciated work. Exhausting work. By its nature, it was work for which we had not always followed the outcome. We seldom knew how stories ended.

This is what my husband learned. This man from the past had been part of our camp staff when he was a young teen. A pot boy. (Talk about unappreciated work!) For whatever reason, now thankfully shrouded in time, we had fired him. Gulp! But the following Christmas, seeing his potential, we had cast him as the lead in a play. And the following spring, when he applied again to work at camp, we hired him, and he had a terrific summer. The trust we invested bore fruit.

Wracked with tears of joy and relief, my husband told me 'the ending". This man had treasured our years together. They were life changing for him. And now as a mature person in ministry, he used these experiences as a benchmark. "All my life," he told Rob, "all my life I have used this as my model for what forgiveness is all about."

Oh God, how blind we are. How little we know what we do. Somehow, we do right, almost by default. Unknowingly. And most of the time, we have absolutely no idea of the impact of our actions on the lives of those to whom we minister.

There are othe elements to this story which are highly personal and not mine to share. But this revelation touched both of us deeply and heaven's doors slid open just a crack. For a moment we were permitted a glimpse of face to face, the Love of God working itself out in a life.

1 Corinthians 13:12
Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. NIV

"Through a glass darkly."
What could it mean?
Mystery.
Promise.
Comfort.
We grasp for reality,
struggle to shape meaning,
to see God at work.
Then Purpose reveals
Love
magnified in the mirror.
Clarity.
A Divine moment
of face to face,
and sneak preview of heaven.

Constance 3/5/05

I.T. & Identity

2005-04-29T19:04:00.000-04:00

Okay, so I have been living in sin for thirty-seven years. Reading the form letter, it appeared to me that whoever has been researching our case was researching the years 1945 - 1949. This would mean that the bride and groom in question were married either before conception or some where from birth to two years of age. The Ministry involved has been sent a sharp letter from Rob. When he recorded that I own not a single piece of official paper in my birth name, except for my birth certificate, I felt a little sad.

That led me to consider how, if we had been married just a few short years later, I would have kept my birth name. In 1967 it wasn't done. I ponder whether it would be worth my going back to my liltingly musical, so called 'maiden' name. Or would this add further to my identity issues? But then, if we are not registered as being married, are all my documents in a false name? Am I still Connie Ballantine and do I really have the option of remaining so?

The really scarey thing is that the United States government seems to have more information about us than our own government!!!!! In crossing the border 18 months ago, my husband was questioned about his place of birth, his High School and Universities, professions and so on. The AMERICAN BORDER GUARDS appeared to have this information in their computers, at their finger tips. WHY DOES THE CANADIAN GOVERNMENT HAVE SUCH A DIFFICULTY WITH I.T.?

Anyway, I am attempting to gain confidence by improving my computer and blogger skills. I'm blogging family pictures for those who know me well. I have to do this over and over in order to get the skill down. And Deb Sawyer has given me info to help me with my Links section. So I'll be fiddling around with these tasks. This should distract me from the fact that my identity seems foggy.

Progenitor and Descendent

2005-04-29T18:36:00.000-04:00

My mother at 86 feeding Baby Robbie age 3 months. Two miracles.

My Third Grandchild Whatever Way You Look At IT

2005-04-28T00:58:00.000-04:00

Nana Connie with baby Robbie, January 17, 2005

Married Bliss

2005-04-28T00:53:00.000-04:00

The Happy Pair, snapped on the way out of church, by James Ellis, October 14, 1967

Progeny

2005-04-28T00:03:00.000-04:00

Two grandchildren at Christmas.

Living In Sin For Thirty-Seven Years!!!

2005-04-27T13:12:00.000-04:00

Okay, so we were babies. That means that there are still many people living who were present at the ceremony on October 14, 1967. If you are one of these, or anyone else having any knowledge whatsoever of this event, will you please register your assent as a comment. A mere, "Yes" will suffice. Some of you will remember the festivities quite well.

The bride was slim in an off-white slubbed linen gown of medieval simplicity. When she spoke, it was with the voice of a maid. The groom was handsomely boyish, exuberant and tall in formal morning dress. He carried himself with the charm and grace of Robin Hood, which may also account for the fact that he nearly arrived at the church sans shoes. The officiant, a serio-comic figure of Friar Tuck proportions and baldness, was suffering from a bilious attack. In severe pain, sweating profusely, but otherwise masking his discomfort for the sake of his young friends, he presided over the service with dignity. There was a distinct odour of sanctity about the vows. There were times in ensuing years, that the couple wished the Friar had omitted his prayer asking God not to spare them suffering so that they might be compassionate. But the marriage 'took.'

Several lifetimes passed. The groom, applying for a pension, is told to produce a marriage certificate in order to assign beneficiary rights to the bride of his youth. Fourteen moves, two children, two dogs, two cats, two hamsters, a thousand clean-outs, a flood, a fire and the marriage certificate is no where to be found. A quest is initiated.

The church in Windsor, Ontario has been amalgamated. No records exist for 1967. Church archives in Toronto have no records of any marriage solemnized in that church from the years 1960 - 1972. And the pension will be witheld unless Robin Hood can establish the legality of his marriage. He is told to say he has been LIVING COMMON LAW FOR THIRTY-SIX YEARS and furthermore to PERJURE himself in front of a Justice of the Peace in this respect! Anyone knowing Rob will know how impossible this will be for him. He himself has conducted dozens of weddings over the years. What would this do to his credibility? Furthermore, he is told that he cannot SWEAR to the validity of his marriage in front of a Justice, even though this is the TRUTH.

Many phone calls and letters later, it is allowed that a senior offical of the Church may confirm by letter that the marriage took place. This is graciously done. The pension is granted and the aging honeymooners decide to apply to the government for a copy of their original certificate.

More than a year passes in which the officials in Thunder Bay do not cash the cheque for the copy. Nor do Robin and Marian hear anything at all from the Registry. From time to time, they think of their request, lost somewhere in bureaucracy. A feeling of unease arises. This intensifies when Marian is told that her SIN card cannot be replaced unless she produces a marriage certificate. The government has accepted her income tax for thirty-seven years in her married name. Her post secondary degrees were granted in this name. Her children were registered under this family name. If she is not legitimately married, she wants her taxes back!

Today a letter arrived from the Office of the Registrar General indicating that no record of this marriage exists. What could this mean? They are each free to marry another??? Legally yes. Morally no.

If the wedding described above seems real enough to you and not a mere dream, please indicate this in the comments. Your affirmation might just release Robin Hood and Maid Marian from their present nightmare. Maid Marian, in particular, is suffering a severe identity crisis.

Holding in Prayer

2005-04-14T00:02:00.000-04:00

Spencer stretches,
accepting love,
long limbed,
arms round my neck,
feet past my knee.
Gives butterfly kisses.

Rachael sits by my side,
practicing grown-up independence,
then clings coyly
and hides her head
at the hint of strangers.

Robbie smiles at his Papa’s voice.
He’d let us hold his babyself all day.
Sometimes we do.

Other children. Other times.
My own children when they were young,
growing in my heart.
The special ones I lift from a distance,
offering a surrogate mother’s prayers.

Jude who died.
Kaitlyn with leukemia.
Healthy Matthew,
tucked under a paternal arm.
And Audrey,
named for a Nana gone to heaven.

My own mother holds the infants
becoming once more herself,
nurturing generations.
Time doesn’t matter, nor language, nor infirmity.
Later, she falls asleep
like a child herself,
in my arms
on her narrow bed.
She stirs and wakens slowly
as if we had forever.
One day, we will.

Shall we hold each other in Godspace,
kindred and friend,
in God’s place?
Shall we gentle all little children with our prayers?

Eaten Posts

2005-04-13T20:03:00.000-04:00

My computer has eaten two different posts today.
I'm miffed.

Just checked and it hasn't eaten this one. So insignificant. Neither profound nor beautiful or even silly. Think I'll publish.

The Dining Room Suite

2005-03-31T21:24:00.000-05:00

I remember when my parents bought it. A mahogany Duncan Fife style, reproduction, dining room suite by Bassett. They went shopping at Tepperman's. An adult's only expedition. But the excitement surrounding the suites' arrival was visceral.

There had never been a dining room suite because there had never been a dining room before. The 1950's house my father built had a kitchen with a bay window and built-in, restaurant style banquette, upholstered professionally by my mother. The table with dropped leaves for expansion and crafted by my father, was clear birch on a wrought iron pedastal. So my mother, blessed with the gift of hospitality, had for years, entertained at our kitchen table. A dining room for entertaining and a proper dining suite was a luxury which she anticipated when we moved.

For over forty years, the dining room suite has been central to our family celebrations. Christmases, all high holidays, birthdays, anniversaries and showers have been commemorated around this festive board. The suite had a sideboard for serving and a bow fronted china cabinet, both with lots of storage. The chairs, my mother claimed, were never the chairs which they had been shown when they purchased the set. In typical fashion, my parents didn't want to make a fuss and never followed this up. Recovered several times by both my father and me, the chairs did show the least elegance and the most wear and tear of all the pieces in this set.

So now, it falls to me to make the decision to sell the suite in order to make room for more guests at Dawsonwood Cottage. It is not a decision which everyone in the family greets with joy. The dining room suite has meaning somehow beyond itself, representing family unity, good times, times of struggle. Conversations. Great gastronomic creations.

The table moved into the living room to make room for a hospital bed when my father was dying. My mother's fine china watched over him as he slept. At the dining table, my mother and I wrote our thank yous for condolence gifts and kindnesses. Later that same year, I would assemble wedding invitations for my younger daughter at the very same table. Over the last seven years, I have been the one to decorate the table at Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter. Now I am the one taking it apart.

My mother is failing. Her meticulous entertaining finished. Her memory faint. She lives in a retirement home and visits to her former home are tiring for her. It is time for another of the many transitions which Judith Viorst calls Necessary Losses.

We all have remembrance, and I more than any. Perhaps that is why it is easier for me to let the dining room suite go. I remember when the delivery men carried it, reverentially, into our home. I saw it go out today, faded but still grand. Time for practiced detachment. Time for releasing. There's a few good Christmases left in that suite for another family. Let it be.

Dying to Live Again

2005-03-27T01:08:00.001-05:00

Have I missed something, or has the blogging community been largely silent about the Terri Schiavo dilemma? I probably don't read the right blogs. There has been an ocean of words in the press. Easter morning provides an opportunity to do the one thing we can do...pray with open hearts for everyone concerned.

If she dies
is Resurrection
defeated by the other side?
Weep we
in a darkened moment.
Then the Light.
C.K.

Daughter of My Daughters

2005-03-26T06:52:00.000-05:00

Last night I sat up late with my daughters. The laughter was good. Storytelling was in the air. One of my sons-in-law heard there was coffee and stayed for the chat. We were too tired to stay up and too tired make the effort it takes to go to bed. I embarrassed them with my childishness. They surprised me with their wisdom, compassion, generosity and wit. What a delight then to open henrinouwen.org this morning to read a description of our relationship:

But a mother can also become the daughter of her daughter and a father the son of his son. A mother can become the daughter of her son and a father the son of his daughter. Father and mother become brother and sister of their own children, and they all can become friends. It doesn't happen often, but when it does happen it is as beautiful to watch as the dawn of a new day.

He Shall Feed His Flock

2005-03-24T22:03:00.000-05:00

For the last two weeks, in preparation for Easter, we've been listening to Handel's Messiah. It is a particularly wonderful recording by the Gabrieli Consort and Players, which attempts to render a robust, playful, passionate Messiah which is true to Handel's vision. I could listen all day to this exciting music. It calms me, energizes me, puts me in touch with God. The selection of texts is of course, appropriate to this season of the year, and one wonders how it ever came to be associated with Christmas at all.
Anyway, we (I mean Rob and I) have also been reading Parker Palmer on scarcity and abundance. Somehow when Palmer's words come into contact with Handel's music, the whole notion that "He shall feed his flock" comes alive. I am nurtured. Fed. My anxiety about a myriad family stresses disappears. I feel carried in Christ's arms.
When I was a child my uncle, a fine artist, painted a mural on the Sunday School walls. Jesus with the flock. I can see it still. Perhaps some would consider the image sentimental and dated now. As a child I was captivated by the larger than life size figures. It goes with Messiah, scarcity and abundance and Easter.
When my oldest daughter was about seven months old, we were ministering in a rural parish a long way from the place we call home. We spent a lot of time on the road going from town to town, visiting our outlying flock, holding small meetings, doing 'the work'. On one of these trips we pulled over to the side of the road to watch a flock of sheep with their lambs. It was snowing. A gloomy day, overcast and bitterly cold. We couldn't get out of the car, but our daughter waved and cooed at the lambies. The hillside was scarcely green, but the lambs frisked about. It was as if they were aware of the abundance which was their inheritance. They didn't look at all nervous that there wouldn't be enough grass when the time came. So Handel, and Parker Palmer, Jesus caring for the flock on the Sunday School walls, and newborn lambs on a stark hillside near Parrsboro Nova Scotia.
This year we have a new grandson, named Robbie after his Papa, whom he already loves. When Robbie was born he was very small and had to spend the first week of his life in hospital. The medical reasons for this are not important. What is important is that he is thriving today. At two months old, he is meeting his benchmarks and is close to double his birth weight. Abundance. Answers to Prayer. Jesus carrying the lambs. Handel. Parker Palmer. Sheep and lambs on a hillside in the snow.
Whatever the initial appearances, I do believe that there is enough and plenty. I have experienced this to be true this year. And this is my Easter blessing for you all.

Mornings are for Meditation

2005-03-15T22:18:00.000-05:00

Wait and watch
as sunlight strengthens.
Winter fog like incense rises,
fades from white to palest blue,
disappears in morning skies.
Deep black pools form on the river,
lick the ice bridge from each side,
where yesterday
a feral cat
crossed safely to the other bank.

Hoarfrost
bright as teardrop winks.
Fear, loneliness,
and hurts past spent,
are warmed by Light
without, within.
Snowdrifts
heating at the core
weep silently,
give up their power,
shrink,
dry by degrees.

Underneath the eager moles
dig tunnels for quick escape.
And beaver free to swim at leisure,
dive under ice.
Primrose and crocus
plump and swell.
Sap soars.

Here is God,
and here and here.
In person, sky, and river and ground,
God releases Life Unbound.

Watching the Seasons Change

2005-03-15T10:34:00.000-05:00

Thank God. A perceptible difference. A change. Dare I say, epiphany? More like spiritual Spring. All the little bits and pieces of my life are coming together. After a winter of nearly fifteen years, poetry is returning. I am painting again. I have stopped struggling after perfection. I have found that there is a growing place of ease in me.

What has made the difference? Willingness to trust God. A wise woman prayed with me (see Listening 3/12/2005). She asked if I had forgiven God...for the pain in my life, for disappointments, for a long life of depression, for inherited pain, for loss of career, for financial instability. I have so often felt angry with God, and known that was okay, but had never imagined "forgiving God." The irony being of course, that it is not God who needs my forgiveness, but I who need to forgive in order to be free from bitterness and the hold of the past. Inwardly then, I was resenting God. Trust in God and love of God were impossible. Commitment without loving trust, a long winter indeed.

So now I can claim what I think God has been creating in me all along. My world is not the macrocosm, but the microcosm. Not the public stage, but the private page. My vocation is to conceive and birth Beauty.

After nearly three years of trying to paint a large canvas landscape of a vast valley in Nunavit, I found myself painting a small card, and capturing the sense of this place in miniature. Similarly, I sketched the vast frozen space of lake Simcoe, the distant huts, the racing vehicles. With a few strokes, the essence was there, in a tiny picture no bigger than my hand. It takes a measure of trust to let these tokens go out into the world. Their insignificance is both their strength and a metaphor of Creator God's attention to detail, and grace at work in me.

So too, prayer is opening. I have let go of the striving to make my prayers conform to what I think I have been taught. I am trusting that God has placed a prayerful heart at the core of my being, and that God's Spirit prays within me. I give myself over to this praying...a jumble of faces and situations, intentions and longings. Why should my prayer life be any more linear than my left brained thought life?

There is holiness as I watch the river. I accept that deep winter is slowly turning to spring. I watch the seasons change and hold up the ever changing world to the One who never changes, who loves me when I cannot love back, who trusts me even when I cannot trust, who has placed his seal on me from the beginning of time, who knows my calling when I cannot hear it, and waits with me through a long winter for the discovery of spring.

Poem to follow in next post.

Listening

2005-03-12T20:04:00.000-05:00

I have spent the last week listening. During two days of solitude I listened to my own thoughts quieten. I realized how I am often deafened by worry, and paralyzed by the concerns of life. In quietness, apart from family responsibility it was possible to bring my will to focus on God. It was possible, also, to listen with my eyes, to record in watercolours some memories of spaces, places and times where I have felt at peace.
Then solitude was followed by other kinds of listening. I listened to lectures and to students practising the art of counselling. Sometimes betrayed by my ears, I tried to listen with my heart. Thank God for eyes and heart..to see gesture, posture, movements and tears.
And while I was listening to others, someone else was listening to and observing me. At the very end of the week, a new acquaintance, sensitive to God's voice asked to pray with me. She helped me to give voice to issues that have been lying silent in the back of my mind, issues related to trust and love and will. I suspect I will be writing about this in the next few days.
Imagine my surprise then, upon returning, that the Henri Nouwen daily thoughts were dealing with this very topic.

Henri Nouwen has written:
Listening in the spiritual life is much more than a psychological strategy to help others discover themselves. In the spiritual life the listener is not the ego, which would like to speak but is trained to restrain itself, but the Spirit of God within us. When we are baptised in the Spirit - that is, when we have received the Spirit of Jesus as the breath of God breathing within us - that Spirit creates in us a sacred space where the other can be received and listened to. The Spirit of Jesus prays in us and listens in us to all who come to us with their sufferings and pains.

When we dare to fully trust in the power of God's Spirit listening in us, we will see true healing occur.

For those who don't already know this site, Henri Nouwen's wisdom can be found at: http://www.henrinouwen.org

Retreat

2005-03-03T19:14:00.000-05:00

To all my faithful blog readers and lurkers:
I am going on a retreat for a few days and then participating in a workshop, so I will not be here at my post (ha, ha). When I get back I hope to be filled with Inspiration. Bless you all on your journeys.
Connie

Beethoven's Hair

2005-02-26T00:13:00.000-05:00

For access to the interactive site which tells this phenomenal story, click on above title.

I have Beethoven in my blood. So may you. Nightly, I was lullabied by his symphonies or for variation, a piano concerto. Passionate music. Provocative music. Music to woo a lover or win a war.

Da Da Da DUH. Da Da Da Duh.

In my family love of the music of Beethoven reached a profound level. Over the years we lived a sort of parallel Ludwigian existence. My father, given a musically gifted son, assumed the role of Beethoven's father. He had a passing resemblance to the great genius himself. If my father had let his hair grow, he would have looked like Beethoven. Alas. He did not. And he stopped short of waking my brother at three in the morning to practise.

My brother, one supposes, was to be the tortured genius. Given the painful exigencies of the real Beethoven's life, one wonders why we all entered into this legend with such whole hearted vigour. I think there was some belief in our family that it was necessary to suffer for one's art. No pain. No gain. I will stop short of saying that both my parents went deaf as an empathetic response to Beethoven in later life. But they did go deaf. The rigorous tutelege of young Ludwig was our family's template for life. And after all, our last name did begin with the letter "B." And my brother's name did begin with "L."

The long dead composer achieved sainthood in our household. Well, there was Jesus. And then there was Beethoven. Beethoven, writing Moonlight Sonata. Beethoven cutting the legs off his piano so that he could feel the vibrations of his music on the floor. Beethoven, stone deaf, being turned to face tumultous applause for the debut of his ninth and last symphony. Beethoven's sufferings somehow flavoured his music and made him real.

Then there was the fact of his personal habits, his temperament and lifestyle. I believe that loving Beethoven made us more tolerant of human weakness than we otherwise would have been. Fundamentalist. Evangelical. Teetotalers. He wasn't any of those things and yet we honoured him. Beethoven's foibles stretched us, made us think. Made us, somehow citizens of the world.

What day is it?

2005-02-23T12:11:00.000-05:00

One day pushes itself into the next.
Always some tasks left over
to seed the agenda of the future.

Mail waiting for stamps.
Mail waiting for addresses.
Some things can't happen on the net.
Like thank-yous,
and personal care bills,
and posting videos.

And washing.
Those colour sorted piles,
extended in rows across the basement floor,
lie dormant for tomorrow.

People to be consoled.
Errands to run.
A well-meant promise to be kept.
They stand like scarecrows
in a field of days
stretching to infinity.

There must be a reason why
I chose this,
rather than that,
like Frederick Bueckner,
climbing his study stairs
and turning his back on
visible suffering
to do what may be a higher good.
Or I may be fooling myself.

Missed the day for blogger's protest.
Really a whole day went missing.
What was I doing?
Ah, babysitting.

And is this Wednesday already?
Is there a point to getting started this week,
or should I just wait until next?
Can I pick up a paint brush?
Can I write a story?
Can I further my vision?
Can I concentrate on God?
Can I admit I'm angry?

Hagia Sophia

2005-02-19T23:35:00.000-05:00

Return now to the subject of Sophia, the Spirit of Wisdom, because it is not far from the longing for liturgy which I have been clumsily attempting to address for the last two posts. I'm making this a short post because Thomas Merton has written a poem entitled Hagia Sophia which links his vision of Sophia both with the active work of God in creation and with the Holy Spirit and with Jesus. He does all of this within the framework of the traditional hours of prayer; lauds to compline. If you believe as I believe, that our worship is rooted not so much in knowing as in mystery, then Merton's poem is for you. If you believe, as I believe, that there is a feminine face to God, then this poem is for you.

Click on title above to take you to Thomas Merton's poem Hagia Sophia

Longing for Liturgy: Part Two

2005-02-12T22:03:00.000-05:00

I believe that my longing for liturgy began in childhood when I attended a cousin's confirmation. Such was my early fundamentalist indoctrination, that I felt a hum of terror as well as a frisson of curiosity while watching the proceedings. Were these windows "idols?" Were these carvings "graven images?" I let myself down into what was Holy Mystery. The service was scarey and wonderful. The colours, the candles, the organ and choir embraced me; spoke to the place inside me where God and Beauty dwelt. The air was filtered gold. The scriptures had a familiar cadence, but a deeper dignity than they achieved when we read them from well-worn "promises" around the supper table each evening.

It is not news that space affects and shapes worship behaviour, and visa versa. People move into a cathedral with a muted awe. There is little chat before service. The space invites contemplation. A large industrial space is conducive to contemporary worship with room for sound equipment, projection screens, dancing and moving about. The plain Quaker meeting house is perfectly suited to the prayers which will be spoken after silence. Given these differences, I wonder if denominations, rather than being a divisive, might be God's way of providing for varying taste and temperament.

In EVANGELICALS ON THE CANTERBURY TRAIL, Robert E. Webber urges us to be Christians first and whatever else we are, Baptist, Episcopal, Methodist (even "emerging" one supposes) second. This concept was compelling for me since the church where I worshipped had many "distinctives". There was a tendency for me to commit the sin of henotheism, placing the distinctives and governance of the church in the ultimate place in my life. God showed me that the amount of time I spent talking about the church, complaining about the church, strategizing for change in the church, were depleting my love of God. Indeed, my constant battle with the church was substituting for a truer experience of God in my life.

Webber asserts that the evangelical church arose, in part, as a response to scientific rationalism. Christianity needed to be rational. Sermons defend what properly may be accepted as Mystery. I remember an agonized flannelgraph retelling of "Jonah" which a zealous leader inflicted on our stunned congregation. In it he showed, with dimensions, that there was a fish large enough to swallow Jonah whole, what Jonah experienced literally in the belly of the whale, and how he, hairless and naked and scalded by stomach acids, was spat onto the beach. All irrelevent!

I find the liturgical church comforting in that it takes me into the creaturely space of not-knowing. God is great, compassionate, mysterious and bigger than me. I sense this in the vaulted space, in the art, in the grand music pulsing through wooden pews, through the timelessness of the service.

Never was this comfort more needed than when Rob and I found ourselves in England as tragedy stuck his family at home in Canada. His sister, thirty-two years old mother of three children under five, was killed in a car accident. Unable to return for her funeral, we sought out a place to be in prayer each day of our journey, stopping for evensong or attending morning prayers wherever we found ourselves.

The day before the funeral in Canada, we visited Westminster Abbey. In November, by custom, it is surrounded by a memorial to war dead. There were thousands of white crosses planted in battalions, complete with a separate section for padres who had given their lives in service. Hundreds of padres! Newly ordained pastors, we purchased a cross and placed it in memory of some unknown padre in some unknown place. We were strangely comforted by participating in this symbolic act. In its deepest sense, that is what liturgy offers, a symbolism which speaks to heart matters, bypassing the rational mind. This multitude of crosses and our own loss had a connection which would only be destroyed by analysis.

The Abbey, however, was not our ultimate destination on the funereal day. Crowded with tourists, it was more like a museum than a place of worship. No comfort there. Just to the left of the Abbey, stands St. Margaret's Chapel. There God's Spirit surrounded us and comforted us. The interior was womb-dark and one could kneel for a long time in quietness, undisturbed. I remember shaking uncontrollably. Neither could believe that this young mother, wife, sister, daughter...was dead. In agony and unknowing, we clung to eachother, comforted by the palpable eternity which surrounded us. This has remained a most sacred memory of our life journey. In our bereavement, we felt surrounded by clouds of witnesses, connected to past and future by the act of kneeling and reading and praying.

Longing for Liturgy: Part One

2005-02-10T23:46:00.000-05:00

This blog came out of reflections on bobbi's post Ash Wednesday in http://emergingsideways.blogspot.com.

It was another Wednesday of no particular significance in the church calendar. We were on our first holiday away from children, and found ourselves in romantic Charleston strolling cobbled streets in evening light. When bells began to toll, we followed the sound to a wonderful Episcopal church where earlier we had wandered among ancient tombs and pieced together stories of Colonial America. This time, we were not alone. From behind iron gates and painted doors in that museum perfect city, citizens of every discription emerged. A lady in a mink coat and diamonds, a poor man on crutches, a woman in a wheelchair, her friend, street people. There were young folk dressed in jeans and tees; older folk whose clothes, conservative and clean, had seen better days. There were children, holding hands with parents. White folk. Black folk. Gay and straight folk. A lot of hugging, waving and greeting as we all poured into the church.
Like Bobbi and Liam we were eyed with curiosity and welcome. We were greeted with a handshake at the door and carried willingly to places near the front.
It was a low church service of the kind we now refer to as "blended," a little guitar, a little organ. There was the usual juggle with the books. No matter. I didn't care if I got it right. I just soaked in the Spirit of the place, the clear intentionality of the worshippers, the focus on prayer and scripture, the beauty of the read prayers, the sincere tears at general confession, the release of absolution. The homily was a gentle reminder of our Christian duty within the world. With a full heart, I received communion, and let my tears of joy and longing fall unhindered.
I had been sneaking the restfulness of liturgy for years. It provided soothing contrast to the lively music, hearty singing, hand clapping, and "testimonies" of my home church. Read prayers were a considered change from the spontaneous, well-meant ramblings, which sometimes invited the Lord to endorse a narrow personal agenda. Communion drew my heart. Having grown up and served in a non-sacramental church, this act of ritual had special appeal to me. I loved the fact that one was not forced to walk the aisle alone, but that all those who wanted to receive came forward together. I loved that I participated in an act of worship which linked me to Christians around the world and down through history. The significance of this brought me to tears each time I participated. I could barely stand from the sense of holiness I felt in this...probably was very close being slain in the spirit right there in the Anglican/Episcopal church. This was the power of Communion for me.
Over the years, we have continued to seek out respite from evangelicalism in churches which have a highly liturgical service. Amongst the highlights: daily morning prayer at the little Anglican Church at Jackson's Point, Ontario; Christmas Eve in a Lutheran church in Florida; a memorial service for transplant donors at St. Michael's Roman Catholic Cathedral in Toronto; an Episcopal service in Savannah, the first Sunday of the war on Iraq.
We had crossed the border with some trepidation on the day the U.S. declared war. Strangely, there was no bottleneck, no added questioning. We sailed blythely on our way; Tybee Island, our longed for holiday destination. We had chosen Sunday as one of our days to tour nearby Savannah, and knowing from a previous visit that there was a church on just about every square in the old city, we had our pick. We began early, walking the squares, trying to sense the Spirit of each place, reading sermon topics on notice boards, noting times, praying. Our stroll took us to the Episcopalian Church. Somehow we knew we would feel at home.
It was a subdued service. We had expected perhaps, some flag waving, a chorus or two of God Bless America. No. It was a straight, right out of the book, Anglican/Episcopal service, with some resounding hymns and a homily taken from the lectionary texts for the day. (Rob has been preaching from the common lectionary for nearly twenty years. It forces him to come to terms with scripture, rather than riding any particular hobby horse. However, I stray.) So the sermon instructed us how we should live in the light of scripture. There is a place in the Episcopal service of prayer where names are mentioned specifically. It was there and there only where the war on Iraq was mentioned. It was acknowledged that some in the large congregation had relatives and friends who would be serving and be in danger. They were prayed for. AND THE IRAQI PEOPLE WERE PRAYED FOR. Simply. Lovingly. Non-dogmatically. Without prejudice. Kindly. The war had just begun, but there was healing in that place. The liturgy, the structure of the service had provided us all with safety from the urgency of the moment and placed us squarely where we should be in Kingdom goals and Kingdom ends. I am still thankful.

Some years ago Rob and I read a book called "Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail: why evangelicals are attracted to the liturgical church" by Robert E. Webber. More about this later.

Speaking of Sophia, an open letter

2005-02-08T21:45:00.000-05:00

Oh dear Stephanie,
I fear I may have opened a contentious issue. I love the way you use the names of God. Sophia is the feminine name for the wisdom of God. There is evidence that early Christians equated Sophia with the Holy Spirit. In the Old Testament, especially the Wisdom Literature, she is Wisdom and is closely linked to the wisdom of Solomon.
I am not an expert in this. Of course, some see that the patriarchal church has suppressed this knowledge of Sophia in order to maintain a totally masculine Trinity. Others, of course, would see the resurgence of interest in and knowledge about Sophia as a blasphemous attempt by feminism to pervert the gospel.
Whatever knowledge I have personally about Sophia, has been gained in passing, rather than through deep study. I liked the notion, when I first heard of it, and was comforted by the fact that The Holy Spirit might be the feminine aspect of God. Certainly, the work of the Holy Spirit, both as inspiration (wisdom) and as comforter, are what is highest and best in women.
In truth, I think of God as neither male nor female. I believe that our assignation of gender to God arises from anthropomorphism. While we were created in the image of God, it seems to me that many of our attempts to understand God must of necessity arise from what we perceive and know of ourselves. Revelation of God has come in human form. The words of God were written down by the hands of humankind. That does not mean they are without divine inspiration, indeed, it is that inspiration which is attributed in early Christianity to Sophia.
So, if it comforts us to address God as Abba, Daddy, in response to the example of Yeshua, Jesus, then too, may it comfort us as women to accept that The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Wisdom and Truth, Sophia, wears a feminine face.
Love and blessings, to a wise woman of faith, Stephanie,
Connie

The Paradox of Woman's Being and Doing

2005-01-31T19:42:00.000-05:00

The definition of "woman" cannot be comprehended either through distilling the essence of her being, or by solely outlining what she does. Like faith and works, being and doing are inextricably linked. They are paradoxical notions. Being and Doing parallel and echo Faith and Works. In the context of a work driven, achievement oriented society, doing (works)has been denigrated spiritually in favour of being (faith), as if the essence of personhood, either male or female, can be divorced from what one does. I maintain that it cannot.

I grew up thinking I knew what it was to be female. My mother looked and seemed the perfect model of feminity. She wore those slinky suits and crinolined dresses, matching hats and stilletto heels. With her large breasts and small waist she was the essence of feminine sexual desirability in that post war world. She had a low, soft voice and deferred to my father in many things. But that is not all there was. My mother visited the sick, comforted the bereaved, opened her home to the lonely, taught the teen Bible class, shared leadership in the women's prayer group. Once my brother was in school, she returned to work outside the home. She brought her skills of organization and administration to her work. She kept her personal griefs to herself, in the way she had been taught by her Victorian parents. I expected to grow up to be just like her.

Then suddenly it was the sixties and I emerged as a woman far different from my mother. I did not have large breasts and a slim waist, but small breasts and a thicker waist. This was confusing. Was my body the definition of who I was as a woman? Now more than thirty years later, past menopause and well into the invisible decades, I can assert firmly, "No." I was not like my mother in size or shape or fashion. I didn't think like her either. But I was still a woman.

I was somewhat consoled by the sixties' fetish for flat chestedness and long slim legs, but I was further confused by the buzz of burgeoning feminism all around me. Reading Germaine Greer and others shattered all the notions I had gathered from my mother about what was required of a woman. Chastity was gone. Sexual freedom was in. Homemaking was gone. Career was in. Dependence was gone. Independence was in. A woman had to be tough. Passive sexuality was out. Orgasm was in. The cover photo of The Female Eunuch haunts my mind...a headless, limbless, empty female torso, hung painfully, a sack on hooks, or was it a clothesline?

For me it is quite impossible to talk about a definition of womanhood without reference to sexuality, sex role stereotypes and history. I never demand of the past that it be other than it was. There is no point. Clearly both my mother and I were products of our generation. We wore the fashion of our time and imbibed our individual generation's norms and mores. If I were to go one generation back, I would find my mother's mother doing the same, to the best of her ability. Immigrating to Canada. Bearing and raising ten children. That is what women did in 1914, before we had birth control and the vote. Still, I believe we were not without influence. Left to his own devices, I don't think my grandfather would ever have managed to get himself and those first five children on the boat!

The essence of womanhood cannot be grasped without an understanding of her lived experience. One must be female. One must fill out that empty torso and wear it in the world. I have an acquaintance who is transgendered. She has lived as both a man and a woman, and although clearly she felt that she needed to conform her physical self to her psychological reality, I think she would be the first to say that her experience of herself as female was and is the aspect of her life which defines her as a woman. In other words, not her genitalia, but her inner sense of herself defined her. She lived this all her conscious life, long before her surgeries. She perceived herself as woman before anyone sensed this and furthermore, she perceived that this was how God made her. I don't argue with that.

I have spent a lifetime trying to conform to this or that external notion of womanhood. I was not the classic beauty that my mother had been. Nor was I fertile, like my grandmother. I spent some time at university trying to embody The Feminine Mystique, the toughness, the language, swearing a blue streak, striking an angry posture. But my lived experience as a woman was mine alone. No one can duplicate or falsify this aspect of reality. This place, this lived experience, is where our being and our doing unite.

My lived experience of womanhood was abruptly awakened when I held a dead baby in my arms, and buried it in an unmarked grave in a Haitian jungle. Part of the experience of all womanhood was now my own. There was One who in permissive will allowed me to experience this tragedy. Later, though I would adopt children, I would never bear them. But I would know, from inside, what it is like to nurture and love, and then, shockingly to bathe and dress a tiny body for burial. This experience almost more than any other in my life defines who I am, creates my essence. It may be rooted in practical doing at a point of time in a long gone summer. Yet it is vitally real today. It links me to grieving women in East Asia, in Iraq, in Toronto's hospital for sick children.

Who rushed to the grave to anoint the body of Jesus? The women. This is one thing women do. But this is not all. Women come alive where being and doing meet, where heart's longing and soul's choosing mesh. They live out their essence, as they become aware, of self and other in the unending chain of being, of pain and joy, of solace and wholeness. They make choices, creatively doing...following the call of the One who made them female in the first place. Their faith carries them into works and back again to contemplation.

I end where I began, touching on huge issues and leaving them largely unsolved. There is a paradox of being and doing, of faith and works. You can't have either without the other. Women, in the context of their times, live out that paradox. Whether they be confined or free, young or old, educated or unschooled, cosmopolitan or rural. Whether they are single or married, widowed, divorced or abandoned. Whether they have children or not, wombs and breasts or not...these things, believe me do not define woman. A woman is one God makes and calls. This makes her no different from a man. It is her living, her sense of herself, her being and doing, which make her unique.

Theology of the Crocus

2005-01-29T01:31:00.000-05:00

Crocuses have disappeared from our supermarkets. For years, come January 15, one could find small tubs of white or yellow or purple bulbs waiting to burst into bloom. A taste of spring at $1.49. I got them every week in winter. Tossed them in the garden later, where they continue to make a timely appearance once snow melts.

Not any more. The gentle crocus has suffered a marketing demise. The profit margin was too little, or the garden manager couldn't shift them as fast as they faded. A crocus has a short shelf life. But I'm feeling rather jaded about it all. This small pleasure, this tiny self indulgence has been stripped away from me. I had no say at all. Store people give me blank stares as if these little pots of hope never existed. Am I the only one who remembers them?

If a butterfly flapping its wings in Mexico can cause climate change in Alaska, then let me tell you, the lack of early crocuses in Muskoka might cause a rebellious migration. Somewhere on earth millions of these gems bloom for the express purpose of providing their tender parts for saffron. Perhaps I might go there, become a saffron picker.

I had another car accident. Silly. Small. In the parking lot of the Independent Grocer. I was so tired from sleepless nights feeding our little five pound baby. So relieved he is starting to fill out around the edges. Wanting a pot of crocus to celebrate. Distracted by the driver who signalled his impatience to have my spot. Boom. Right into a car parked in the new mother's space. When I found the owner, she turned out to be white haired and neither pregnant or a new mother. Perhaps that is why she has never phoned to say what the damage would be.

But I miss those crocuses. They were hope to me. Hope that winter would come to an end. And faith. Their tiny insignificance reminded me of faith. Mustard seeds, especially encased in glass and hung around the neck have never done anything for me. But crocuses. They are love too, since my husband often broke out the $1.49, and when we were really poor, it meant a lot. It was an unnecessary extravagance, like that box of ointment.

You will remember,if you read my last post, that a crocus bloomed at my father's feet the day he died. Hope, faith, love.

If all of this is silly and impossibly trivial, so be it. Determined not to miss this simple joy next year, I shall simply have to pot my own.

Blessings

Working Out Salvation

2005-01-22T23:51:00.000-05:00

Obstinate weather today. Snow and more snow. Winds gusting, sculpting drifts where it seems to me no drifts have ever been. And cold.

Four years ago today it was also cold. At least -20C, but clear. Snow was past crunch to squeak. I remember it well because it was the day my father died. He disconnected himself, in a way. With that powerful strength which had never left his arms, he shoved the feeding spoon away, pulled out his IV and his catheter and died. When we arrived, his shrunken body lay in a pool of sunshine. A lone crocus bloomed at the end of this bed.

He had always been a singular man. A lifelong Christian, his faith had grown as his mind wrestled with issues in his own way. He had travelled the world, revelling in the differences and similarities amongst people in China, the middle East, Greece and the UK. Not for him the easy platitude, the heedless prayer. His one regret, "If I just had one more trip in me, I'd like to see India." There were no more trips.

"Don't put me on that prayer chain," he had exorted. "I don't want people praying for me to be healed. We all have to go sometime. You just pray for me to have the grace to face what is for me." At 83 years of age, this seemed a strong, pragmatic approach to death. He had lived successfully with cancer for 12 years. It was enough for him. He had worked out his salvation "with fear and trembling" and he didn't want to disgrace God by flinching at the end. He achieved his aim.

When St. Paul wrote to the Phillipians, his implication in 2:12-13 was that they were to carry on in his absence, without the kind of direction they had received in the past. They were to do this, respectful of the fact that God was working in them them to achieve His purpose. This implies that they were to act in accordance with what they already understood about the Christian life. And St. Paul goes on to remind them what some of these things are, just in case they had forgotten.

When I am doubtful about the will of God, or am confronted by someone inquiring about the will of God, I am thrown back on Phillipians. "God works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose." It is no great mystery. There is no exclusively right way, but a path that is laid through first principles, and holy living. Personally, I am praying for grace to work out my own salvation with fear and trembling.

But Joy

2005-01-18T07:23:00.000-05:00

I could have named this post "tenacity"
or "endurance."
I could have named it "patience."
I could have given this post just about any Quaker
virtue and it would fit.

But Joy.
Joy comes in the morning.

Robert Edward shot into the world weighing a mere 5 pounds and looking
rather fierce. "Would someone give me a decent meal?" he asked, waving arms and legs and bleating in indignation. "I've been hanging on in there for nine months with only half a placenta. Now that I've shown what stuff I'm made of, give me a couple of good sound names and some calories."

An anxious start to life, but we have grateful hearts. Barb, Dylan, and Robbie are doing well but sister Rachael insists her brother's name is Clifford.

Bless God

Sandwiching it all in

2005-01-16T21:56:00.000-05:00

This will not be my most inspirational blog. You're warned.
Not so smiling this week, not so whimsical, not so firm in my resolution to make sense out of disaster. Not much positive to say. Caught between that door and that clock. Anxiety creates immobility. I'm stuck.
If you've been there, you will know.
Just waiting, waiting, waiting for something to budge. For the next thing. In this moment there is little I can do to move things forward. Just be.
The family waits impatiently for its January addition, a dear little baby of one sex or the other. There is room in my heart for this new little child. But I am terrified, fearful that I won't have the energy and time to do my bits.
Don't tell me that grandparents don't have any responsibility. They do. My inlaws raised three grandchildren, providing emotional support, babysitting, weekend respite, spiritual guidance, endless shopping outings, vacations and hands on nurturing, after the tragic death of the children's mother. They did this for seven years. And supported all of the rest of us in whatever way they could, financially, spiritually and emotionally.
I don't anticipate another tragedy. I do anticipate work.
And then there's my mother. Medications out of wack again. Self-care dropping. Embarrassing loss of control in public spaces. Needing more than I can give. I feel guilty. Expectations of self and other I can't meet.
This member of the sandwich generation feels a little squashed. I wish I could find something really profound to say about it, some enlightened little word to make it feel better. I feel I am hopelessly narcissistic. Can't help it. Just need to let time pass. To remember to breathe in this tight spot, and to believe there is meaning in it all somewhere.

Where I am in place and time

2005-01-09T22:33:00.000-05:00

Between a door and a clock

I stand between a clock and a door. Fittingly, I think.
The clock is the last of the many my father made. Solid cherry and a thing of beauty. I recognize that I have become a woman of a certain age and am surprisingly happy about this. My father attained his most valued personal achievements after fifty. So, the clock is hopeful. While it reads twenty past eleven, for all we know, this could be twenty past eleven in the morning! There is still time for me to live. And I have a strong sense that I get to choose whether it is morning or evening, whether my life is at its prime or its end.
And then there is the door, the painting I bought because I loved it. There it hangs, like an invitation. To open doors. To push on doors. To walk through and explore behind doors. To command doors to open. To bang on doors. I am here. To shout with Jacob, "I will not let you go until you bless me."
How fortunate I have been already in life, and yet, I dare to ask for more. I do not stand between a rock and a hard place, but between a clock and a door. Opportunities knocking, tick tocking.