NUDGINGS: a journey into the unknown

I was saying to a friend the other day how I had always had trouble backing up in a car until I learned to trust in and use my mirrors, when she started to laugh… and then told me this story of her own. “A good many years ago when cars only had two mirrors, the rear-view one and the one on the left, she was driving along the road, checking in the rear mirror from time to time as we all do, to see what the traffic was like behind her, when that mirror fell off, landing on the floor of the car. Her immediate feeling was that a ‘window had closed’ in her world!” Her reaction was so vivid and so strong that she still remembers to this day exactly what it felt like way back then, still remembers that feeling of loss, the shock of losing something that was there only seconds earlier. If you have ever questioned the theology of your childhood, as I have, you can relate to this feeling of things not being the same, of a window closing in your life. There is just that kind of ...

Earlier this month, when the lease on our current vehicle was at an end, we leased a new car. One of the best things about a new car, for me, is ‘that new car smell’. Imagine my disappointment when I discovered that THIS new car lacked ‘that new car smell’! How could that be???  And so the first week went.  Then one day, the temperature outside rose from the -25 it had been to 0 and above. That was the first miracle. And the second one was that suddenly that wonderful ‘new car smell’ was evident! YEAH!!! AND it lasted for all of 48 hours before the temperatures plummeted again. I’m guessing we never acquired a new car during the winter months before, or it we did, it was a different kind of winter from this year’s. Well, this happened coincidentally near the beginning of Lent and so I was also hearing the story of the temptation of Jesus for 40 days in the wilderness (Luke 4:1-13).  This got me thinking about my own ‘wilderness experiences’. ...

‘… suddenly, a bright cloud overshadowed them … [they] were overcome by fear…' [Matthew 17:5, 6] These words from the first century writer of the gospel of Matthew are as true as I write them today, as they were those many years ago. We may well share with the writer of and listeners to Matthew, the experience of being up on the mountain and having a cloud suddenly come down, blotting out the sunshine that had been there just minutes before.  I know it happened to our family on the Colombian ice fields and when in Cape Town we had to seize the moment when a ‘tablecloth’ was not covering Table Mountain to go up and enjoy the view from the top. On February 27th, however, people driving on Highway 400, experienced a different kind of cloud . . .an intense snow squall producing near whiteout conditions that resulted in a 96 car pileup [according to the Ontario Provincial Police spokesman]. I am sure, just like the disciples in the passage above, the drivers...

Is Lent really for only 40 days? For many of you out there, it is now the season of Lent: that period of 40 weekdays between Ash Wednesday and Easter. Incidentally, for those of you who might be thinking this winter will never end, the word Lent comes from the Middle English word, ’lente’, meaning springtime. One of the meanings of Lent from an online dictionary is ‘a  period of 40 days before Easter during which many Christians do not eat certain foods or do certain pleasurable activities as a way of remembering the suffering of Jesus Christ’. (It could be argued that there are more important things to remember and emulate about Jesus Christ than his suffering … things like his compassion, his call to non-violent resistance, his call to universal love.) This is now often replaced with the concept of adding something  for that period , often a spiritual practice that has been missing, to our lifestyle.  In the hope, I presume, that it will continue after E...