To make Comments write directly to Jim at jimt@quixotic.ca
30
Jan
2023
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.
Categories: Soft Edges
Tags: Incarnation, 12th night
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!”
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: New Year, Resolutions, Bucket list
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.
Tags: leadership, Waxwings, berries
24
Dec
2022
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.
Tags: resurrection, Christmas, Incarnation
Thursday Dec. 22, 2022
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”?
Tags: Nativity, Bethlehem, Mary and Joseph