NUDGINGS: a journey into the unknown

Five days before the movie theatres were to open their doors for the first time in months, but with limited capacity, an industry advocate was saying that 50%wasn‘t good enough. They wanted it to be 100%! At no time did he thank the government for moving the reopening forward a few days, nor did he thanks all the people in the province who had made it possible by embracing vaccinations and following the other guidelines. I wondered what had happened saying those two simple words, ‘Thank you‘! Of course they wanted more, but surely what they got was worth something. I have noticed as this pandemic has dragged on, how little appreciation is shown for small or even larger gains.    People want it over, and things back to normal RIGHT NOW! There are very few ‘thank yous’ being heard on air,    but there are a lot of complaints. They seem to take it as being their right to get what they want and to get it NOW with no consideration as to ...

There is no doubt that this pandemic has brought with it lots of challenges. Here, in a first world nation, we have seen it hitting hardest those who are underprivileged, who have crowded living conditions, who work at minimum wage jobs (without sick days) to put food on the table for their families. Some areas like Toronto have targeted the people in these hot spots with pop-up clinics in order to get them vaccinated as soon as possible and curb the spread of the COVID-19 virus in these neighbourhoods. This has resulted in a higher percentage of vaccines being administered in these areas as compared to some of the more affluent ones,  where  it has brought down the number of new cases dramatically.  But then we have the luxury of having an adequate supply of vaccine arriving monthly.    What if we didn’t? What if we were like South Africa where a week or so ago only 2% of the health care workers had been vaccinated, where 3 million of their citizens over 6...

  “The sins of the father are to be laid upon the children.“ William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice   This phrase, ‘sins of the fathers’, comes originally from references primarily in Exodus, Deuteronomy and Numbers and relates to generational sins passing from one generation to the next. Despite what the church said, I must say it always seemed to be unfair to me that the children would suffer because of the father’s sins.  Recently however I heard a new term (for me at least), transgenerational. While this talks about passing from generation to another, it isn’t about about the children inheriting the sins of the fathers but rather about the children inheriting the emotional scars of their parents. And now I wonder if that is perhaps what is being alluded to in the Old Testament, that it was not the sins of the fathers but rather the scars those sins left behind.   It certainly sheds a whole new light on the problems that beset various facets of ...

We all know someone who tells the same story over and over.  Do they not remember telling us before we sometimes wonder…. Research conducted at Queen’s University and funded by the Government of Canada’s New Horizons for Seniors has discovered a pattern in the stories told over and over by aging parents. There are really just Ten Stories (more or less) The role of the storyteller is important  Many of the stories come from the 2nd & 3rd decade of life which is when values are learned  The facts of these stories aren’t important. What is important is the meaning within them. The next time you find yourself listening to (or telling) a story for the second, third , or fourth time,  try listening to it in a different way to see if you can hear what is really being said! These same four points hold true for any stories that were part of an oral tradition such as stories of Indigenous people, folklore, and yes, stories in the Bible. All of these, based on what w...

  An iconic saying for our generation, “That’s one small step for man. One giant step for mankind” is attributed to Neil Armstrong as he stepped onto the surface of the moon. However, what  Neil Armstrong insists he actually said and the tapes from NASA confirm is “That’s one small step for a man.  One giant step for mankind.” Interesting how millions of people hearing the broadcast live on July 20, 1969 heard one thing while Armstrong actually said something else, isn’t it!   I thought of this saying earlier in the week when a group of high school friends were planning to meet over lunch this month. Patio dining was now allowed! We had all had our first shots, and some our second! We felt the need to celebrate! Only 4 were allowed at a table? Well we could just use more than one table and move them closer together! This didn’t sound like Armstrong’s small step to me….  Armstong’s quote is the way forward from this pandemic. If everyone was to take one sma...

  “In times of stress, the best thing we can do for our children  (and each other) is to listen with our ears and hearts and to be assured that our questions are just as important as our answers.” -Fred Rogers, You Are Special (1995) Controversy has been swirling around the heads of our children.  Many families have one or two children and in the large urban areas live in apartments or condos.  Children are feeling isolated as they try to cope with online learning and a lack of social stimulation resulting in depression and anxiety. The question on the minds of both children and parents has been ‘Will schools reopen in June or remain closed with online learning until September?’ They finally got the answer on Wednesday of this week  when Premier Ford made the announcement that schools would indeed be closed to in-person learning until September. He spoke of the possibility of play dates and summer camps and ended by saying that NOBODY wanted to see the chi...

  I find myself on a Saturday morning counting out my pills for the next week prior to restocking the weekly supply. Do I count the pills out one by one? No! Do I put them immediately from the pill vial into their section of the box? No! I arrange them in two groups: one of 3 pills and one of four... just as I was taught over 70 years ago in Grade One by Mrs Dawson. How many other things, I wonder, do I do a certain way because that’s the way I was taught as a child? 1 Corinthians 13:11 ran through my mind. “When I was a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child, when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.“  So for the next few days my mind was busy considering just how many of those ‘ childish things’ still were part of my life. We might have grown up in a house where alcohol was used to excess, where violence was a way of life, or where those who looked or sounded different were denigrated. That is no reason for us to repeat those things as adults....