NUDGINGS: a journey into the unknown

  I remember driving in the car with my daughter in the spring of 2003 as she talked on her cell phone with her fiancee  in South Africa. That blew my mind! At that time I had a cell phone that lived in my purse turned off (kind of like carrying a phone booth with you). It only got turned on for emergencies! This morning I was sitting on my bed just out of the shower communicating back and forth by emails and texts (including photos of the overnight snowfall) with a granddaughter in England, a friend from 80’s who lives in France, and a longtime friend from the small town I grew up in! Had we wanted to the text messages could have added a live picture in FaceTime!   What really is mind-blowing about this is that it now less that 20 years later this all seems so normal!  This past week’s reading for the Transfiguration in the synoptic gospels ( Matthew 17:1-8, Mark 9:2-8, Luke9:28-36) tells of a similar experience where James and John  were with Jesus on a mountain top when suddenl

While flipping through the nightly programming list on the TV a couple of days ago, I noticed a show called ‘Democracy is a Verb’. With the impeachment hearing for the past president of the United States very much in the news right now that is a topic on everyone’s mind. As recent events south of the border have shown us, people need to be ready to stand up for what they believe in, while giving the other side the same opportunity. When one side or the other stop being able to defend their views, democracy becomes an autocracy. So you can’t sit back, pay lip service but do nothing if you want a democracy to survive. Democracy requires that all citizens work to support the advancement of their ideals while listening to the opposing views. This also brought to mind the phrase I once heard that said ‘God is a verb.’ God is not an object that you talk about, that you describe, that you take out of a box only on special occasions or when needed.   No! If God, like democracy, is also a verb

  Over the years, I have done my share of knitting, crocheting, cross stitch, and sewing.  However as the years have passed the arthritis in my hands and the slowly but surely progressing macular degeneration in my eyes have made handwork of any kind well nigh impossible.   In this time of a global pandemic when we are told to stay home to stay safe, it seems that everyone around me is either knitting up a storm for the grandchildren, for the homeless, for the housebound, painting pictures or cupboards, or even making quilts for posterity. To put it mildly, I was feeling left out of the activity and just a little sorry for myself. Then this poem came across the screen of my iPad..... I cannot sew,  I cannot knit,  yet still I stitch,  yet still I stitch  these remnants from another time.  I stitch,   I stitch with words instead  to lay across my feathered bed... this patchwork quilt".  (Written by Judy Imrie) And I realized that I could still do all those things -ju

  Over the last three or four years I have found colouring pictures online to be a good way to relax and reduce stress. Nothing new there. That is what their advertising says they are good for.  The daily picture for today was a forest scene . As I started to colour it in, it became clear that it was an autumnal scene with vivid reds and yellows.  As I look out the window at the sun on the snow I wondered why they would post such a scene at the end of January? Then I thought of family living in South Africa who were just making the transition from summer into fall.  The internet is world-wide and someone there could be working on the same picture! Suddenly the picture made sense to me.  And isn’t that the truth? Until we know why something is written or said, we can’t always appreciate it or understand it’s meaning. In some pictures you will use a lot of light, bright colours while in others the colours are mainly somber. What I have notice over time however is that in both cases the p