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3
May
2022
Thursday April 21, 2022
My alarm went off at 5:30 Easter morning. Through my window, on the far side of the lake, a full moon was slipping behind the mountains.
I heard a thump. A bird had flown into my window. Quail aren’t noted for intelligence – but even they know it’s easier to find sunflower seeds at my feeder than to scrabble around in the undergrowth looking for leftovers from last fall.
A quail, a nerf-ball of feathers, lay motionless on my deck. Broken its neck when it hit the glass, I assumed.
But I had an Easter sunrise service to attend. So I left it for later.
Categories: Soft Edges
Tags: Easter, Quail, sunrise, service, lake
Thursday April 14, 2022
These days, every newscast about the war in Ukraine includes a warning about “disturbing images.”
Victims lying in the streets, hands tied behind their backs, a bullet hole in their heads. Bodies, wrapped in plastic, laid out like speed bumps. Trenches with the dead stacked like sardines.
Tomorrow’s “Good Friday” church services should carry a similar warning: “This service may contain disturbing images.”
Tags: Good Friday, Cruelty, sadism
14
Apr
Thursday March 31, 2022
A summer evening, in beautiful Butchart’s Gardens, near Victoria. B.C. On a grassy meadow, people -- young, old, and in-between -- sprawled on blankets, listening to entertainment from the Gardens’ open-air stage.
The singer was belting out a Barry Manilow piece.
I write the songs that make the whole world sing.
I write the songs, I write the songs.
Several people got up and left. I felt sorry for the performer.
It must be discouraging for any performer to watch people leaving. It would have been discouraging for Barry Manilow himself, if he’d been there. No matter how many million songs you’ve sold worldwide, it hurts when people don’t want to hear your song.
Who are you, when what you’re good at doesn’t appeal anymore?
Tags: Losses, Manilow, somebody
1
In her semi-memoir Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert describes being taught Balinese meditation. She had just spent four months in India learning -- sometimes painfully -- Yoga meditation. It involved physical postures that had to be practiced. And memorized texts that must be repeated precisely. Over and over.
But her guru in Bali simply said, “Smile.”
It was the Balinese attitude -- Smile. Always smile. Always face the world cheerfully.
It seems to me there’s an underlying truth there. We receive what we’re tuned to.
Tags: Eat Pray Love, resonance, Bali, smile
29
Mar
Thursday February 24, 2022
I took my bicycle for a ride along the Mission Creek Greenway in Kelowna, not long ago. I didn’t bother checking a map –why bother? The creek runs down to the lake; the Greenway follows the creek; what could go wrong?
Except that the trail I was riding along abruptly ended at a wire fence.
Clearly, the main trail had diverged somewhere, but I was so preoccupied with my own ride that I didn’t notice. It must be somewhere to my left. And fortunately, there was a trail of sorts leading that direction.
The trail was rough, but passable. Until I got to a little stream, seeping down through millennia of rotting vegetation, just too wide to leap across.
Tags: God, Job, bicycle, Satan