When you need a friend

A long-time friend posted on my Facebook page yesterday about making and keeping friends. The message said:

“It’s easy to make 15 friends in one year.

But keeping one friend for 15 years is special.”

I had to agree, because this person has been my friend since senior public and high school days, when our small rural schools closed and we were collected by bus and on our way to another bigger school. In a time like that, we are forced to move beyond our comfortable places. My friends from School Section (commonly known as S. S.) # 8 came too. We made new friends and kept the former ones too. And there were friends along the way at church in my Sunday School class and in our church in the city who have become just as dear.

East coast friend Maryann

 Barbara

Sunday School and confirmation-- friends there too

We recently had opportunity to gather with these long-time friends, for Linda’s partner became a friend of ours too. With us, another friend, Lorraine, gathered into our midst at a different point in our lives, in career choices and university years (for them).

Lorraine travelled with us to visit Linda and Bob in Port Dover, their retirement community. Another couple, Donna and Ron, also represent a friendship made during high school years, so you can imagine the conversations that might make its way into our gathering. 

in Port Dover

I’ve learned over the years the difference between an acquaintance and a close friend. I have many acquaintances, people I know reasonably well. Then the life-long friends, or other friends made later and just as dear, who care about how I’m doing, who have interests similar to mine. Those are the ones I share with when the world feels uncomfortable, when things happen that make me sad. Those are the ones who I go to when my world feels like it’s falling apart, and whom I also lend an ear when they suffer a life calamity or death of a loved one. We celebrate too, and often finish each other’s sentences and thoughts.

 

Missing Kathy too

It’s painful to lose a friend like that, and I’ve lost a number of them over the years— Barb, Susan, Gayleen, Kathy, and more. The other half of a personal journey, the second part of a soul sister. It’s good when a sibling, daughter, or a cousin fits in that space too, and I add a few of those to my consideration of soul sisters and friends (including male cousins).

In Sunday School we sang, “Jesus loves me, this I know,” and we learned that Jesus wants to be our friend too. A different kind of friendship, to be sure, because grace and mercy are at stake. And forgiveness. We might try, but we humans don’t forgive as freely as God does. I know I am forgiven, and often the hardest to forgive is myself. My friends may forgive me, but God’s grace is so much bigger and eternal.

 

I cannot imagine going through life without friends. How lonely it must be. We as humans will never perfect, in fact far from it. And yet in our communities there’s still loneliness and lack of trust, and pain. And we feel it too at times. We need grace and forgiveness. As Leonard Cohen says in Anthem, “There’s a crack in everything.” And he expresses that’s where the light gets in.

And so I’ll keep all my friends—acquaintances, soul sisters and close friends, siblings and cousins whom I can confide in, and Jesus. That should keep me in good company whatever happens in life.

 Carolyn R. Wilker is a blogger, author, and editor from South-western Ontario, Canada, who enjoys photography, gardening and reading, and spending time with family.

 https://www.carolynwilker.ca/

Eric Liddell’s fiery chariots --HIRD

by Rev. Dr. Ed & Janice Hird

How often does a Chinese-born missionary to China become the subject of an academy award-winning movie? The people of China see Eric Liddell as their first Olympic gold medalist, even recently unveiling a statue of him. His daughter, Patricia Liddell, commented, “My father was multi-faceted, he didn’t just appeal to religious people. He was born in China, he worked in China, he died in China. He’s their Olympic hero.”

In the movie, Chariots of Fire, he is shown running for the glory of God in the 1924 Olympics. Known as the ‘Flying Scotsman’, he famously said: “God made me fast, and when I run, I feel His pleasure.” When asked how he ran so quickly, he often said that he ran as fast as he could for the first half of a race, and then asked God to help him run even faster for the second half. Liddell won so much gold and silver that his mother hid his trophies under her bed at night, in case of burglary.

Missionary families often make great sacrifices for the sake of the lost. Born in 1903 at Siao Chang on the Great Plain of Northern China, Liddell, and his older brother Robert, were sent in 1912 to the Eltham missionary boarding school in London. While at Eltham, Liddell earned the Blackheath Cup as the best athlete of his year, becoming the captain of both the cricket and rugby union teams. He did not see his mother again for seven years, and his dad for 13 years. Since he only knew Chinese culture, he experienced enormous culture shock in his parents’ homeland of Scotland.

While earning a chemistry degree at the University of Edinburgh, he was not only a track and field runner, but also became an award-winning rugby player for the Scottish national team. Being painfully shy, Liddell never could have imagined that he would become the most famous person in Scotland. Chemistry Professor Neil Campbell at Edinburgh commented, “No athlete has ever made a bigger impact on people all around the world, and the description of him as ‘the most famous, the most popular, and best-loved athlete Scotland has ever produced’ is no exaggeration.” Dunky Wright, Scotland’s greatest long-distance runner, said, “he was without doubt the most glorious runner I have ever seen …with such a high moral Christian character…”

Liddell had a unique running style that coaches tried to cure without success. The New York Times noted that he seemed to do everything wrong. The Daily Mail sketched him in a cartoon as if he were a rubber contortionist. Throwing his head back, he swayed and rocked like an overloaded express train. He was compared to a startled deer, a windmill with its sails off kilter, a terrified ghost, and someone whose joints had never been oiled. Jack Moakley, the wisest and oldest of the American Olympic running team, said, “That lad Liddell’s an awful runner, but he’s got something. I think he’s got what it takes.”

It hurt Liddell deeply when many called him a traitor for being unwilling to run on Sunday at the Olympics. His strong Christian convictions led him to refuse to work on Sundays, including winning gold medals. His stunning gold Olympic win in the 400 metres turned him from a national embarrassment to a celebrated hero. The closest parallel to his new fame was Beatlemania, complete with an actual Eric Liddell fan club.

For Liddell, the 1924 Olympics was just a brief diversion on his way to serve as a missionary in China. Before he boarded the boat to China, enormous crowds came to hear him speak in churches. More than 1,000 people had to be turned away sometimes because there was no more room.

Liddell served in China as a missionary chemistry teacher from 1925 to 1943, first in Tientsin (Tainjin) and later in Siaochan. In 1941, the fighting between the Chinese and invading Japanese forces became so dangerous that he was forced to send his Canadian wife Florence and their three children back to Canada. Kissing his wife goodbye, he whispered in her ear, ‘Those who love God never meet for the last time.’ The Japanese occupiers did not allow Liddell to hold church services with any more than ten people present. So he met nine people for afternoon tea, giving out copies of his sermon. These nine people then each met nine other people giving them copies of the sermon until everyone was reached. This became known as the Afternoon Tea Church.

Over 1,000 missionaries were imprisoned by the Japanese, many of whom died. In 1943, Liddell was sent to the Weixhan Internment Camp in modern-day Weifang, Shandong, with 1,800 other prisoners, including 100 other missionaries’ children. While interned in this 150 by 200 yard camp, he helped the elderly, taught Bible classes at the camp school, arranged games, and taught science to the children, who referred to him as Uncle Eric. David J. Michell, a child internee, remarked, “He had a smile for everyone.” Sports Writer A.A. Thomson said of Liddell, “During the worst period of his imprisonment, he was, through his courage and cheerfulness, a tower of strength and sanity to his fellow prisoners.”

Sometimes he ran races against the Japanese guards in order to allow food and medicine to be smuggled in for the starving inmates.

Liddell never saw his family again, dying at age 38 in the internment camp of a brain tumour, just months before the WW II liberation. His last words were, “It’s complete surrender.” Adopted by the Chinese as their very own, he is commemorated in a monument in Weifang, featuring these words from Isaiah: “They shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary.” What might it take for us to feel God’s pleasure for the sake of the nations?

Rev. Dr. Ed and Janice Hird
co-author of For Better, For Worse Discovering the keys to a lasting relationship

Is the mind real? Here's some science evidence - Denyse O'Leary

Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor was featured in a short film as a supplement to the Science Uprising series. There, he mentions four researchers who have shed light on the non-material mind nature of our minds:


Wilder Penfield (1891–1976):

Some of the earliest evidence came from neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield, who was the pioneer in epilepsy surgery in the mid 20th century. Penfield operated on over a thousand epilepsy patients while they were awake (under local anesthesia), and he stimulated their brains with electrodes in order to identify epileptic regions for surgical resection. He carefully recorded their responses to stimulation. In his book Mystery of the Mind, (1975) Penfield noted:

“When I have caused a conscious patient to move his hand by applying an electrode to the motor cortex of one hemisphere, I have often asked him about it. Invariably his response was: “I didn’t do that. You did”. When I caused him to vocalize, he said: “I didn’t make that sound. You pulled it out of me.” When I caused the record of the stream of consciousness to run again and so presented to him the record of his past experience, he marveled that he should be conscious of the past as well as of the present. He was astonished that it should come back to him so completely, with more detail than he could possibly recall voluntarily. He assumed at once that, somehow the surgeon was responsible for the phenomenon.”

Penfield never encountered a patient who, with stimulation of the brain, thought that he (the patient) had willed it. The patient could always distinguish between acts he willed himself and acts imposed on him by the surgeon’s electrode. My own experience (much more limited than that of Penfield, as I am not primarily an epilepsy neurosurgeon) has been the same. Patients can always distinguish evoked responses from voluntary willed responses.
Michael Egnor, "Neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield on Free Will" at Evolution News and Science Today:

Book: Mystery of the Mind: A Critical Study of Consciousness (1975)


Roger Sperry (1913–1994):

The neuroscientist Roger Sperry studied scores of split-brain patients. He found, surprisingly, that in ordinary life the patients showed little effect. Each patient was still one person. The intellect and will – the capacity to have abstract thought and to choose – remained unified. Only by meticulous testing could Sperry find any differences: their perceptions were altered by the surgery. Sensations – elicited by touch or vision – could be presented to one hemisphere of the brain, and not be experienced in the other hemisphere. Speech production is associated with the left hemisphere of the brain; patients could not name an object presented to the right hemisphere (via the left visual field). Yet they could point to the object with their left hand (which is controlled by the right hemisphere). The most remarkable result of Sperry’s Nobel Prize-winning work was that the person’s intellect and will – what we might call the soul– remained undivided.

The brain can be cut in half, but the intellect and will cannot. The intellect and will are metaphysically simple.
Michael Egnor, "Science and the Soul" at The Plough

Book: Science and Moral Priority (1983)


Benjamin Libet (1916–2007). His focus was on free will:

Some of the most fascinating research on consciousness was done by Penfield’s contemporary Benjamin Libet at the University of California, San Francisco. Libet asked: What happens in the brain when we think? How are electrical signals in the brain related to our thoughts? He was particularly interested in the timing of brain waves and thoughts. Did a brain wave happen at the same moment as the thought, or before, or after?

It was a difficult question to answer. It wasn’t hard to measure electrical changes in the brain: that could be done routinely by electrodes on the scalp, and Libet enlisted neurosurgeons to allow him to record signals deep in the brain while patients were awake. The challenge Libet faced was to accurately measure the time interval between the signals and the thoughts. But the signals last only a few milliseconds, and how can you time a thought with that kind of accuracy?

Libet began by choosing a very simple thought: the decision to press a button. He modified an oscilloscope so that a dot circled the screen once each second, and when the subject decided to push the button, he or she noted the location of the dot at the time of the decision. Libet measured the timing of the decision and the timing of the brain waves of many volunteers with accuracy in the tens of milliseconds. Consistently he found that the conscious decision to push the button was preceded by about half a second by a brain wave, which he called the readiness potential. Then a half-second later the subject became aware of his decision. It appeared at first that the subjects were not free; their brains made the decision to move and they followed it.

But Libet looked deeper. He asked his subjects to veto their decision immediately after they made it—to not push the button. Again, the readiness potential appeared a half-second before conscious awareness of the decision to push the button, but Libet found that the veto—he called it “free won’t”—had no brain wave corresponding to it.
The brain, then, has activity that corresponds to a pre-conscious urge to do something. But we are free to veto or accept this urge. The motives are material. The veto, and implicitly the acceptance, is an immaterial act of the will.
Michael Egnor, "More Than Material Minds" at Christianity Today

Book: Mind Time: The Temporal Factor in Consciousness (2005)


Adrian Owen (1966– ):

In the past decade, British researcher Adrian Owen has found using fMRI imaging that some patients with such severe brain damage that they are considered to be in a persistent vegetative state are actually capable of sophisticated thought. The “comatose” patients’ brain scans show that, in reply to questions by an examiner, the patients are in fact thinking and imagining.
Michael Egnor, "A Map of the Soul" at First Things

---

Also by Michael Egnor on the immaterial mind:


Do “forced thinking” seizures show that abstract thought is a material thing? Michael Egnor: Epilepsy suppresses abstract thought, it does not evoke it


Do epileptic seizures cause abstract thoughts? A psychiatrist argues that “intellectual seizures” can occur. He is mistaken. Seizures never evoke abstract thought.


and


Atheist psychiatrist misunderstands the evidence for an immaterial mind. Patients with massive brain damage were shown to have a mental life.

All Nature Sings . . .

Surely the tiny bird that’s been rapturously serenading my Beloved and me and our neighbours each morning for several weeks now isn’t singing the praises of the Toronto Raptors and celebrating their MBA championship win – as marvellous as that win is!

Photo Credit: Free Art

Also, I doubt that, in sending his trilling call ringing around our backyards, this cute songster would be consciously singing praises to God for our great country of Canada and celebrating our national birthday, as we have just done.

This little creature (I think he’s a yellow warbler) alights on the topmost pinnacle of our neighbour’s weeping Alaskan spruce and just sings his little heart out for a couple of hours. Perhaps he’s trying to attract a mate, or maybe to greet the day for sheer joy. In any case he cheers us up and he certainly has attracted us – his admirers.

These lines from the hymn This Is My Father’s World *would include this bird and its song as honouring the Creator:

Outer Planets of Solar System

Source Credit: pixy.org

This is my Father’s World

And to my list’ning ears /

All nature sings, and round me rings

 The music of the spheres. . . .

Also:

This is my Father’s world,

 The birds their carols raise;

The Morning light, the lily white

Declare their maker’s praise. . . .

In a world gone mad – beset by torturous trials and tragedies, clamouring competing interests and oligarchic monopolies, despotic dictators, corruption and crime, with nations in uproar, wars and rumours of war and millions of refugees on the move; all this besides massive pollution and extreme weather events, famine, fire and flood and species extinction – beauty and loveliness can still be found, seen and heard and experienced!

Public Domain

Do you ever draw in the scent of a flower, welcome the gentle breeze on a stifling day, absorb calming music and accept a caring touch, as simple expressions of goodness? Commonplace niceties, such as a kind word and the song of a bird, can help refresh the spirit and raise the gaze, softly calling us to be thankful and to offer up praise to God the Creator our Heavenly Father, for His many mercies.

Let us also thank Him for the companionship and guidance of the Holy Spirit, who brings the grace of Jesus our Redeemer and dearest Friend into our lives as we open our hearts to God.

Peter’s Point to Ponder:

Should all nature sing, giving praise to God,

yet my heart remain unmoved, and my voice

 – devoid of praise –

lie silent as the grave?

After all, I’m ‘nature’ too!

~~~                                                                

*Author: Maltbie D. Babcock

~~+~~

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. ~+~

Life is a Poem by Rose McCormick Brandon

If you build your life on my words, said Jesus, you will be like a house built on a rock. When rains pour and rivers flood, your house won’t collapse. (My paraphrase of Matthew 7:24)

The Greek word Jesus used for the idea of building a life on His word is poieo. The English word poem comes from this. Poets use words in creative ways to build something original. 

“Be a poet,” Jesus is saying. “Take my words and build a life with them.” His words build solid foundations. His words decorate our lives and turn them into something beautiful. 

I met a pretty mother of two. She told how she’d been addicted to heroine, sold her body on city streets. Since childhood she had lived in constant rage. One rainy night, in the grizzly downtown core, she went berserk. Slashed her arms. Screamed like a mad person. An ambulance came and took her away. 

When I looked into her clear eyes, I couldn’t picture the wild person she used to be. "I was living in hell," she said. A hurricane had rushed in and flattened her life. In her agony she remembered Jesus loved her. A pattern of self-abuse would have continued had He not stepped in and turned her jumbled life into a poem. 

That awful night Jesus began to build a meaningful life in her because, as Corrie ten Boom said, “No darkness is so deep that Jesus is not deeper still.”

As long as there’s breath, it’s not too late for God to take a meaningless messy life and turn it into a beautiful poem. Build your life on the foundation of Christ’s words. 

“One well-chosen word at a time. One stanza of service at a time. And with our words and deeds, we can leave something beautiful behind in the lives of others.” Eugene H. Peterson.

***

Rose McCormick Brandon writes biblical essays, devotionals and inspirational pieces. She is the grateful winner of several awards from The Word Guild. Her book, Promises of Home, is a collection of stories of Canada's British Home Children. Some of her writings are compiled in the book, One Good Word Makes all the Difference. Rose is married to Doug, the mother of three adult children and three (and another on the way) grandchildren. They live in Caledonia.

The Interrupted Life VI – A Consequence of Sexual Abuse by Eleanor Shepherd

         

The story I want to share of an interrupted life this month is a difficult one. There are so many people whose lives have been put on hold because of the devastation that has come to them through abuse of various kinds. One of the most pernicious seems to be sexual abuse, because it is often linked with an abuse of power that takes advantage of innocence. That seemed to be the case for my friend, Brenda who shared with me two significant interruptions in her life. Many of her own reflections about her experience of an eating disorder are detailed in her book Meeting Myself : Snippets from a Binging and Bulging Mind.

            My friend suffered from bulimia for years as a result of being a victim or sexual abuse from ages 11 to 14. Before she even knew that there was a name for her condition, it was well established, as her way of coping with the emotional and psychological damage that she suffered. 

            The abuse that she received caused a numbing of her emotions, and she tried to fill the emotional void, with food. Her eating disorder did not mean that the food brought any satisfaction to her, she just kept stuffing it in to try to fill the void. Then she tried to get rid of it, so her choice of self-soothing would not be obvious to others. 

            Unlike many of the interruptions in the lives of others, both the abuse and the bulimia were not sudden interruptions in Brenda’s life, but rather subtly crept up on her. They became elements in her life that crippled her relationships with others because she was unable to experience and express emotions and thus grow into the person that she was intended to be. 

            Fear was the only emotion that she was not able to keep down and it came to dominate her life. Her reaction was to battle with it by attacking her own body through an eating disorder. She wanted to be able to tell them about the abuse and the toll it was taking on her life, but fear and guilt convinced her that nobody would believe her. In a way, she was trying to punish herself for what she was doing, as a result of the guilt that accompanied her abuse. 

            In addition to all this, her eating disorder also caused Brenda to undergo two bouts with cancer and a syndrome that causes her saliva glands to work overtime.

            With the burden of her bulimia, Brenda struggled for years to finally regain a healthy lifestyle. It was only after she entered into a vital relationship with Christ, and grew in her relationship with Him, that she was able with help to gradually find freedom from her eating disorder and begin to allow her emotions to become a part of her life once more. Part of her recovery involved forgiving the one who had abused her, and although he had been dead for many years, it was only then that his power over her life was broken. 

            Many people suffer from the long term ravages of abuse and although it is difficult, I would not be surprized if like me, you want to be willing to listen to their stories and accept them wherever they are on their journeys. We do not want to pry into people’s lives, in a way that is unhealthy, but simply be ready to listen, if and when they feel safe enough to open the door a crack. Perhaps we can help them to more quickly recover the years that have been stolen from them by abuse. Maybe we can do this for each other and grow together. I think that was what the Apostle Paul was talking about when he told the early Christians in Galatia that they were to bear one another’s burdens. (Galatians 6: 2). This key can help us to deal with our own interruptions.

Word Guild Award
2011

Word Guild Award
2009

Word Guild Award
2018

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. Other award winning stories appear in the booksHot Apple Cider andChristmas 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. Eleanor and Glen have two adult children: John who is pursuing a PhD in Rehabilitation Therapy in Toronto and Elizabeth who is a professional musican, nominated for Juno awards for her last four jazz albums and is currently on tour.