Jim Taylor's Columns - 'Soft Edges' and 'Sharp Edges'

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20

Oct

2020

Hope

Author: Jim Taylor

In the night, a firefly blinks

once

a single speck of light, a mote, a flake

flung into a slow, black, sloe-black

river of loneliness

rippling through

the gnarled fingers of the darkling forest

seeking a silent echo


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Categories: Poetry

Tags: hope, future, fireflies

5

Dec

2019

Mixed feelings about what Hope means

Author: Jim Taylor

Here we are, into the first week in December, the first week of what the Christian Church has traditionally termed the beginning of a new year.

            In the northern hemisphere, we have three different “years.” The calendar year starts January 1. The school year starts in September. And the Christian year starts with the four Sundays before Christmas -- collectively called Advent. The first Sunday is usually about Hope.

            Of course, it’s about hope for the coming of a Saviour, a Messiah, a holy person who will show the world how to live.

            But is that really hope, 20 centuries later? We already know that child was born, and grew up, and set us an example…. 


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14

Dec

2016

The White Helmets of hope

Author: Jim Taylor

Around Christmas in North America, children (and many adults) hang their hopes on a man with a white beard.

            In the war-torn Middle East, they’re more likely to hang their hopes on men in white helmets. 

            The White Helmets are standard construction-worker hard hats. The men need those helmets, because they go into places where no North American construction worker would venture. Into shattered buildings, where concrete block walls teeter. Where floors have collapsed, trapping victims beneath tons of rubble. Where snipers’ bullets fly, and unexploded bombs await the unwary. 

            In Syria, the White Helmets – officially the Syrian Defence Force -- have saved at least 70,000 lives, and probably many more.


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Categories: Soft Edges

Tags: hope, mercy, rescue

17

Apr

2016

Aboriginal suicides based on loss of hope

Author: Jim Taylor
Only one of my long-term friends ever committed suicide. I found his death much harder to get over, to get reconciled to, than the “normal” deaths of other friends. And so I can’t help wondering about the emotional effect of 11 suicide attempts in a single night. And then a plot by13 more to kill themselves just a few nights later. My mind reels. That’s the situation in Attawapiscat, an aboriginal community about halfway up the western shore of James Bay. A few years ago, Attawapiscat made national headlines when former chief Theresa Spence held a hunger strike near the parliament building in Ottawa. Perhaps the social conditions are worse in Attawapiscat than in other reserves; perhaps they’re not.
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