Dancing in the Rain by Ruth Smith Meyer

The windows of the worship space in our church are large.  There is no need for stained glass images to enhance the view and adoration of our Maker, for we can see the handiwork of creation—a variety of trees, daffodils, iris and other plantings at their base, the green grass and blue skies. A few weeks ago a steady rain fell during the service. That just added to the lush beauty of the view each time I glanced out a window. 

 Suddenly, my eyes were drawn to movement and I watched in awe as several bright yellow goldfinches did an aerial dance, rising and swooping in delight, rising higher and then diving toward the grass before they shifted upward again. It seemed as though they were releasing their spirits in utter abandonment to joy. I’m afraid my attention strayed from the sermon as my eyes were riveted to the in-flight extravaganza.

I thought goldfinches were vegetarians, eating only seeds of plants, but I wondered if I was wrong and they perhaps were catching some of the vast army of mosquitoes that have inundated our area. I would have been less surprised if they had been swallows, but the colour and size of those birds definitely identified them as goldfinch.

As soon as I returned home, I looked on line to see if goldfinches eat mosquitoes. But according to the sources I investigated, I was right—they are vegetarians.

Maybe those delightful, bright coloured birds were frolicking in exuberant jubilation just for the sheer joy of it.

I felt a tug in my own heart.  We’d had a difficult week with an emergency ambulance trip for my husband, a real scare that his symptoms were life threatening, several days of uncertainty and some still hanging over our heads.  

Could goldfinches be a reminder to me to let go of the resistance to the rain of difficulty and uncertainty? Could I dance too, knowing that grey showers would water my soul just as surely the rain was watering the earth?  Could I just enjoy God’s care for us and do my own dance in the rain?

Over the next few weeks, that picture from the sanctuary window vividly played over and over again in my mind. It seemed every time uncertainty and distinct possibility of more health challenges arose, that scene of joy in the rain came back to me to urge me to dance in spite of or amidst the rain.

Habakkak 3: 17.18 says:

“Even though the fig trees have no blossoms,
    and there are no grapes on the vines;
even though the olive crop fails,
    and the fields lie empty and barren;
even though the flocks die in the fields,
    and the cattle barns are empty, yet I will rejoice in the Lord!
    I will be joyful in the God of my salvation!”

I could substitute some of the seeming lacks in my own life and that of my husband’s right now, but the good prophet has the idea and we will rejoice in the the God of our salvation—even in the rain!

“(For) those who (go) off with heavy hearts
    will come home laughing, with armloads of blessing.” Psalm 26:5

www.ruthsmithmeyer.com.  Come visit me and read about my newest book, Out of the Ordinary--the story of my life. 

Making Choices--Carolyn R.Wilker

 

Going on holidays presents an array of choices once you get there, or even in the planning beforehand.  You can stay at a Bed and Breakfast or hotel or stay with friends nearby, if you’re fortunate enough to have that option.  Perhaps tenting or even a cottage.

Once you get to your destination, there are even more choices : what to do next. If it’s a relaxing vacation you’re looking for, you might take along a few good books to read, or sit and visit with others. Or perhaps you’re going swimming or playing tennis or hiking. And there are always the decisions of what to make for meals.

In case you’ve not already guessed, we’re on vacation. We’ve been pondering and planning for awhile on how to fill the time.  But maybe not all of it. Our family made plans too. It’s a much-desired and needed time away from  our regular work schedule.

            Today we attended the Lakefield Literary Festival with our grandchildren and our daughter  to see  children’s authors Ruth Ohi,  Aubrey Davis and Helaine Becker, which proved great entertainment for a Saturday July morning.

Back at the trailer, our daughter and son-in-law made plans to take us a boat ride across the lake to their favourite ice cream shop. But we learned, when the boat would not start, that the trip needs to wait a few hours until the boat battery gets recharged.

            We may make plans, but even those may not always work out. Some things are beyond our control, but can be resolved, and the boat ride is one of those. It can wait, but the blog post can be written while a  young one has a much needed nap. 

These choices, which involved planning and packing, now result in this time away to enjoy time with family and in the outdoors . Not all choices are that easy though. While the road seems smooth and the trip fun, there are times that our choices are much tougher and have a more lasting impact. As in Robert Frost’s famous poem, “The Road Not Taken,” where the poet ponders which road to take or leave for another day, there are many important ones to be made over our life’s journey, some of which may actually be harmful to you or others, and have eternal consequences. How we conduct ourselves at all times is important, how we live with and among others shows our values and morals.

So let us make those choices wisely, yes, even while on vacation. May your summer be safe, and enjoyable.

And that boat ride... was worth the wait, and the ice cream too.

www.carolynwilker.ca

 

Going to the Heart - HIRD

By the Rev. Dr. Ed Hird 

It is far too easy to look at outward appearances, and miss the heart of the matter.  The Hebrew prophet Samuel, before choosing King David, was told: “People look at the outward appearances but God looks at the heart.”  In North America, we can easily be three thousand miles wide and one inch deep.  We can easily be swallowed by the latest cultural fad, and never discover who we really are.  I love going to the gym, and keeping healthy.  But as mentioned in my recent book Restoring Health, it can’t just be about the outer appearances.  We need to look at health holistically in body, mind and spirit.

The Good Book says ‘Above all else, guard your heart for out of it are the issues of life.’  Our ‘heart’ refers to the core of our personality, our identity, whom we really are.   Many people have invested so much into keeping other people happy that they have very little idea whom they really are.  They confuse their core identity with their latest job, their education, their bank account or relationships, all of which may be very transitory.  The Good Shepherd said “Out of the heart, the mouth speaks”.   Sometimes in the disappointments of life, our heart can turn hard, like a stone.  Our hearts need melting, so that they can become soft again.  When our heart shuts down, we stop caring.  We slip into cynicism and bitterness.  God does not care about how good we look on the outside.  He goes to the heart of the matter.  God wants a genuine relationship with each of us.  It has been said that Jesus died on the cross from a broken heart.  He poured out his heart of love for each of us from Calvary’s tree.  Most Canadians believe in God, but we can easily keep God at a distance.  God is into intimacy.  God wants us to open our hearts to his love.   This love can never be forced.  It can only be offered.  When we open our hearts to the Father’s love, something happens at the core of our being.

 

When I was age 17 in the last few months of Grade 12, I had a life-changing encounter with the Father’s love.  Suddenly my heart, my core personality, was powerfully changed.  I was a new creation in Christ.  I had a new purpose and reason to live.  Within a week, I felt a call to be an Anglican priest.  My grandmother and mother had known for years that I would become a priest.   I was going to become an electrical engineer like my father.  God touched me at a heart level.  I had been going to church for many years, but nothing had connected.   Love changes everything.  When I finally understood that God loved me deeply, I was undone.  My whole world was turned undone.  God loves you just as much as he loves me.  God is waiting to touch each of us at the heart level.  The heart of the matter is our heart.  My prayer for those reading this article is that each of us will open our hearts to God’s amazing love for each of us.

 

The Rev. Dr. Ed Hird, Rector

St. Simon's Church North Vancouver

Anglican Mission in Canada

-an article for the July 2015 Deep Cove Crier

-author of Battle for the Soul of Canada and Restoring Health: body, mind and spirit

-co-author of 2nd Cup of Hot Apple Cider

Like, you always wondered about the space aliens. Okay … - Denyse O’Leary

(My try at science fiction:)

Shhh!!

When the Luminarians began exploring Earth some 150 years ago, they had to develop a strategy for ensuring that they remained undetected.
uminarians are somewhat more intelligent than humans but are also much more modest. Also, they had noted that very intelligent humans often cannot see the obvious.

Thus, a strategy occurred to them that, properly executed, would enable them to carry out their research without interference.

Having first made sure through biotechnology that they looked and acted like humans, they became psychiatrists - focusing on institutions where most of the patients are on involuntary committal orders. They had no reason to fear exposure from such persons in the event of a security slip-up.

A number of their other strategies were similarly wise. They associated with crackpots. They persuaded them to accuse NASA of hiding the bodies of space aliens. This ensured that the whole notion of the Luminarians' possible existence attracted easy public derision.

The Luminarians took no offense at this; indeed, they did everything possible to encourage it.
What was even better was that crackpots who accidentally stumbled onto the facts immediately seized the opportunity to phone NASA with the news that one of their own number was in fact a space alien … .

Which had the effect desired by the Luminarians, if not necessarily by the crackpots.
Some Luminarians infiltrated astronomy and space exploration (including NASA) and encouraged nonsense wherever possible, behaving coolly, sometimes even hostilely, toward expressions of good sense or reasonable interpretation of evidence.

Despite being deists themselves, the Luminarians have encouraged the new atheist movement as much as possible. It promotes a view of cosmology that makes facts like fine tuning of the universe for life undiscussable in science. And when facts aren't discussable, what can be/?

They promote any alternative nonsense instead.

An early Luminarian coup was to spread the (false) news that thousands of people had panicked when they heard the radio broadcast of H.G. Wells's War of the Worlds in 1938. This alerted generations of social science researchers to the study of why people believe “things that aren’t true” (in other words, things not believed among the researchers who got soc sci grants).

It sometimes became necessary to take a human being up to one of the high tech labs in their invisible spacecraft, for a detailed neuroscience examination. They were careful to follow a critical policy:

Never abduct anyone likely to be believed by persons with any authority. It made no difference to their study of specific still-puzzling features of human neuroscience whether the research subject was likely to be believed by such persons.

In fact, the authorities co-operated without even knowing they were doing so.

"World's smartest scientist" types helped immensely by saying things like "Why on earth would the extraterrestrials abduct the least believable people. Haw! haw! haw!"

These smartest scientist types were very intelligent, thus could not see the obvious. It never occurred to them to turn their own question around: Why would the extraterrestrials abduct someone who would be believed by persons in authority? How would that help them continue their work undetected in peace?

Far from it, when the Luminarians wanted to study human embryology, they abducted women who had become pregnant under questionable circumstances. The women later claimed to have been impregnated by space aliens. The human embryology project continues unhindered to this day.

I discovered all this quite by accident when I formed the impression that one of my neighbours was in fact an extraterrestrial, based on things about his life that I had stumbled on.

I quietly prepared to turn myself in to a mental home when he came up to me in the common area out back of our townhouses and said, "O’Leary, can we talk?"

He explained that, as a Luminarian, he was here to gather data. In his case he was stuck in a minor, frigid outpost (Ottawa) that he rather disliked, and was hoping for a promotion. Maybe my good opinion would help.

Because the Luminarians knew that humans would eventually make contact with them, they had decided that the best policy was to make sure that we knew as little as possible about them. But they now know a great deal about us - even if it means enduring a winter in Ottawa.

He explained their methods, as outlined above.
I thought about what he said and replied: Okay, let's cut a deal: I'll continue to dump on the space alien stuff, and you leave me and mine alone. ... But you had better keep your part of the bargain.

We’ll see. ;)

The Science Fictions series at your fingertips (cosmology).? br> Also published here.

Denyse O’Leary is a Canadian journalist, author, and blogger.

A Light in the Darkness by Rose McCormick Brandon

“John was a lamp that burned and gave light . . . “ John 5:35

Jesus used these words to describe John the Baptist, that man, prophet, who went about preaching that another would come after him – the Son of God Himself – the One of whom John said, “I am unworthy even to tie His shoes” (John 1:26).

John was a light. Jesus was the Light.

Since Jesus came as the Light of the World many people have been a shining light for Him. Through the centuries these lights have shone all over the world, in families, neighbourhoods, offices and workplaces.

Today, the world is filled with spiritual darkness. It’s the nature of spiritual darkness to cause people to believe they are enlightened. They believe wholeheartedly that they are marching toward the light when in reality, they are rushing headlong toward an even denser darkness.

To us, God has entrusted the role of light-bearer. As Jesus was the Light of the World, His followers are now millions of lights shining in spiritual darkness. Paul referred to believers as “children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe” (Philippians 2:15).

How can I, one little light, make a difference in so dense a darkness? My light seems small and insignificant. Yet, to those searching for God – and there are many searchers – our small lights shine like beacons on a lighthouse.

Keep on shining your light for Jesus. Unapologetically.

“Let your light shine before men that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.” Matthew 5:16

Most of us have come to Christ through someone who let their light shine. Now, it’s our turn to shine for Him.

Prayer: Lord, I dedicate my life to shining for You. Help me not to be overcome by the darkness, or discouraged by it, but make me a light that shines through it, a light that draws others to You.

***

 Rose McCormick Brandon is the author of four books: Promises of Home - Stories of Canada's British Home Children, One Good Word Makes all the Difference, He Loves Me Not, He Loves Me and Vanished. Visit her website Writing From the Heart. Two blogs: Promises of Home and Listening to my Hair Grow.

 

"King Gull" – Musings of Hope (Peter Black)

Can one blame the millions of Canadians who, after a long hard winter and slow start to spring, flock to the nation’s beaches, whether situated by lake or sea coast? Huge numbers, as we know, unwilling to wait for our northern weather to wake and warm up, also take to the air by the plane-load for sunnier climes earlier in the year, and some join floating cities aboard massive cruise ships.

But fancy resorts and busy beaches, with personal water-craft buzzing around, are not for everybody. Quiet cottage country, a remote lake or stream, or a lesser-populated beach on the coast, may better suit those more contemplative souls who don’t particularly intrude into, but observe, nature. They drink in its essence, manifested in its scents, scenes and sounds, and its fauna and flora.

Today we introduce a fresh voice from one such soul, Phil Brown – writer, playwright and poet. Phil’s generously permitted us to post his poem, “King Gull,” inspired by his observations of one of nature’s ubiquitous birds. I read it several times – slowly. Reverently.

I hear your sharp call as I stroll the shore,

A young web-footed gull, a king, destined to soar.

Stretching wings skyward to catch the breeze,

Hovering high over the surf and towering trees.

He circles then seeks those fingerling fish,

That soon will become his life-giving dish.

His sharp eye sees the shimmering glow,

As minnows swarm in the shallows below.

Twisting then turning he dives to the lake,

Downward he swoops to the flashing take.

With his appetite filled, he returns to the sky,

Once again I hear that high-pitched cry.

Many years have now passed, his routine is the same,

But time has now ravaged his aging frame.

The harsh cold winters have hampered his way,

He’s forced to fly less, seeking easier prey.

In the end he settles, feeling the warmth of the sand,

He watches the others as they soar and land.

Slowly but surely he closes his eyes,

I shed a tear as his life’s last ember dies.

With the arrival of spring, I stroll the shore,

I see a new youngster destined to soar.

Stretching wings skyward to catch the breeze,

Perhaps it’s my king over the surf and the trees.*

~~~

Our thanks to Phil Brown. Makes you think, doesn’t it? The cycle of life. A generation passes; a new generation arises.

Phil’s gull lived his life well. His physiology – especially his graceful wings – enabled him to take to flight with ease and soar on the breezes and thermal updraughts. The gull’s sharp eyesight, his specially designed bill, his skills and instincts combined to sustain his life through fishing. As an omnivore, scavenging would have played a part. King Gull was born to soar, until he could soar no more, finally compensating by modifying his diet and activities.

Phil brings heart-touching poignancy to King Gull’s old-age decline and passing. It parallels our human experience. Perhaps we cannot ‘soar’ into the heights of human activity the way we once did, yet God has a promise for His children in their spiritual journey:

“Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint” (Isaiah 40:30-31 NIV).

He’s my hope. Yours too?

~~+~~

*"King Gull poem – used by author's permission: © Phil Brown, 2015.

 

The above article was published in Black's weekly column, P-Pep! in The Watford Guide-Advocate, June 25, 2015.

~~+~~

Peter's second book is a compilation of inspirational articles on a variety of themes from his weekly column. These are interspersed with brief expressions intended to encourage. Ebook edition is now available through Amazon.

 

ISBN: 978-0-9920074-2-3 (Angel Hope Publishing)

Email
Blog 

 

Peter's first book: “Parables from the Pond” – a children's / family book (mildly educational, inspirational in orientation, character reinforcing). Finalist – Word Alive Press. ISBN: 1897373-21-X. The book has found a place in various settings with a readership ranging from kids to senior adults.

Black's inspirational column, P-Pep! appears weekly in The Guide-Advocate (of Southwestern Ontario). His articles have appeared in 50 Plus Contact and testimony, and several newspapers in Ontario.

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Word Addiction - Eleanor Shepherd

          My husband, Glen has been out of town this week.  What usually happens when he is away is that I find all kinds of reasons to delay going to bed.  It is not so much that I fear the dark, when I am alone, although if I am totally honest that does still lurk at the back of my mind.  However, this week I discovered a new distraction.

           

On my iPad when I first opened it was a game called Bookworm.  For the first few years, I completely ignored it.  Who has time to play games when there are important things to do on line, like keeping in touch with friends on Facebook, managing your LinkedIn and Twitter contacts as well as faithfully responding to business and personal emails, hopefully within twenty-four hours?

            I think it was my daughter who in random conversation shared with me the joy she had, playing Scrabble on her iPad when she was touring. (She is a professional musician.) Since Scrabble is always my game of choice I downloaded the App and have always found time to fit games into my spare minutes.  I seldom turn out my light at night without checking to see that I have taken my latest turn in the three or four Scrabble games that I have going.  I will fall asleep thinking of words that I might make with the letters that I have available. 

            One day, not too long ago, when I had the iPad open and was caught up on all my emails, I decided to check what Bookworm was all about.  What a mistake!  I am hooked.  All I have to do is select letters from the ever changing ones offered and create words. 

            Few things in life give me greater satisfaction that to put together letters and create words. In case you have not already guessed it, I have to admit my secret addiction.  With Glen away, I have been staying up at night, way later than I should just to make more words.  There are a few neat challenges in the game, like letters that appear in flames that you must use in words before they move to the bottom of the screen causing you to be eliminated from the game. Also there are extra points for using certain highlighted letters that pop up and the longer the words, the higher the score.  Now, I actually have been paying little attention to the score.  That does not interest me so much.  The thrill for me is to be able to create the words. The act of creating them makes me feel so powerful.  

           

            In reflecting on this addiction to words, I have been wondering about its origin.  How did I become so obsessed with words that I am like an alcoholic thirsting for the next high that comes with my successful creation of words, simply by finding the correct sequence of letters.  I sometimes wonder if it is the way that my brain is wired.  I know that in contrast to words, my reaction to numbers is a fear that makes me want to run and hide from them so they will not land on me.  They make me afraid, because to me they are a source of anxiety and confusion. 

            On the other hand, I find that letters, words and ideas make the adrenalin flow through me and I get so excited, I never want to stop the game or the discussion or put down the book.  Is this related in some way to why I am a writer?  Do all writers feel this giddiness about words?  I am curious and wonder if I am the one who is out of step or is this kind of passion for words common among those of us who participate in the craft of word-smithing.     

Word Guild Award
2011

  

Word Guild Award
2009