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12
Dec
2019
A small ceramic Christmas tree sits on a table in our front hall. It’s not much of a tree – about 12 inches high, dark green, with whitish snow flaked on the ends of its branches. A light bulb inside shines out through coloured plastic plugs stuck into holes in the branches.
Over the years, we’ve lost about a dozen of the plastic plugs. The light inside now shines directly out through several holes.
It never was particularly pretty, I suppose. But it’s special. Because it was given to me with love.
It came from Lorraine Wicklow almost 40 years ago. The next summer, Lorraine died of a massive brain hemorrhage.
As far as I know, she had no family, no relatives. Perhaps I was her family. She used to drop in at my office, back in the days when I worked at the United Church’s national offices in Toronto. She always arrived at the very end of the day, just as I was loading up my briefcase to go home.
Categories: Soft Edges
Tags: Christmas tree
5
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….
Tags: hope, leukaemia, miracle, extinction
1
This coming Friday, December 6, marks the 30th anniversary of the deadliest mass murder in Canadian history. That is, if you don’t count attacks on indigenous peoples. They were, after all, just Indians.
Marc Lepine would probably say the same about his rampage at L´Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal. They were, after all, just women. Feminists, studying engineering so that they could steal men’s jobs.
Fourteen women died. Fourteen more victims -- ten women and four men -- were injured by his bullets. The 15thdeath was Lepine, when he shot himself.
And there’s no question about his intentions. He left a three-page suicide note, plus letters to two friends, explaining his hostility towards women in general, towards women who wanted to be engineers in particular.
I won’t attempt to analyze his motives. I do want to trace his actions, and some people’s responses.
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: mass murder, heroes, Montreal, L'Ecole Polytechnique
27
Nov
Growing older exposes me to new experiences, often unexpected experiences, that make me wonder what I’ve actually been paying attention to, all these years.
Hearing, for example.
As a journalist for most of my life, I’ve needed to hear exactly what people were saying. When quoting people in the public eye, it’s not good enough to print what I think they might have said.
There’s a huge difference between, say, “prosecution” and “prostitution.”
But as I have aged, my hearing has declined. So I wear hearing aids.
When I remember them, that is. I didn’t remember them for a recent gathering. I tried to catch, and translate into comprehension, various people’s comments. But I found the extra effort tiring.
So I tried listening a different way. To the sounds, the tones, the rhythms of speech around the room.
It was like listening to music.
Tags: hearing, music, deafness
20
We had some unexpected immigrants drop in at our house recently. A couple, I assume; they’re always together. And they literally dropped in -- out of the sky, onto our bird feeder.
Roger Tory Peterson’s Field Guide to Western Birds defines them as ringed turtle-doves. The description is clear and precise -- they could be nothing else.
Pigeons have been around for a long time. It was a pigeon that Noah released from his ark, to see if there were green shoots growing anywhere. And a pigeon that settled on Jesus as he came up out of the Jordan River after his baptism.
This particular species was probably imported from southern Africa or Asia as household pets. Peterson calls them “a domestic-bred variant of the African turtle-dove…seen very locally in city parks in Los Angeles, rarely elsewhere.”
Which raises some uncomfortable questions.
Did someone move Los Angeles?
Tags: Bible, immigrants, turtle-doves, Roger Tory Peterson