Jim Taylor's Columns - 'Soft Edges' and 'Sharp Edges'

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30

Jan

2023

Edging towards my expiry date

Author: Jim Taylor

Thursday January 5, 2022

 

So here we are – 12th Night, 2023, the end of the fabled Twelve Days of Christmas. 

            Originally, 12th Night referred to the arrival of the Three Wise Men – although the Bible never says there were three – from the East.

            My mother’s British traditions considered it bad luck to leave Christmas decorations up after 12th Night. In an eruption of winter energy, we took down all the tinsel and tinkles, the glass balls and nativity scenes, and packed them away for the next Christmas. 


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30

Jan

2023

My ‘bucket list’ has a hole in it

Author: Jim Taylor

Sunday January 1, 2023

 

So here we are -- New Year’s Day, 2023. It’s tempting to make guesses about what will, or will not, happen during this coming yea. Will gene-splicing enable medical science to create killer T-cells that attack only individual cancers? Will nuclear fusion – using unimaginable power to create unimaginable power – finally put the fossil-fuel industry out of business? 

            Will meteorologists find a way to keep polar vortexes where they belong, hovering over the high Arctic like a frigid skullcap?

            It’s tempting to speculate, but useless. Because I don’t expect to be around long enough to say. “I told you so!”


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30

Jan

2023

A path between opposites

Author: Jim Taylor

Thursday Dec. 29, 2022

 

The waxwings are back!  They swirl in the air by their hundreds -- perhaps thousands -- dense clouds of feathered wings beating the air into froth.

            As far as I can tell, waxwings do not have a leader giving orders. No individual waxwing says, “Okay, all of you, we’re going to go strip Jim Taylor’s tree of its berries.”  They simply arrive. And then, for no apparent reason, they leave. All of them, all at once. They whoosh off, perform a variety of aerobatic manoeuvres. The cloud of birds inverts itself, reverses itself, spins upside down and sideways, emulates a Mobius strip, and returns to my tree for dessert.


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24

Dec

2022

The way God does things

Author: Jim Taylor

Christmas Eve, 2022

 


Christmas and Easter sometimes remind me of the Bobbsey twins. They’re inextricably bound together, Can’t get along without each other. And yet they’re constantly competing with each other. 

           Briefly put, the Incarnation argues that God – whoever or whatever God is – became a human being in Jesus, the baby born in Bethlehem. The Resurrection claims that that same baby, some 30 years later, triumphed over death and will never die again. 

            Both focus on the uniqueness of the event. This only happened once, we declare. The rule –we commonly assume – is that God is “out there” somewhere. Or perhaps “up there”. But certainly different from us. Not mortal flesh-and-blood. 


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24

Dec

2022

Homeless, lonely, and hungry

Author: Jim Taylor

Thursday Dec. 22, 2022

 

Occasionally, around this time of year, a TV station will send its cameras into an encampment of homeless people for the obligatory human-interest story. But I notice that the cameras stay outside the tents and makeshift shelters. Perhaps to respect their subjects’ privacy. Or perhaps those subjects won’t let the cameras any closer.

            And I wonder how today’s news media would treat the most famous homeless couple of all -- Mary and Joseph. 

            We’ve all heard the story told in the gospel attributed to someone called Luke. About how Mary and Joseph travelled from their home village of Nazareth. To Bethlehem. To be formally registered in the city of their legendary ancestor, King David. 

            But have you really listened to that story?

            When you read that “there was no room for them in the inn,” do you hear those two little words “for them”? 


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