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15
Sep
2018
It’s easy to say what I don’t believe in anymore – an all-knowing grandfather God who sits on a cloud somewhere up there, out there, distant but keeping an eye on everything, delivering rewards and punishments,, and upsetting things here on earth with what we call “acts of God.” But then people ask me, “So what kind of God do you believe in?” And I find prose can’t do it; poetry at least comes closer.
Faces talk around a table
knees warm around a campfire
voices sing in a circle
hands clasp in the darkness
and in between, among, around them
hovers a shining....
Categories: Poetry
Tags: God, shining, presence
12
On my last visit to Vancouver, I took a walk along False Creek.
Vancouver's waterfront is open to everyone, regardless of age, ethnic origins, or income.
And the Parks Board has thoughtfully placed benches along the way, where passers-by can sit, catch their breath, enjoy the view, or just meditate.
Most of the benches have small bronze plaques attached -- memorials to a family member or friend. I read them, casually, as I strolled along. Until I got to one that offended me.
It eulogized a child who had died. It described how wonderful she was. And the last line said, “Jesus always picks the finest flowers first.”
And I found myself instantly angry.
Categories: Soft Edges
Tags: Jesus, Vancouver, False Creek, park bench, plaque, friend
9
The video images of flames shooting skyward out of the National Museum of Brazil, in Rio de Janeiro, stabbed me in the heart.
I spent close to 20 years alternating between president, secretary, and grunt volunteer with the infinitely smaller Lake Country Museum. I know from personal experience how hard it is to document the past, especially from societies that maintained no written texts.
Every artifact, every letter, every story, is like a clue in a mystery novel. Clue by laborious clue, a museum puts together a coherent picture of what life was like, back then -- whenever “then” was.
The Rio fire, in effect, ripped out almost all the pages from the novel about South America.
How can you read a novel that isn’t there any longer?
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: museum, Fire, lobotomy, Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, artifacts
5
I had my 82ndbirthday last weekend. I’m headed for 100! Wooo-hooo!
Anticipation makes me think back to how things have changed over the last century, or two. My wife Joan’s grandfather arrived from Sweden a century ago with an axe-head, a plane blade, and a handsaw. With those, he made all the rest of his carpenter’s tools.
I wonder what he would think of modern chainsaws.
A century before that, my ancestors arrived from Scotland, to farm 40 acres in southern Ontario. I wonder what they would think of tractors with air-conditioned cabs. Of hay-balers and combines and automatic milking machines.
Nothing stands still. Ever. And it shouldn’t.
Not even religion.
Tags: birthday, Evolution, change
2
The Roman Catholic church is taking flak from the mass media. The most recent attacks follow revelations from a grand jury in Philadelphia, described by Pennsylvania’s Attorney General as the "largest, most comprehensive report into child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church ever produced in the United States."
According to the report, more than 300 "predator priests" in six Pennsylvania dioceses have been credibly accused of sexually abusing more than 1,000 child victims over 70 years -- prior to 2002, when scandals involving Cardinal Bernard Law in Boston forced the U.S. Catholicbishops to adopt new rules for reporting abuse.
The reaction has even led to demands that the Pope himself resign, for failing to act sooner.
Tags: Roman Catholic church, Pope, sexual abuse, pedophile