NUDGINGS: a journey into the unknown

We all need comfort foods especially in these times of uncertainty.  Mine is macaroni & cheese made the way my mother made it. There is nothing like it when I feel the need for reassurance that is well in my world.  I ‘m sure everybody reading this has their own comfort food that they turn to when the stress of everyday life gets them down. However an everyday diet of that comfort food would soon prove to be detrimental to our overall health. A friend was telling me about going to a funeral just last week. Having been raised in a parsonage she enjoyed hearing the old hymns again as well as the oh so familiar words of the service even though she noticed that in her mind she was questioning the words she heard. However she found  it strangely comforting after not hearing those words for so long. It was another kind of comfort food. Nothing’s wrong with either kind of comfort food as long as we don’t make a steady diet of it  …forgetting that the other foo...

Easter is here for another year. The forty days of Lent are behind us as we go into the  3 act drama that tells the Easter story: Maundy Thursday   with the last Supper and the vigil in the garden, Good Friday with the crucifixion and the burial, followed by the glorious news of Easter morning   that Christ is Risen! Each year we seem to focus more on the three days of Easter then we do on the 40 days of Lent. Yet without those forty days, the Easter celebrations wouldn’t be the same. Those forty days to study, to learn, and to focus on the story we are celebrating add immeasurably to those celebrations as they add another layer to our understanding of the story. We got our 4th booster shot of the COVID vaccine regimen   this past week. While the first 3 doses were important and added to our immunity, this 4th dose will not only bring our waining   immunity up to what it   after the previous shots, but will add another layer of immunity… just like Lent d...

As  masks are removed, vaccine mandates disappear and as cases rise, we are being encouraged to venture forth into this brave new world. So these two words rang true to me. .. Anticipatory Anxiety. As I gingerly put my toe into the water, I find myself wishing for the four walls of home. Nightmares which were common in the first few months of the pandemic have returned. Just thinking about venturing out is enough to make the muscles in my stomach clench. Yes, I am anticipating the worst,or at best the unknown, that awaits me outside the door. I notice in the stores that whether you wear a mask or not seems to depend on the colour of your hair. The grayer the hair is the more likely that person is to be wearing a mask-at least right now. Probably because we are in the season of Lent and also because I have been reading ‘Witness at the Cross’ by Amy Jill Levine, I find myself seeing corollaries in the story of the events leading up to the first Easter and my current experience of t...

“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...