Battered by Wind

It’s the anniversary of 9/11 and the world-shattering consequences that so many of us remember, whether it was the images that played over and over on television, or the talk of what our world was coming to.

I’d been at Bible Study that morning and heard the news on the way home. Sarah, who was home from school with a bad headache, had seen the news as it played over and over. Not an enjoyable way to celebrate her 16th birthday.

We watched the startling pictures on the screen once together as she rested tearfully on the couch. I turned off the television and announced we were going out for ice cream and we could celebrate with friends on another day. She needed a distraction, not that she or anyone could forget. We would learn later that one of our other daughter’s friends had been scheduled to be at the Tower for a meeting that morning, but he’d slept through his alarm. Thankfully.

 
Recently I had reason to watch a video that was circulating on Facebook, an anniversary of the tornado in 1979.

At the time, my husband and I were living in Waterloo region with our two young children, who were 3 years and 6 months. We learned that the tornado had taken out homes, barns, power lines and trees in Oxford County. Where I grew up, and where my parents and two youngest siblings still lived.

When we learned of it, we tried calling but couldn’t get through, likely because the power was out. My husband said we needed to go and check on them, and so we drove out to see trees fallen across roads and people already at work clearing the road.

My parents and younger siblings were shaken but otherwise unharmed. The barn had lost its entire upper story and trees in the yard looked like battered toothpicks.

I can't recall exactly what my parents said, but they knew something was eerie when the storm was still as they sat eating their evening dinner. My parents each grabbed a teen and headed for the basement of our farm home and made it just as the house got a good shaking.

Talk about the force of winds that picked up a barn door that had taken eight men to hang, as it was flung about like something light. The tornado had hit the barn first.

Neighbours lost home and barn but fortunately none were killed, though there were some injuries. The video spoke of emergency services and a community supporting each other. The effects of the tornado changed some lives significantly. Homes and barns can be rebuilt while the human spirit needs to work through the losses such a storm inflicts. And they came through it, emerging on the other side changed and perhaps stronger.

I pondered this phenomenon and wrote about it some time ago, how the human spirit emerges in such a situation, as it also must have following the 9/11 attack. Different forces at work and how people make it through, sometimes leaving us with more questions.

We Don’t Know the Storm

We don’t reckon the damage done until it passes

and all the storm took with it

boards and rafters, roofs and feathers

but more than that   lives changed

by that one moment

or what seemed like one moment

when things broke loose in the wind and rain

when it scattered boards and roofs like children’s toys

we hurried to the cellar for safety,

prayed while it shook the house

asking God to keep us safe

and now we live with ever after and what if’s

what if we’d known better what God and the storm could do

what God, after the storm, can do

 


Carolyn Wilker is an author, editor and storyteller from southwestern Ontario.
https://www.storygal.ca/
https://www.carolynwilker.ca/ 

General William Booth: the Fire and the Blood -HIRD

By Rev. Dr. Ed & Janice Hird

 

Everyone nowadays loves the Sally Ann, the Salvation Army. But such admiration was not always universal.  Violence and bloodshed was the order of the day when William Booth first reached out to the down-and-out in East London.  Few people today realize that one of the main purposes of the famous Sally Ann Bonnet was to protect the heads of wearers from brickbats and other missiles.  So many people used to buy rotten eggs to throw at the Sally Ann Bonnets that these rancid eggs became renamed in the market place as ‘Salvation Army eggs!’ In fact Janice’s great grandfather George Morgan was a longshoreman who volunteered as a body guard for William Booth, and Ed’s step-great grandmother Ensign Kate Lee Gathercole preached on the volatile streets alongside her good friend Catherine Booth.

In 1880, heavy sticks crashed upon the Salvation Army soldiers’ heads, laying them open, and saturating them in blood.  Mrs. Bryan (wife of the Captain) was knocked down and kicked into insensibility not ten yards from the police station, and another sister so injured that she died within a week.  During 1882, it was reported that 669 soldiers and officers had been knocked down, kicked or otherwise brutally assaulted, 251 of them being women and 23 children under 15.  In Hamilton, Ontario, the Salvation Army officers were initially ‘squeezed and mangled, scratched, their clothes torn and almost choked with the dust…’  In Quebec City, 21 of the Salvation Army soldiers were seriously injured, an officer was stabbed in the head with a knife, and the drummer had his eye gouged out. In Newfoundland, the Salvation Army was attacked with hatchets, knives, scissors and darning needles.  One night, a woman-Salvationist in Newfoundland was attacked by a gang of three hundred ruffians, thrown into a ditch and trampled on.  She managed to crawl out only to be thrown in again, as other women were shouting ‘Kill her! Kill her!

Ironically many police initially blamed the Salvation Army for being persecuted.  In numerous parts of England, playing in a Salvation Army Marching Band was punishable with a jail sentence!  During 1884, no fewer than 600 Salvationists had gone to prison in defense of their right to proclaim good news to the people in music and word.  In Canada alone, nearly 350 SA officers and soldiers served terms of imprisonment for spreading the gospel.  Despite the jail sentences and persecution, within three years the Army’s strength more than quadrupled!  The early Salvation Army ‘jailbirds’ described their handcuffs as heavenly bracelets.  It is little wonder that the Salvation Army eventually developed such a powerful prison ministry. 

One of William Booth’s mottoes was ‘go for souls and go for the worst!’  A local English newspaper The Echo commented that the Salvation Army largely recruited the ranks of the drunkards and wife-beaters and woman home-destroyers.  Many of us remember as children the song: ‘Up and down the City Road, In and Out the Eagle; That’s the way the money goes, Pop goes the weasel’!   Few of us realized that we were singing about the famous Eagle Tavern, just off City Road in London.   ‘Pop goes the weasel’ was cockney slang for the alcoholic who was so desperate for a drink that he would even pawn (pop) his watch (weasel).  Ironically, the Salvation Army bought the Eagle Tavern and turned it into a rehabilitation centre.  The Lion and Key public house in East London became known as ‘The Army Recruiting Shop’.  The landlord said, ‘My trade’s suffering, but you’re making the town a different place, so we can’t grumble.  Go on and prosper!’

William Booth shocked the world by conducting worship with tambourines and fiddles, instead of the traditional church organ.  To make up for the Salvation Army’s lack of church buildings, General Booth bought circus buildings, skating rinks, and theatres.

In response to such bold innovation, one newspaper columnist claimed in 1883 that ‘The Salvation Army is on its last legs, and in three weeks it may be calculated it will come to an end.’  In the beginnings, the Salvation Army was essentially a youth movement, with seventeen-year-olds commanding hundreds of officers and thousands of seekers.  Archbishop Tait of Canterbury was so impressed by this youth movement reaching the poor, that he set up a commission which unsuccessfully tried to adopt the Salvation Army as an Anglican society.

By persevering, the Salvation Army began to earn respect from both the churched and the unchurched, and from all segments of society.  Even Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle sent the following message: ‘Her majesty learns with much satisfaction that you have with other members of your society been successful in your efforts to win many thousands to the ways of temperance, virtue, and religion.’  By their persevering in reaching out to the poor, William Booth and the Salvation Army became known as the champions of the oppressed.    Like no other individual in nineteenth-century England, General Booth dramatized the war against want, poverty and destitution. 

It was not by accident that William Booth’s message became linked with ‘soup, soap, and salvation’!  Every Salvation Army soldier was taught from the beginning to see themselves as servants of all, practicing the ‘sacrament’ of the Good Samaritan.  The famous preacher Charles Spurgeon once said, ‘If the Salvation Army were wiped out of London, five thousand extra policemen could not fill the place in the repression of crime and disorder.’ In recognition of his incalculable impact on the poor, William Booth received on June 26^th 1907 the degree of Doctor of Civil Law from the University of Oxford.

William Booth throughout his life showed remarkable creativity and courage.  He was one of the world’s greatest travelers in his day, visiting nearly every country in the world.  Even at age 78, General Booth was described as ‘…a bundle of energy, a keg of dynamite, an example of perpetual motion.’  A keen observer of the international scene, Booth in 1907 prophesied Japan’s technological rise, saying: ‘It is only a question of time when her industries will be tutored with the most expert direction, and packed with the finest machinery taken from all nations of the world, and I do not see what can prevent her producing the finest articles at the cheapest possible price.’

His fellow soldiers saw Booth as a man to follow to their death, if need be.  William Booth was truly a spiritual father to the fatherless.  His son Bramwell held that his Dad’s greatest power lies in his sympathy, for his heart is a bottomless well of compassion.  A Maori woman described William Booth as ‘the great grandfather of us all – the man with a thousand hearts in one!’  Mark Twain said, ‘I know of no better way of reaching the poor than through the Salvation Army.  They are of the poor, and know how to get to the poor.’

We give thanks for the remarkable General William Booth and the Salvation Army who have shown the true Father’s Heart to so many hurting, fatherless people.

The Rev. Dr. Ed and Janice Hird

-co-authors of For Better,For Worse: discovering the keys to a lasting relationship

Fading Flower to Fruit-Picking Time by Peter A. Black

Apple Blossom

Courtesy: FREE Stock Photo

This morning I fell into musing about the marvels of nature, of the flowers and blossoms of spring, and the summer-through-fall season of harvesting fruit. 

How beautiful the cheerful, creamy-white apple blossom on several neighbourhood trees was this spring. Driving down a city street, elsewhere, I marvelled at several trees clad in rich burgundy cherry blossom.                                                 

I mused on how great it would be if the fruit trees could keep their blossoms all year, instead of appearing for only a short time then fading so quickly away? Fact is, flowers bloom, then their petals must fade and fall in order for fruit to develop and bear seed – a process necessary for ensuring the survival of their kind, as new trees get a start. With that kind of tree, no matter how much we love seeing and smelling the blossoms, they must fade and die before the fruit can fully develop and we get to enjoy eating it!

Cherry Blossom

Courtesy: FREE Stock pexels

A seed dies in the process of giving birth to new life. It illustrates the spiritual principle of life coming out of death. That’s the opposite of what we tend to think, in relation to the natural world. Commonly we figure that people are born, they live, and then they die. True enough.

In the realm of spiritual life, however, we are called to die to our self-life in order to live in the fulness of the life of Jesus and in the love of God. Jesus had to die on the Cross before He could rise from the dead to make new life available to those who trust in Him.

People might Ooh and Aah at the glorious sight of blossoms on trees, but do the trees puff with pride because of the praise? Of course not.When their flowers fade and fall they lose their glorious adornment.  

Sometimes segments of the Christian community experience periods during which they garner admiration in the general community, only to be cast aside when hypocrisy and failure become apparent with it; the glorious flower and verdant leaves of popularity fade and fall. Bitter fruit!

Credit: Google duty-free images

But wait, the Scriptures teach: “... the fruit of the [Holy] Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. . . Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. . .” (Galatians 5:22-24).

Courtesy: FreeImages.com

There it is – the principle of spiritual life following spiritual death. The fruit of a life lived in the grace of Jesus under the  sunshine of God’s love produces good and pleasant fruit, regardless of our age and physical appearance. But, surely God is grieved when bitter fruit causes people to turn away from faith in Jesus.

Even sour lemons have beneficial uses and are, in fact, good fruit. A touch of honey can make quite a difference. As an old Gospel song says: There’s honey in the Rock, my brother [my sister, too]!  Jesus is our Rock.

Pensive Prayer: Dear God, even though the flower of our youth eventually fades, grant that good fruit will continue to form in our lives, as the divine harvest-gathering time draws ever near! In Jesus’ name, Amen.

~~+~~

Peter is a retired pastor – well, sort of retired – as he is currently engaged as an associate volunteer pastor. He lives in Southwestern Ontario with his wife, May, and writes a weekly inspirational newspaper column and occasional magazine articles. Peter is author of two books: "Parables from the Pond" (Word Alive Press) and "Raise Your Gaze . . . Mindful Musings of a Grateful Heart" (Angel Hope Publishing). He and May are also engaged in leading nursing home / residential chapel services, pulpit supply and music. ~+~

The Interrupted Life VIII – A War Widow by Eleanor Shepherd

This month I want to share the story of my friend, Luce in her own words. 

Eleanor: What event interrupted your life? 

Luce:  It was the war in Yugoslavia in 1991 that triggered the huge losses that interrupted my life.

Eleanor:  What was your life like before this event?  

Luce:  In June 1991, I celebrated eight years of being happily married to a loving Yugoslav husband.

I was 25 and living a life filled with culture, music, arts, knitting with my older female friends, and singing duets with my husband at special events. 

 Although trained as a translator, my husband requested I not work. So I was a happy housewife, living in my beautiful house, driving Yugoslav girlfriends around in my new Cadillac. I volunteered weekly in hospitals and senior homes using my language skills. 

Eleanor:  What was the most important thing about your life at that time? 

Luce:  Pleasing my hard-working husband: he was “my everything”, and his income ensured that we had no financial worries.I wanted to be “as Yugoslav as I can be” to make him proud. 

Eleanor:  What were your dreams? 

Luce:  I had no great ambitions but to be a good wife, a good person. I wanted to start a family of my own. 

Eleanor:  What had you accomplished? 

Luce:  Coming from a very poor and mainly uneducated family and neighbourhood, I was very proud to be the only one in my family who had gone to the great, inaccessible University. I obtained a Bachelor’s degree in translation. That was my greatest accomplishment.

I was proud of my courage to leave my country out of devotion to my husband, to live in

uncomfortable and unhygienic conditions in the mountains of Yugoslavia. I adapted to rural life, learning to care for cows, sheep, pigs, and chickens. I adjusted to living without running water, washrooms, or electricity, and found I could still be happy!

  

Dark clouds came when things started to deteriorate in Kosovo. In the winter of 1989, everyone seemed convinced that war was coming. My husband decided we would be safer back in Canada.

Eleanor:  What were your fears? 

Luce: My husband was the youngest of a family of 13 children. Many were not fertile and I was afraid I would not be able to have a baby. Also a few family members were “not well in their heads.” Though they exhibited jealousy or suspicion or were depressed, they were always kind to me.

When Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia, in June 1991, my husband foresaw civil war coming.

Eleanor:  Who were the most important people in your life? 

Luce: My husband, my family, and a few dear friends.

Eleanor:   Describe your two most important relationships at the time. 

Luce:  My relationship with my husband was the most important: we were kind of in a symbiosis. 

Also I had a very close  friend, Slobodanka (45 years old at the time), who was like my “Yugoslav mother”. She taught me so much, we spent so much time together, she was my “role model” of the perfect housewife.

Eleanor:  Were you a person of faith at the time? 

Luce: Yes, as a Catholic, I did believe in God as the Creator. I knew Jesus as a “character” in the Bible, but had no real concept of the Holy Spirit. 

Eleanor:  What did your faith look like?  

Luce: I knew by memory all my Catholic “poems/prayer” but I did not know how to really talk with Jesus and God.I did not rely on God but on my husband.

Eleanor:  Describe the event that interrupted your life?  

Luce:  On November 29^th1991, my husband was suddenly struck by a terrible schizophrenic psychosis and ended up in the Douglas Hospital.

I had seen him in the morning, he seemed okay. I kissed him goodbye and never saw him again.

Eleanor:   Did the trauma happen all at once of was it gradual? 

Luce:  Shortly after Croatia’s declaration of independence, in June 1991, my husband’s joy and energy began slowly fading away. He became suspicious of our Yugoslav friends, particularly Muslims and Croatians, as he was Serbian.

He started demanding we cut our relationships with people. He brought a bodyguard into our house. He slept with a knife under his pillow.

In disbelief, I hoped this was just some type of temporary depression.

On November 29^th, when I spoke on the phone with the Douglas Hospital psychiatrist, I was informed that this type of schizophrenic psychosis was irreversible. I had lost my husband forever.

The doctor told me to consider myself a widow,“You should pack up your things, and go on with your life.  

Eleanor:  How did you feel? 

Luce:  I was devastated! I was in denial. I was lost! The man I married was someone I did not know! 

Eleanor:  How did you react? 

Luce: I lost myself in action. I could not stay in the home I shared with my husband. I grabbed garbage bags, threw in my clothes and personal belongings and left. 

Subsequently, I faced death threats and suffered a physical attack from a brother-in-law. Shortly after, in despair and sadness, I fell into the arms of a “new friend;” and found out I was pregnant two months later. Not knowing who was the father, I made the tough decision to end my pregnancy, and suffered the physical and emotional consequences of that abortion.             

Eleanor’s Conclusion: 

            Were you to meet Luce today you would encounter a beautiful woman of grace who exudes love. The interruption of becoming a war widow eventually led her into a deep experience of faith. That is a story for later.

Word Guild Award
2018

Word Guild Award
2011

Word Guild Award
2009

Eleanor Shepherd from Pointe Claire, Quebec has more than 100 articles published in Canada, France, the U.S.A., Belgium, Switzerland and New Zealand. Thirty years with The Salvation Army in Canada and France including ministry in Africa, Europe, Haiti and the Caribbean furnished material for her Award winning book, More Questions than Answers, Sharing Faith by Listening as well as her Award winning stories in Hot Apple Cider and Christmas with Hot Apple Cider. She co-authored with her husband Glen the Bible Study book Why? Families. As well as writing, she conducts workshops on listening skills and prayer. Eleanor recently retired from being the pastor of an English speaking congregation in Montreal with The Salvaton Army. She is currently pursuing studies to become a Prayer Companion.