NUDGINGS: a journey into the unknown

“Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”   by Louise Penny  As the restrictions for COVID are being lifted, there is a general thirst for the ways things used to be, remembered as the perfect society in the perfect world. We want to get back to doing and being the way we remember life as being. This poem reminds us that life was not perfect, indeed is not meant to be perfect.The pandemic has shown us some of the cracks that were there: racism, poverty, and food vulnerability being just a few. By exposing those and other cracks in our society, it has opened up the way for us to make the necessary changes in our new world to address these problems and others. Jesus, in Matthew 5:16 said “let your light shine before others“ .  I would like you to consider  this in light of what Louise Penny had to say in her short poem. We spend a lot of our time trying to be perfect especiall...

“Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them…“ Matthew 6:26 NRSV Right now the colouring app that I use daily is running a series of pictures called ‘Moments of Happiness’. What are these pictures about you might wonder. Celebrations? Family gatherings? Attending  a concert? All things we have missed over the last two years. The answer would be NO, NO, NO!  The pictures to date have shown instead getting a good night’s rest, enjoying a morning cup of coffee, making time for some self-care, cooking, and for today, exercising at home. All things that were part both of our lives both before and during COVID… and will be afterwards as well. I was once told as an adult that not only could I not sing, but that I never would be able to. Immediately I stopped singing (even in the shower). For the most part conductors in the various choirs I had sung in over the years had left me alone. So I had had that!...

  “For he will command his angels concerning you: to guard you in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.”   Psalm 91:11-12 We are all familiar with how angels are portrayed in religious paintings; beautiful ethereal beings, dressed in white with golden wings. Indeed we may have or have had a guardian angel of our own especially as a child. For many of us, our guardian angel may well be another person who looks out for us, sheltering us from the worst of life’s trials, while we take on that role in the life of another. These last two years have been especially hard on all of us as we struggle to cope with or without that  guardian angel.  A friend (who tells me I was one of her guardian angels when she was a child) sent me this poem this past week. It struck a chord in me. And I hope it does on you too…. Whenever I thought of angels, perfect symmetry came to mind,   A Christmas choir of thous...

  “So much has been taken, but not everything. What this moment has taught us is that we have the ability to radically reimagine and reshape the world.” - Marc Lamont Hill, We Still Here: Pandemic, Policing, Protest, and Possibility (2020) As I heard Dr.  Eileen de Villa,  Medical Officer of Health for Toronto say on TV this past week, “COVID is COVID is COVID” . We might want it to be something else. We might be wishing for it to disappear.  We might try to deny its detrimental effect on both our health and the health care system.  But we can’t. COVOD is here and not going anywhere soon, if ever. Just like mumps, measles, influenza, cancer and a myriad of other illnesses, COVID-19 is here to stay. Our job is to accept this,  to stop pretending that life is going to get back to the way it was pre-COVID which is not going tp happen and learn to live with this new reality. As I was writing this, Hebrews 13:8 was going through my head. “Jesus Christ is...

  ‘By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going.’   -Hebrews 11:8  Dr. Theresa Tam, Chief Public Health Officer of Canada, says this, too, will pass . Dr. Eileen de Villa, Medical Official of Health for Toronto, says this, too, will pass . Justin Trudeau , Prime Minister of Canada, says this, too, will pass . But will it really??? Some days this feels like an unending struggle with just one tiny step forward and not just two, but more like a dozen steps back.  Of course I’m talking about COVID-19 with all its associated variants. We might even be forgiven for rewriting that well known quote from Ecclesiastes to read…. For everything there is a season,…but  just not for this ! Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French priest,  might well have been talking about COVID   when he penned the lines below: We should like to skip  The ...

As Epiphany came and went this year I found myself thinking about the story of the magi and the gifts that they brought to the baby Jesus, gifts of gold, frankincense,  and myrrh. These gifts were harbingers of who Jesus was: gold was a symbol of kingship, frankincense (an incense) a symbol of a deity, and myrrh (an embalming oil) a symbol of death.  Then I began to wonder what gifts the last two years under COVID-19 had brought with it. And there have been many gifts - most of them disrupting our lives and our livelihoods. But not all! And we are still learning from them.  There is the gift of patience which as the saying goes is seldom found in women and never in a man. If we have learned nothing else from COVID it is that we need to have patience, that as the top doctors say it will end one day and until that time all we can do is to have patience. A second gift we have received is a new appreciation of the importance of friends . ZOOM  chats, phone cal...

July    24th this year marked 2 years since Clarke had cancer surgery. It seems like it happened in another lifetime.    Mid-August, that same year, granddaughter left to teach in England. She came home for Christmas that same year but then we didn’t see her again until then end of July this year.    Our long-time cleaning lady has just returned after 17 months.    All of these seem to have happened much longer ago then they actually did.  I was reminded of a programme on Time featuring Stephen Hawking that I saw on the television a few years back. He made the comment that time doesn’t exist except when we use it to mark ages, hours, years or distances, heat or cold, etc. Time is in fact something that we humans have invented to serve our own needs.    When nothing new is happening, time slows down for us. Remember those summers when you were a kid that lasted forever? But when new things are happening, time speeds up and you hear p...