To make Comments write directly to Jim at jimt@quixotic.ca
28
Nov
2018
We had just arrived in the Okanagan. We moved in, unpacked, and went church shopping.
The first church we tried was Winfield United. The service itself was, well, so-so. Solid. Perhaps even stolid. Nothing exciting, but nothing offensive either.
Then, on our way out, Marg Kyle grabbed me. “We need you in our choir,” she insisted.
I’ve been singing in that choir for 25 years now.
In the church — and I guess in other contexts too — we talk a lot about community. We value community, even the virtual community supposedly offered by the internet.
And yet we often get it wrong. A seniors’ care home is not automatically a community. Neither is a housing sub-division. Both can become a community — but that will depend on the relationships of the people who live there, not just on living in close proximity.
And having a million followers on Twitter or Facebook does not create a community either.
Categories: Soft Edges
Tags: transcendence, community, choirs
25
Jan
2017
Dogs dream.
That should be an obvious statement. All dog owners have seen their pet’s legs twitching while asleep. Clearly, the dog is chasing something. A rabbit perhaps. Or romping for sheer joy through an imaginary meadow.
We cannot know exactly what the dream consists of, because dogs can’t talk to us. But the fact that dogs can dream should tell us that dogs are capable of imagining themselves in situations that transcend the immediate present.
That is, they are not simply creatures that react to external stimuli.
Tags: dogs, dreaming, transcendence