NUDGINGS: a journey into the unknown

“Let me give you a new commend: Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another. This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples-when they see the love you have for each other.” John 13: 34-35 MSG After my husband and I returned a couple of weeks ago from spending most of the day at a Toronto hospital for a pre-op appointment, I looked at him and said, “I feel reassured, which seems to me to be a strange way to feel. How do you feel?” “Reassured.” was his answer. The bigger question was WHY we felt that way. It might have been because the very first question asked of him was “What are we doing for you?” And the whole of the next 6 hours proceeded in the same direction. Everyone was listening to what we said, concentrating on what they could do to make things work for us.  A week ago today, he had his surgery and has been in this same hospital ever since. And we have continued to feel reassured, reassured that they are doing ev...

“Making sense of painful experiences is sacred work. It asks us to respect our own time, space, and language. These are the unique fingerprints of our own healing.“ ~ Rebecca Ray We all have difficult times in our lives. That is a given. I have learned a lot during the last 6 months about living with difficult times, about my reactions to the reactions of others, about what is helpful and what is not. Sometimes I feel like a sounding board where others can vent their feelings on what is going on in MY life. And that isn’t helpful! If they feel that things aren’t going as they should, I don’t need to hear that. I already know it. While I appreciate their concern, talking about something else is a nice break. I know they are concerned but I feel that they should trust me enough to let them know if there is something they should be aware of. I was feeling guilty because I had these reactions, knowing people were just expressing their concern. I felt ungrateful. Frankly I was annoye...

“Perhaps the gospel to a world spinning on a wheel of greed and scarcity is to say we have a gospel of enough. It is a narrative that speaks to God’s work in the world.” ~ JoAnn Flett Minimalist living is a chic thing in our society. Indeed one of the in-things is the Tiny House Movement (usually under 500 sq. feet). Countless books have been written about down-sizing and getting rid of clutter. And to cut the cost to the environment we are asked to reduce, reuse and recycle. All of these go against the mantra that bigger is better. We live in a small space, not quite up the the standards of a tiny house, having just over 800 square feet. Our rule has been for the last 18 years that when something comes in, something of equal size needs to leave. Despite this we have annual or semi-annual bouts of de-cluttering the cupboards and drawers, getting rid of what we haven’t used in the last 12 or so months. And so we have experienced the feeling of lightness and space ...

God, make me so uncomfortable that I will do the very thing I fear. ~Ruby Dee I have been writing this blog for almost 6 years sending it out via email. The hardest thing I have ever done was deciding after a few years to post it on FaceBook as well, not only to my FB friends (including members of my family)  but also to the public.  If I could have exempted my family from the FB postings, I would have. The thought of those nearest and dearest to me actually finding out who I was and what I thought was scary. I would no longer be seen as someone in a specific role because I would be expressing thoughts and ideas that didn’t fit that role. It was a very scary thing to contemplate. However the other side of the coin was that I felt I uncomfortable in excluding the very people I was fondest of from an opportunity to find out what I really thought. Strange how the public at large didn’t bother me...... You may have had a similar experience where you found that n...

“We don’t heal in isolation, but in community.”  ~S. Kelley Harrell, M. Div. Sometimes the hardest thing we can do seems to be to tell the community, within which we move, what is really going on in our lives. These are many reasons we feel this way. We don’t want it to be ‘all about us’.  Nobody needs to know. They won’t understand. It won’t make any difference in the long run. We can handle it all on our own. It’s none of their business. Etc. Etc. Or perhaps it’s because we are afraid to be vulnerable, to risk losing friendships, acceptance,  and understanding. They mightn’t understand. They mightn’t be able to cope. They might judge us. All of these are real fears. The problem that I see with this path is the necessity to keep straight for months or even years just who knows what story. And then dealing with the expectations that arise out of those stories but are never going to happen in actual fact. We were faced with a similar situation the past ...

“Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It's splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.” L.M. Montgomery Anne of Green Gables was a favourite book of mine growing up. As an only child, I emphasized with Anne’s delight in finding a ‘kindred spirit’ in Diana Barrie. I have been blest over the years with many good and long-lasting friends, some from as far-back as the first day of Grade One. (There was no kindergarten way back then in rural Ontario) And I thought of those friends as being kindred spirits, and so they were and still are. But in the last decade I have had the awe-inspiring experience of meeting not one, but two people who I knew immediately were kindred spirits. In both cases I felt immediately that we had gossiped over the back fence for all of our lives. They were just that familiar.  I felt like I had known them forever. While I have seen one of these people fairly frequently since meeting them, the other I only saw for t...

“There were many Jews staying in Jerusalem just then, devout pilgrims from all over the world. When they heard the sound they came on the run. Then when they heard, one after another, their mother tongue being spoken, they were thunderstruck. They couldn’t for the life of them figure out what was going on, and kept saying, “Aren’t these all Galileans? How come we’re hearing them talk in our various mother tongues?” Acts 2: 5-11 MSG If you were in church last Sunday, you probably heard some version of the words above read as a portion of one of the lessons. Even if you didn’t, you will still be familiar with the story about people speaking in tongues that the church has labeled Pentecost. I have aways understood it as sort of a mini United Nations, where through the wonders of technology, [in this case God or the Holy Spirit], each person hears their own language regardless of the language actually being spoken. But for some reason this past Sunday, the words being read had ...