NUDGINGS: a journey into the unknown

It’ s a generational thing.   The younger generation in our family either are  part of the university sports team or a high school team that was in medal completion at the provincial level. Their grandparent, on the other hand, had their first experience of a gym in their 77th year. However, ALL three of them have the Bronze Cross from the Lifesaving Society! As I thought about this, this past week, I began to see that while some interests have remain common in both these generations, there is also a new reality for the Millennials. After all, for example, gyms didn’t even exist in their grandparent’s time, except maybe as part of a school setting. Now it is an everyday occurrence for them to go to the gym after or before school or work several times a week.   As I think of all the other changes that I have experienced in the last 70 years, it is mind-boggling. There have been so many medical advances; the discovery of DNA, of new drugs, the use of ultrasound a

I heard the story every year… After waiting for 10 years to have a family, my mother was overjoyed when that first Mother’s Day rolled around. But when by evening the expected acknowledgement of her changed status had not appeared, she couldn’t help mentioning it to my Dad. His response was swift, “You aren’t my mother!” Yes, we heard that story every year, and I suspect that my Dad often regretted that he had ever uttered those words! The expectations of these special days and events in our culture, like Mother’s Day & Father’s Day often bring about disappointment and misunderstandings because we all have different expectations of what their meaning is and we too often don’t share those expectations with others around us. My Dad’s life would have gained had my Mother shared with him before that first Mother’s Day what she was hoping would happen. I’m sure each one of us has made similar comments off the top of our heads and without actually thinking what we were s

“Now the face that I see in my mirror,   more and more is a stranger to me. More and more I can see there's a danger   in becoming what I never thought I'd be. Some days are diamonds, some days are stone.   Some times the hard times won't leave me alone. Some times the cold winds blow a chill in my bones. Some days are diamonds, some days are stone.” (Lyrics from Some Days are Diamonds by John Denver) Two things happened in my life on the same day not long ago. Two things that were both very different, yet the same. Although one was a diamond and the other a stone, it was the first line of this song that came to me “Now the face that I see in my mirror, more and more is a stranger to me” because they both involved not the face I now see in the mirror everyday, but the face I used to see 50+ years ago.   On sending an e-card to wish one of my best friends from back then a ‘Happy Birthday”, I received a note back from her saying in part “ Ah, you

Trinity Sunday, just what does it mean to me? As I look back at the years of sermons I have heard on just what Trinity Sunday means, a couple of them stand out for me. The first meaning that I remember hearing preached in a sermon compared the Doctrine of the Trinity to a three leaf clover… each separate but part of the same plant. Later in my thirties, I recall a sermon that compared the three states of water: steam, liquid, and ice to the three persons of the Trinity and that satisfied me for quite a number of years, actually until fairly recently. In the last few years, as I have studied the modern biblical scholarship that is now available and especially this past year, reading ‘Christianity, the first three thousand years’ by Diarmaid MacCulloch [c.2009] I have come to wonder just these doctrines meant to the original developer. By the end of the 4th century, this doctrine had  substantially  reached its current form. Language has changed greatly in the las