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8
May
2020
During my wife’s last calendar year of life, she knitted a prayer shawl a month.
You may not be familiar with prayer shawls. Some are square; some triangular. Joan’s tended to be about five feet long and two feet wide, knitted with the warmest and softest wool she could buy. (The wool shop was always glad to see her!)
In the days when we could still gather for worship services, our congregation periodically held a blessing of prayer shawls. Every person either laid a hand directly on a shawl, or on someone connected to a shawl.
People have different understandings of the efficacy of prayer.
Regardless, I have no doubt that those shawls carried with them a sense of warmth and comfort to people who needed both.
Categories: Soft Edges
Tags: knitting, bad news, comfort
3
A new word crept into the language while I wasn’t watching – “liminal”. None of my dictionaries include it. And they were only published 20 years ago.
Not “limn,” which means to paint or portray.
“Liminal” derives from Latin “limen” meaning the threshold of a doorway. It marks the division between inside and outside, between warm and cold, between calm and stormy.
It is the moment of transition, when one state of being transforms into another.
A liminal moment is easy to identify if it’s a doorway. It’s more difficult with geography, for example. Exactly where would you say the mountains end and the prairie begins? Which do the foothills belong to?
Or with light. At what point, as light fades, does day become night?
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: Rohr, COVID-19, Liminal
30
Apr
After a month of trying to trace my late wife’s account numbers, policies, investments, and benefits, I can say one thing with certainty – I hate automated voice menus!
There are times when I think I would rather forfeit any moneys owing than deal with another supposedly helpful telephone menu.
At some point, the synthetic voice will list a series of options, usually preceded by a caution: “Please listen carefully, as these options have been changed recently.”
None of the options deals with my needs. I press the number for the most likely option.
I wait. I get an endless loop of music, periodically interrupted by assurances that the company considers my call very important.
Half an hour later, the next available representative is still not available.
Corporate voice mail systems are about as inscrutable as the Sphinx.
Tags: corporations, Voice menus
26
The world changed this last week – did you notice? The world’s most valuable commodity was momentarily worthless.
No, I don’t mean gold. Gold has been valued for a very long time, mostly because it doesn’t tarnish. But the world could get along reasonably well without gold. Or platinum. Or even diamonds.
I’m referring to oil.
On one crucial day, for the first time ever, West Texas crude, the gold standard for oil, dropped to minus-$37 U.S. a barrel.
Tags: Oil, West Texas, negative value
24
I would not want to be a refugee. Pictures of them suggest they’re in shock, traumatized by the life they have chosen to leave behind. Civil wars. Poverty. Famine. Religious repression. Militias with licence to kill.
Refugees have hope, of course – they hope for freedom from poverty, from oppression, from persecution.
But they have left so much behind. So much that was dear to them. Businesses that they sank their heart and soul into, with a clientele built over years, maybe even generations. Extended families -- aunts and uncles, parents and grandparents, nieces and nephews, sometimes their own children. Languages and customs familiar since infancy.
All given up for a new life they don’t know yet, they can’t know yet.
Tags: refugees, COVID-19, religions