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17
Jun
2022
Thursday June 16, 2022
It was not a typical breakfast conversation: But then, we weren’t a typical breakfast group.
For around 25 years, a group of guys -- who all worked for, with, or in Canadian churches -- have met at least once a year to talk. About almost anything.
We haven’t solved any of the world’s problems. But we’ve had a good time not solving them.
And so, on this particular morning, we found ourselves wondering about the difference between guilt and shame.
Categories: Soft Edges
Tags: Shame, guilt, indigenous peoples, settlers
Thursday June 9, 2022
Piano recitals are back.
My church has a wonderful grand piano. Piano teachers love to bring their children to play on it, to the applause of their admiring parents and adoring grandparents.
Until Covid-19 came along, we used to have up to a dozen piano recitals a year. During the pandemic, some teachers abandoned recitals altogether. Others did virtual recitals.
But as the pandemic restrictions eased, the recitals have come back.
I’m the sound man. I get to attend, without having to play anything.
Tags: learning, piano, recitals, mistakes, duets
Sunday June 5, 2022
England is having a grand party to celebrate Queen Elizabeth’s platinum anniversary – 70 years on the throne. (TV doesn’t tell me how enthusiastically the Scots and Welsh are joining in.)
“Lillibet” and I don’t have a long personal history. Minimal, in fact. Our life stories intersect at only two points.
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: Queen Elizabeth, 70 years, A, .C. Taylor
Thursday June 2, 2022
As far as I know, none of my friends are in imminent danger of dying – thanks to pills, pacemakers, and physiotherapists.
But we have all had warnings of our mortality. The future is not infinite anymore.
The editor of my elementary school’s newsletter mused about her shrinking mailing list. “When I don't know what's happened to classmates,” she wrote, “it makes me sad. Sort of like I haven't said a proper goodbye.”
Goodbye.
We don’t like goodbyes. As Rabbi Kami Knapp wrote, “People feel uncomfortable with the feelings associated with goodbyes, or we become too busy to take the time to properly say goodbye.”
Many of our words for parting deny the possibility of permanent separation, whether by death or circumstance.
Tags: death, goodbye, partings
Sunday May 29, 2022
Yet another school shooting in the U.S. Nineteen children and two teachers dead -- plus the shooter himself.
As I write this column, authorities are still trying to fathom the teenaged shooter’s motives. Was he influenced by extremist ideologies? By prejudice? By social media?
I suggest that the terms we use, in examining motives, are themselves part of the problem. Traditional interpretations of “right” and “left,” liberal and conservative, get in the way of understanding.
We need to start again.
Try these definitions on for size. The right worships the individual. The left worships the group.
Tags: politics, labels, right/left