Every now and then a good news story comes along that I have to share.
This one starts at a resort community somewhere in the Okanagan Valley. Like all resort communities, people come and go; some stay longer than others.
This particular resort works hard at building a real sense of community. So residents have their pets. Even if some of those pets are a little unusual.
So you might see a man taking his pet pig for a walk along the shore. Or a woman cycling to the recreation centre with a hen perched proudly on her handlebars, looking like an old-fashioned automobile emblem.
And if you followed that hen home, during the last month, you would have found her nesting on a clutch of seven eggs. Two eggs looked like what you might buy in a supermarket; the other five were pale brown.
They were fertilized Chantecler eggs.
Chantecler chickens are uniquely Canadian. In the early 1900s, Brother Wilfred Chatelain was a monk at the Abbey of Notre Dame du Lac in Oka, Quebec -- the same place that produces a distinctive semi-soft Canadian cheese, and where First Nations people and police forces had an armed standoff for 11weeks in 1990. Brother Wilfred realized that all hens in Canada came from warmer climates. They didn’t cope well with Canadian winters. So he crossbred hens, until they produced a breed that could stand low temperatures. Down to minus 30 Celsius, I understand.
The breed’s name derives from a Middle Ages fable about a rooster named Chanticleer who outsmarted a fox named Reynard.
Three of the five Chantecler eggs hatched. When those chicks mature enough to look after themselves, they will be flown -- as airline cargo, not under their own power -- north to Inuvik, on the Mackenzie River delta 200 km north of the Arctic Circle.
In Inuvik, eggs can cost as much as $6 each. Even at that price, like the vegetables also flown in from warmer climes, they’re only sort of fresh…
But this year, if all goes well, Inuvik will have its own fresh-laid eggs. Up to 200 eggs a year, from each hen.
The idea came from Raygan Solotski, manager of what her stepfather brags is the largest greenhouse north of the Arctic Circle. Owned by the 3400 citizens of Inuvik, the community greenhouse provides a limited supply of fresh vegetables.
The three little Chanticleer hens, and others that may follow them, will live in an insulated henhouse connected to the relatively protected environment of the greenhouse, providing the first fresh eggs that Inuvik has ever known.
To add a further twist to this story, some authorities declared the Chantecler extinct in 1979, when what was believed to be the last rooster died, at the University of Saskatchewan. But a few private farms and enthusiasts didn’t accept the over-hasty verdict. They kept the breed going. And soon their descendants will be laying fresh eggs near the edge of the Arctic Ocean.
It shows what can happen when people decide to work together.
*****************************************
Copyright © 2016 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups, and links from other blogs, welcomed; all other rights reserved.
        To comment on this column, write jimt@quixotic.ca
*****************************************
.
YOUR TURN

In last week’s column, I opened with an incident in which I had trouble hearing a man silhouetted against a bright window. 
Ted Wilson responded, “I suspect you may lip read more than you realize. My late wife also suffered from incremental hearing loss and had to resort to hearing aids by mid-life. She gave up teaching because she relied heavily on hearing to keep track of what was going on in the classroom and the resulting lack of directional hearing was too much of a handicap. She didn’t realize she lip read until one night we were watching a hockey game and the Ref penalized a player, who gave the Ref a piece of his mind using some locker room language. A camera had zoomed right in on the player and, although there was no audio, Barb knew exactly what he was saying. 
“We were given two eyes, two ears, but just one mouth. That’s God’s way of telling us that we should not talk more than 20% of the time. Less if we are in a group of five or more, or the others are smarter than we are.”

Steve Roney wondered if I had a reputable source for my claim that only 10% of a message is conveyed by the words themselves. 
I couldn’t find my source, but fortunately Don Schau provided it: “Great article on listening. It is a key skill that we all need to learn more about and improve. 
“The percentages you mention are actually 7% words, 38% tone, and 55% nonverbal. I was always told these came from a study at UC Berkeley but doing a little research found they were produced by Albert Mehrabian. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Mehrabian. The numbers have certainly been abused over the years as people choose to adopt communication styles to get what they want. In my opinion, the 7% is the foundation, the real message if you will. The rest is support that allows the listener to get the correct interpretation of the words. It works sort of like punctuation for the written word, only better.”

Cliff Boldt quoted my sentence, “Perhaps, if we emptied our minds of our incessant busy-ness, we might even be able to listen to that still small voice beyond nature, within nature, that some of us call God.” Cliff added his own take: “Yep, if I want that experience, I go sit on a log on the beach and listen to ocean coming in. Works every time.”

And Jack Dreidger questioned by claim that I had seen someone’s aura: “The dictionary says an aura is ‘any invisible emanation.’ How do you see something invisible? I can understand someone ‘sensing’ something invisible; I fail to understand how anybody could ‘see’ something invisible.”
I can only respond that it’s one reason I’m skeptical of definitions -- once stated, they become inflexible. I trust my own experience more than I trust any dictionary definition.

*****************************************

PSALM PARAPHRASES

Psalm 126 is described, in the Bible, as a “Psalm of Ascents.” That is, it would be sung as Jewish pilgrims ascended the slopes leading up to Mount Zion, the site of the Temple. As a pastoral people, they depended on agriculture for their survival. Simply being spared a disaster was cause for celebration. 

1   God has been good to us. 
The storm clouds gathered, the hail hung overhead--
But it passed by. 
2   Then we laughed and danced; 
Our peals of joy echoed across our lands.
Celebration spread faster than fire through summer grass, 
faster than rumors on a summer night.
3   For God has done great things for us. 
We are overcome with gratitude. 

4   The desert is not kind, O God. 
It demands living on the edge of disaster. 
Give us some sparkling springs!
5   We watered the desert with our tears; 
With our hearts in our mouths, we watched the green shoots stretch up. 
6   We risked everything on the seeds we planted; 
We sank our lives into this soil. 
Now the harvest has come home a hundredfold; 
God, you have renewed our lives. 

For paraphrases of most of the psalms used by the Revised Common Lectionary, you can order my book Everyday Psalms from Wood Lake Publishing, info@woodlake.com.

*******************************************

YOU SCRATCH MY BACK…
Ralph Milton has a new project, called Sing Hallelujah – the world’s first video hymnal. It consists of 100 popular hymns, both new and old, on five DVDs that can be played using a standard DVD player and TV screen, for use in congregations who lack skilled musicians to play piano or organ. More details at www.singhallelujah.ca
Isabel Gibson's thoughtful and well-written blog, www.traditionaliconoclast.com
Alan Reynold's weekly musings, punningly titled “Reynolds Rap,” write reynoldsrap@shaw.ca
Wayne Irwin's "Churchweb Canada," an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. <http://www.churchwebcanada.ca>
Alva Wood's satiric stories about incompetent bureaucrats and prejudiced attitudes in a small town are not particularly religious, but they are fun; write alvawood@gmail.com to get onto her mailing list.
Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” – ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at twatson@sentex.net

*****************************************

TECHNICAL STUFF

If you want to comment on something, send a message directly to me, jimt@quixotic.ca.
        To subscribe or unsubscribe, send an e-mail message to jimt@quixotic.ca. Or you can subscribe electronically by sending a blank e-mail (no message) to softedges-subscribe@quixotic.ca. Similarly, you can un-subscribe at softedges-unsubscribe@quixotic.ca.
        You can access years of archived columns at http://edges.Canadahomepage.net.
        I write a second column each Sunday called Sharp Edges, which tends to be somewhat more cutting about social and justice issues. To sign up for Sharp Edges, write to me directly, jimt@quixotic.ca, or send a note to sharpedges-subscribe@quixotic.ca

********************************************