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17
Jun
2022
Thursday May 26, 2022
A rhythm was running through my head when I woke up: “Dah dit dah dit dah dit dah…” No words, just a mesmerizing beat.
Ever had one of those earworms that won’t go away?
During my shower, a word inserted itself to the relentless rhythm: “Patsy.” Then the rest of the words came trickling back: “Patsy Atsy Or-ee-ay… Workin’ on the railroad.”
I cannot imagine where that memory came from. It wasn’t in any of my dreams that night. The last time I remember singing it, I was a teenager, sitting around a campfire, each of us trying to holler louder than everyone else.
Categories: Soft Edges
Tags: Earworms, hymns, interchangeability
Sunday May 22, 2022
This May, Americans are all riled up about abortion. A leaked draft of a forthcoming judgement, written by the conservative judges on the U.S. Supreme Court, suggests that the Court is likely to overturn the 1973 Roe vs Wadedecision that has, for almost 50 years, allowed American women to have safe and legal abortions.
In Canada, May is Cystic Fibrosis Month. Cystic Fibrosis is a much less divisive issue than abortion. But the two are linked together for me. You’ll see why.
Our son was born with Cystic Fibrosis, CF. It’s a hereditary illness. Both my wife and I had to be carriers of a recessive gene. Our two genes combined to give our son CF. He had nothing to do with it – he was the innocent victim.
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: abortion, Cystic Fibrosis
20
May
Thursday May 19, 2022
I don’t live alone anymore. For the past few days, I have shared my home with a wasp. A black-and-yellow wasp, that is, not a White-Anglo-Saxon-Protestant WASP.
I don’t know how this particular insect got into the house. I keep my doors closed. I have screens on all my windows. Nevertheless, the other day, a wasp came buzzing into my office. It circled around me a few times, settled on my screen, watched the cursor go by, circled me again, peered at my face, and flew off.
It did a similar routine that evening, when I was cooking supper.
Almost as if it was looking for company.
I wonder if it’s lonely.
Tags: prayer, lonely, Wasp
Sunday May 15, 2022
The small congregation to which I belong, Winfield United Church, got national attention in Broadview, a national magazine.
Winfield is a relatively successful congregation. It is not, for the moment, threatened by closure or amalgamation. It raised more than half the cost of its new building, right beside the famed Okanagan Rail Trail, by donations. Its Thrift Shop provides outreach to the whole community.
But the Broadview article didn’t deal with any of those. It was about a woman “emotionally and sexually abused” by her minister -- 37 years ago.
Tags: crime, sexual abuse, corporate defence
13
Thursday May 12, 2022
We all know about life’s major decisions. You know this decision will affect you for the rest of your life.
I am only realizing, late in my life, that smaller decisions, things I didn’t bother thinking twice about at the time, can also affect the rest of one’s life.
When I was ten, I regularly went to a barbershop a couple of blocks away. The barber kept a stack of comic books for his customers to look at while they waited.
I got hooked on Batman. I loved the way he dispatched his foes with a single mighty uppercut that came all the way up from the floor. Ka-Pow! Blam! Smash!
My family moved away from that barbershop, but I never lost that mental image of Batman’s invincible fists.
Tags: wisdom, Batman, cooperation