NUDGINGS: a journey into the unknown

When I asked our PSW if she had gone out on New Year’s Eve, she replied  “No’. Then she went on to explain that the PSWs were all on ‘High Alert’ because if things could go wrong, New Year’s Eve was a prime time for them to do so. The phrase caught my attention because it was an apt way of explaining my life for the last 2+ months. Six times over that period we have had to drop whatever we were doing, or hoped to be doing, and make our way down to the ER at Toronto General Hospital. Yes, ‘high alert’ covered that way of living. But here’s the thing. What if we, as followers of Jesus, are actually called on to live in ‘high alert’ 24/7?  What if we have become so complacent, so conscious of what society expects from us that we have forgotten the radical nature of Jesus’ teachings. If we really want to live out the basic premise of Golden Rule, to actually do good to those that hate us, to help those who need help no matter who they are, then we too are being calle...

“Here is a simple rule-of-thumb guide for behaviour. Ask yourself what you want people to do for you, then grab the initiative and do it for them . Add up God’s Law and Prophets and this is what you get.”   Matthew 7:12 [MSG] New Year’s Eve has come and gone. We chose, albeit unwillingly, an unique way to ring in 2020 and the new decade by spending the 24 hours from the afternoon of December 31st to the following afternoon in the Emergency Department of a large city hospital. But that’s not why I will never forget this New Year’s. I will never forget it because of what I learned. Despite the fact that it was probably one of the busiest nights of the year for the Emergency Department, and we were their least critical case, the staff were unfailingly thoughtful and kind to us throughout the entire 24 hours. From moving us to the quietest part of the Department so that my husband might be able to get some sleep, to providing both of us with heated blankets, they did every...

Read in the Babylon Bee [2019] U.S.-Bible scholars now claim the wise men didn’t deliver their gifts in person a few years late, as is commonly believed, but instead delivered presents directly to the Messiah using Amazon’s convenient one-day Prime shipping. “Instead of making the long, dangerous trek through the desert, the Magi simply hopped on Amazon and ordered gold, frankincense, and myrrh for one low price with free one-day shipping included,” said Dr. Brad Larson of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.  “There really was no sense in going all that way when Mary and Joseph already had a convenient Amazon Wishlist all set up for the newborn king.” Of course, scholars think the wise men committed the gift-giving sin of going “off-list”, ordering Jesus things they thought He would enjoy rather then sticking to the list. “We appreciate the gesture, of course,” Mary reportedly told a source. “But diapers and a Starbucks gift card would have been a lot more useful. ...

“…  believing something to be true has nothing to do with whether it is true.” Marcus Borg (Convictions:How I Learned What matters Most) The story for today is a true story. Although if you remember this quote from Marcus Borg that I used last week,  that really doesn’t matter… The scene is in an ER waiting room in the downtown hospital in a large Canadian hospital.  It is just after midnight and the night is clear, but frosty and cold. A couple sat there through the night, waiting for their friends to reemerge from behind the sliding doors that they had gone into some time before. Here is their story as they told it to me. * * * * * * "As we sat there watching we could see the story playing out in front of us. We chatted for most of the evening with a woman who was well known to the staff, Her take on downtown life in the big city and her interactions with various hospitals was fascinating to us, the story of a unknown culture. She eventually got into a...

Since human civilization first began, people have been telling stories. Sometimes these stories were based on fact, sometimes not. But what many of these stories had in common is that they were a vehicle to pass along knowledge or understanding to those who were listening, a way of teaching some of the great truths of existence. In the words of Marcus Borg (Convictions:How I Learned What matters Most) “…  believing something to be true has nothing to do with whether it is true.” And so for this Advent Season, I thought I would take a look a a few of these stories… Mr. Rogers once said “The world needs a sense of worth, and it will achieve it only by its people feeling that they are worthwhile.” I recently read about a experiment. Someone took 3 glass jars, placed them about a foot apart, placed an inch of plain rice in each one and then an inch of water. Every day, this person looked into the first jar and said kind and loving things to the rice and water like ‘I love you...

This past week, I heard from another of my friends. She was empathizing with me and saying, ‘I know your life isn’t your own right now.’ And while I knew exactly where she was coming from, that she was in fact saying to me “Hang in there. Life will get better!”, it didn’t sit at all well with me. Why is that, I wondered? And so I spent the next little while mulling it over in my mind. Like most, if not all of us, I like to think I am in control of my life, at least to some extent, some of the time. […lol…] I like to think that I make the decisions as to how I respond to the things happening around me. But have I ever thought that my life is my own to do with what I wanted? As a daughter, a wife, a mother, a caregiver, as a woman, that concept seems foreign to my lived experience. So what exactly did it mean? I’m not at all sure that life is meant to be lived for oneself? That seems like something that would soon become boring and devoid of meaning.   I believe we were pu...

Last year we were celebrating 100 years since the end of WW1, "the war to end all wars” with church bells ringing out across our communities, Since then has anything really changed? The Middle East, as well as many other places on this globe, still reverberate with the sounds of of gunfire and of bombs detonating, as we gather again: the young and the old. There is sitll talk of the sacrifice made by many men & women, not just in World War 1 but in the many wars and conflicts since that time: all those  who gave their lives in service to their country, whatever country that might be. And so we remembered…. Achieving a lasting peace has become more and more important as the weapons of war have gotten more deadly, until we now have the capacity to end all human life on this globe. What about the millions of people whose lives have been turned upside down by this latest violence?  Do we remember those who have been killed either by enemy or ‘friendly fire’ or have lo...