There’s nothing quite so disorienting than fog – bad enough driving on familiar roads with a blurred windshield, but when the GPS sent me through unfamiliar countryside, unpaved roads with no lines and unexpected stop signs, my feeling was more akin to panic. I rolled down windows at every intersection, turning down the fan, to listen for any oncoming traffic. So it was a relief to arrive at my destination two minutes before the scheduled event. And then to be enfolded into a community that had the same goal – to help orient girls in the world of today, to give them clear vision, sense of true identity. It is an “impactful” ministry, as someone named it.
The road ahead for them will not always be easy to discern, they may encounter confusing and conflicting images, and their world may be narrowed to only a step or two ahead of them.
I was comforted by the drivers of vehicles who put on their flashing lights to indicate their presence, who marked the road ahead. Sailors look for the beams of a lighthouse, and are reassured and warned by these landmarks. And so, we’ll put the Light on for these girls, and pray that this will be a reassurance and a way to safety.
October 21, 2024
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. Gerard Manley Hopkins
It’s recently come to my attention that I live a life insulated from the very earth from which humanity was made, and to which I will someday return. Hours spent in buildings, protective rubber-soled shoes and boots, concrete pavement interfere with my grounding to the environment, even though I do have the privilege of living in a nearly rural setting. If Hopkins bemoaned the taint of industrial age in his time, how much more appalled would he be in ours?
As a child, I remember thinking my body very recalcitrant matter – pain couldn’t always be assauged immediately, growth did not come on my timetable and pimples appeared on a face at the worst times, much to the chagrin of my 14-year-old self. It had embarrassing needs and behaviours that felt as if they were outside of my control.
But in my body, I can appreciate the world around me through amazing senses, My body seemed to know how to innately heal if I gave it half a chance, and miraculously generated and birthed new life. The world around me, plants and animals, stars and volcanoes, air, water, fire are my context, and I, along with other human beings, can only thrive in interdependence. My body is a gift my spirit has been given for my time on earth.
October 22, 2024
For a brief time this morning, nothing that came to mind felt like a worthwhile endeavour, and I felt like the dejected writer of Ecclesiastes who cried that all was vanity, a chasing after the wind. I’m not sure what brought that on, perhaps the thought of attending a funeral this afternoon. This family had grieved the loss of a mother, and daughter/sister, and now their father within five years. Sometimes it seems as if whole families get swallowed up in the space of a few years. Emptiness remains, relationships of survivors have to be recalibrated.
It doesn’t help that it’s October, and people have ghastly fire-eyed huge skeletons on their lawns. It doesn’t help that the days are getting noticeably shorter. As I get older, increasingly I want to pull back from major responsibilities, but dread the thought of empty, pointless hours.
Anyway, maybe tomorrow will feel a little more hopeful. Hope is our ally in pointing us to the future, and besides, each day has enough trouble of its own, Jesus once said. I’m meeting a friend for coffee, and that’s always cheering.
October 28, 2024
The idea of hibernation becomes very appealing this time of year, and there seems to be a primitive desire to crawl under warm covers for the winter. If hearty foods, like soups and stews and apple pies, could pack away enough nourishment to last, I might consider that option! Certainly humanity has struggled to live through winter in ages past.
Cuba is currently undergoing a crisis with their electrical grid that’s causing great hardship for their population. But none of us may be spared from losing power, as recent Florida hurricanes have demonstrated. It’s sobering to realize how dependent we’ve become on creature comforts, the electricity that keeps our homes warm and powers our appliances in all seasons. How unreliable the water supply or cell phone service can be when towers are toppled, and we’re thrown back on limited resources!
But it is in experiencing our dependence that we truly come to look to our Provider. We are in need of our daily bread, and the spiritual nourishment that sustains us through uncertain times. Yes, we do our best to plan for each day, and for our future. Ultimately, though, we need to trust that the God who provides for even the tiniest of creatures, is aware of what we need. We are never outside of His love and care. So, while this may be the season to draw into ourselves, we can overflow with thanksgiving to experience the expansive joy that counts its blessings always.
Port Stanley on a early summer morning can be a peaceful place, and it’s refreshing to walk its paths along the creek and to the end of the pier. Nowadays the creek is being dredged, but the equipment had not yet been started up when we were there a few days ago.
Port Stanley wasn’t always this quiet. Explored by travelers and adventurers in the 17th and 18th centuries, by the 1800s it was a major port, shipping grain and other products. This continued into the 2000s; as late as October 2003, the Mississagi docked Portside to unload corn into trucks for wet milling in London. The Cuyahoga, Lower Lakes larger sister vessel, was also in Port at that time.
After 1856, with the building of the first railway into Port Stanley from London, Port become a popular summer place, and there are many still around who remember their parents fondly reminiscing about the dances at the Stork Club.
Thousands turned up on July, 1912 to watch the first flier trained by the Wright brothers, Walter Brookins, fly for three days in Port Stanley. It was the first flight by a seaplane in Canada, and the first flight by a passenger in Canada.
In the last week there’s been visits by helicopter and seaplane, and many a resident has enjoyed a stroll to satisfy their curiosity about the latest project in the village. Villagers keeping vigil, if you will, along with the Harbourmaster and those on official duty at the King George VI lift bridge.
Boats, planes, trains, and automobiles! A library, a theatre, quaint shops and lots of sweet tooth opportunities – I count myself fortunate to be here. The village has been growing by leaps and bounds, and there’s never a dull moment!
There’s beauty in both young and old, In youth when life is bright and bold – Gray hair with much wisdom crowned And our world’s wonders have no bound.
All creatures know You as their source. Your Life flows through our river’s course You give each one breath; your spark In the song of the whale, cry of the lark.
What is called our experience is almost entirely determined by our habits of attention. William James
Some towns are very conscious of their history, and are keen to let a visitor know of important events that happened there. Niagara on the Lake is one of these places. We do enjoy that, history can be interesting. But this sign posted there made me laugh, because when I was younger, I often did feel that “nothing happened” where I lived.
One day, bemoaning a case of writer’s block, I voiced this sentiment out loud to my younger sister. She chided me, saying “just look around you!”
If I stop hurrying, and observe life, it does reveal its treasure. For example, there is such a variety of plants and flowers and insects and birds. There are over 25,000 different species of orchids, over 300,000 species of beetles. We just need to use our senses to awake to all of this teeming life we are imbedded in.
In spring we can take in colour and the perfume of flowers, the touch of the wind on our skin, the warmth of the sun on our face. Like the poet William Wordsworth, we save these images up on our mind (and in this day and age, on our phones). Every day our brain processes about 70,000 thoughts, a whole internal world alive and responsive to the life around us. There is so much beauty that even the poorest of us has ample opportunity to appreciate it.
Then there’s the amazing life force of each person. We all belong to humanity and yet at the same time each of us is unique. Even identical twins experience life as individuals. Our lives and environment mold us, etching stories on our faces. The funeral eulogy reveals aspects of a person’s life that would have been so interesting to discuss with them. A woman in my online Bible study noted that the people in our lives can be “blessings or lessons.” We were meant to interact with nature, we are meant to interact with people. We need and support each other in turn, appreciate and share the gifts we’ve been blessed with.
In his book Wisdom of the Ages, Wayne Dyer advises us to pretend to ourselves that this is both the first and the last time we are having an experience; it helps to give us a fresh eye and a sense of enthusiasm for whatever we are doing.
And when we do this, there is nothing or no-one ordinary, and there is nowhere nothing happens.
“Whatever God orders and whatever God guides, he provides. God’s work, done in God’s way, never lacks for God’s supply.”― J. Hudson Taylor
We spent a couple of beautiful days in Niagara Falls, the roar of the spring-swollen river hurtling down into the gorge was, as always, awesome in its power. The tourist season was not yet fully underway, the weather warm and dry for the first time in weeks, and the tulips that had been delayed by cold and rain were blooming in all their glory. Perfect timing to make our visit, after several delays and changes in scheduling.
I look back over events in my life, and sometimes wonder about the timing then too, how I found myself in particular places at particular times, in circumstances I certainly did not engineer on my own.
As a child, I wanted to be a missionary. In those days it was considered a noble ambition, offering an exotic taste of adventure, to bring the knowledge of Jesus to the world. Unfortunately, these days we are living its legacy of cultural insensitivity. We knew our God so little that we failed to see that his truth was far wider than our limited experience, and so often killed joy and freedom by the very gospel meant to be good news.
I seem to be on a trail lately, following the story of missionaries who were not at all like that. My curiosity began with a group called Bible Study Fellowship, and the woman who first led it, Audrey Weatherell Johnson. After surviving a Japanese concentration camp in China during the war, she was hindered from returning. She would have been amazed to know that her faithfulness in teaching a small group of women at home would someday have an effect around the world, including China.
Intrigued, remembering another missionary named Eric Liddell also was incarcerated there in a concentration camp, I searched the internet and found information about the China Inland Mission, which included one of its founders, Hudson Taylor. Realizing that his European garb was a hindrance, he decided to dress in the clothing of the Chinese people. Like the apostle Paul, he encountered danger, violence, personal losses. To travel from England to China in those days required approximately months at sea, with all its attendant dangers. He influenced many others who would follow in his footsteps, including Audrey Weatherell Johnson, Eric Liddell, Jim Eliot, and Anne Graham Lotz.
Because I’ve always loved the movie Chariots of Fire, I then read more about Eric Liddell and discovered that his widow Florence was buried in a quiet rural cemetery in Hamilton-Wentworth. On the way to Niagara Falls, we stopped at the site, so far from her life with Eric Liddell, who she married in 1934 in China. She returned with their two small daughters to family in Canada when it became too dangerous to stay there, and their third daughter, who never met her father before his death in a concentration camp, was born here.
We traveled on, and, looking for parking in Niagara on the Lake, we found ourselves by Queen’s Royal Park. It was only by chance we came across this commemorative stone tucked into a inobtrusive corner in that beautiful park downriver from the Falls:
There’s history all around us. Hudson Taylor visited Canada in 1888 and established the China Inland Mission in North America at the Niagara Conference. Hudson Taylor spent 54 years of his life in China, despite all the obstacles and dangers, because his heart was with the Chinese people God loved.
We all have our mission field, though it may seem small and insignificant in comparison. Love of God overflows into love for all his people. Knowledge of God is a treasure to share with courtesy and respect among all peoples. Its essence is grace and mercy and truth, its justice rolls on like a river.
Every day our brain processes about 70,000 thoughts, a whole internal world alive and responsive to the life around us. There is so much beauty that even the poorest of us has ample opportunity to appreciate it.
I look back over events in my life, and sometimes wonder about the timing then too, how I found myself in particular places at particular times, in circumstances I certainly did not engineer on my own.
