NUDGINGS: a journey into the unknown

We have all heard the saying “Don’t judge a man[ sic ] until you have walked a mile in his[ sic ] shoes” (American proverb) Yet I would posit we do it everyday and/or have it done to us. For example: A number of years ago, while I was using a personal trainer to strengthen my knee after an accident, I was participating in a day-long event during which the leader referred to women with personal trainers as being [and I quote] “rich bitches”. It just so happened that in this group of 9 or 10 women there was another woman who also had a personal trainer to strength her back against work-related injuries. Did it bother her? I don’t know. But I know it made me resentful and angry for the rest of the day and I still remember the comment, how unjust it was was and how it ruined that experience for me.. For the past 5 years, I had found myself in the position of needing bi-weekly appointments with an Esthetician having my nails reinforced with a layer of gel beneath the polis...

“We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now.” Martin Luther King, Jr. This is an apt quote for a country [and a continent] where the majority of the population came from across the seas just a few hundred years ago. And I think that is what Martin Luther King Jr was referring to - that while we, or our ancestors, came to this continent via different ships from different countries and realities, we are all here together in the ship that is this nation and share in all that is both good and bad about it. Let me take the analogy a little bit farther My grandson, for example, is sailing on a ship called ‘Autism’. Life on this ship is perfectly normal for him. It is where he belongs, where he is ‘home’. However people on the ships sailing along beside him, keep insisting that he leave the ship called ‘Autism’ and sail on their ship, adopting their reality. And when that doesn’t happen, then he is the one who is labelled ‘difficult’, or ‘ba...

“Turn your enemies into friends by doing something nice for them.” I read these words recently on a sign in front of a church by the side of a busy highway. On first and even the second and third reading these words seem innocuous enough. We all have enemies and life would certainly be more comfortable if they were friends.  Doing something nice for our enemies seems a small price to pay for the resulting peace, doesn’t it? And it even might work - particularly if our enemy is a neighbour. We could snow blow the driveway or cut the grass a couple of times for them depending on the season. Surely that would change them into friends! If our enemy is in the workplace, bringing them a cup of coffee and a donut a few times a week or offering to help them with a last minute assignment should do the trick very nicely.  But what if our enemy is a world away? What if our enemy is somebody different from us in appearance, ideology, religion? What could we do, or indeed eve...

Easter is a counterintuitive event, or that which is  ‘seemingly contrary to common sense or counter to what intuition would lead one to expect’,  no matter where you are in the spectrum of the church; whether you believe that the stories in the gospel narratives are eye-witness accounts of what actually happened, or you come down on the side that they were myths “…stories about the way things never were, but always are.” [Marcus Borg], or if you land somewhere in between.  Eastertide is when we celebrate spiritual strength over political might, personal choice over legal enforcement, grace over punishment, hope over fear, and love over control.  It tells of a peasant from Galilee going up against the Imperial Roman Empire, of an stone mysteriously rolled away from the entrance to a tomb and a body missing, of people in disarray and confusion. There is no victory of the mighty over the weak no mighty battle being fought and won. Just disgrace and failure i...

I heard a ‘Resurrection Story’ this week …  A computer had refused to turn on and so it was taken to the computer doctor. After a number of days the message was received that the computer had died and please come and pick up the ‘body’ for burial. However once it was safely home again, the owner decided that the computer could be resurrected with the help of running the ‘restore’ disc and some loving care. Now I would like to be able to say this story had a happy ending, but alas the next day found the owner in a store buying a new hard drive to replace the one that had died! So why do I call this a Resurrection Story? Because even with the new hard drive installed and the old one gone,  those things that had been learned with the old will continue to be part of the new.  The core of the ‘Resurrection story’ we will hear read from the Gospel and likely at least to be referenced in the sermon preached from the pulpit on Easter Sunday talks of the bodily resur...