Building an Awesome Life

The Aliens Are Back, And They're Breeding!

2012-01-09T05:35:00.000-08:00

I went to the bookstore with my mom last week, and lo and behold! Gini Koch's newest Alien book had actually arrived! (I'd looked for it just after release date, and every Chapter's store but the one I was at had a copy or three...)

So I picked it up, and saved it for reading on my three day holiday last week. (As a Christmas present, I had a room booked for me at a hotel an hour and a half from my home. Not so I could do any tourist-type things, but just so that I could relax in a room with a jacuzzi and a big bed and a television with lots of channels. It was wonderful!)

As soon as I was unpacked, the book was opened. I read it in the chair, in the jacuzzi, in the bed. I read from the time I got there at about one in the afternoon until I finally finished at one in the morning. By which you can tell it was riveting.

So, first off, the bad news. I'm not, and have never been, a Jeff fan. So sue me. He's too perfect, except for the jealousy thing, which I find disturbing more than endearing. Second, he may be a ladies' man, but I'm not a man's lady.

Which is to say, I'm a die-hard Kitty fan. I'll fight Jeff for her. :D

Seriously, any woman who reaches into her purse to find weapons with which to kill the bad alien superbing and comes up with a ball point pen or hairspray, and then actually proceeds to make it work--that woman is my type of woman! No other description needed. I can work with her music choices--I'm pretty open to anything that's not rap, even if I do prefer Beethoven to Aerosmith.

And it's pretty obvious where she gets her mojo from--her mother is awesome, too, and her long-suffering father is totally true-to-life in his eye-rolling glory. (And Kitty, don't worry that you never really knew what your parents did for a living. Does any child really know her parents before she becomes an adult? I sure didn't!)

Of all the guys in the book though, I have to say I prefer the humans over the aliens. Chuckie is a great character--revenge of the nerds, and all that. Reader is just plain hilarious.

And I just realized I have to take that back--there is one alien who gets more words in this book than he has in previous books, and it's all to the good. Richard White, the Pontifex, steps off the page and into reality as an extremely able partner for Kitty, who once again is left to save the day. He's the only alien so far that's made me want to turn straight...

I do have to say that getting Jeff out of the Armani and into jeans (which does actually happen in this book) is a Good Thing, and amusing to boot. Hope it happens again. (Hint, hint.)

All in all, this one was a very fast-paced and captivating read. The best book of the series so far, in my opinion, though it beats out the first by only a hair. Lots of action, lots of really gut-busting humour, and a bit of truly flesh-creeping horror thrown in. I can't wait for the next one!

Same Old, Same Old

2012-01-01T07:41:00.001-08:00

It's that time of year again.

Yep. New Year's Day, and the time to make New Year's resolutions.

Lots of people don't make them any more, I'm led to understand. They don't make them any more because they make the same ones every year, and by the first of February (if they're really persistent and serious about their resolutions) the habits are gone by the wayside. (If they're not persistent, the new resolution might last until the 5th of January or so...)

Get fit. Eat more healthy foods and less junk (she says as she's writing this, pop and chips near to hand...). Lose weight. Clean the house. Get the finances under control. Write every day. Finish a book and submit it to publishers.

Yep. If you've been reading this blog for more than one post, you'll know exactly whose resloutions these are.

And those who have known me for years know that they're the same resolutions I have made every year since I can remember making resolutions.

Why do I do it, if I continually fail to acheive my goals?

There are a couple of reasons I do this:

1) I do it to remind me on at least an annual basis (and usually more often) that I do have goals that are worth the time and effort to pursue.

2) I do it because I find that the reminder really does help me. I'm not in the same place finanacially where I was ten years ago, I am eating more health-fully, my house is cleaner.

I'm not where I want to be, but I am closer to my long term goals. I've made such amazing strides in the past month and a half that pretty much everyone who interacts with me on a regular basis has noticed. My daughter is saying, "Who are you, and what have you done with my mother?" My ex is enjoying two home-cooked meals a week at my place, and it's noticably lessened his stress. My parents are visiting now. They haven't seen me since September, and my dad's first words to me (and this from a man who is very quick with the backhanded compliments) were, "You're looking really good! What are you doing?"

Things are changing, and they're changing because I continually resovle and re-resolve to get fit, eat healtfully, lose weight, write more, and so on...

So, once again, I'm making New Year's resolutions. Yes, they're the same old, same old. They're not the kind of goals I can really "fail" at. I can get sidetracked, but if I do, all I need to do to get back on track is to review my goals and figure out how I got off track, and then get back on the wagon.

No guilt, no worry. Just pick myself up out of the mud, wash myself off, and carry on.

I Have a New Job!

2011-12-10T09:42:00.000-08:00

No, I'm not working in a theatre again, and I didn't get any jobs with a church (except for filling in for our administrator when she's on holidays, but I was doing that before...).

I skipped the painful submit-a-resume-wait-for-a-call-and-maybe-get-an-interview-but-I'll-never-hear-back-again type of job hunting, and instead applied to our local newspaper to be a...

Paper carrier type person!

Yes, Ruth the paper girl is back. My first run as a paper girl was at the age of ten, my second was about fifteen or more years back, and I'm at it again.

I admit that I need the extra money, but to be honest, I could earn more (a LOT more) flipping burgers for an hour at the local grease joint. I get $0.13 per paper delivered, and my three routes have a grand total of 36 papers. Which is $4.68 per day, and it takes about an hour to deliver. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I also deliver our local free paper plus flyers (way more flyers than paper!). They pay .02 per paper & 1 flyer pack on Tuesdays, and .025 on Thursdays, and an extra .02 per flyer pack above the first. On Thursdays, I've had an average of 3 flyer packs. So each of my 36 deliveries nets me an extra 8.5 cents each per week, for a total payday of 32.94 per week.

Not exactly big money, especially since I use my car to do it and probably spend between five and ten dollars on gas.

Still, it's a really good deal for me.

First off, when I started two weeks ago, I was suffering from back pain so bad that I had to take a fairly expensive OTC medication twice per day in order to remain functional. Within a week, I was down to extra strength Tylenol, and now I'm down to nothing most days. Savings, about $25 per week, plus my liver.

Second, my autistic son accompanies me most days. In fact, I got the route because it was something we could do together that would get us out of the house. I investigated volunteering at our local Re-Store, but they really didn't have anything suitable for us to do. But Robin likes to walk, so the paper route was perfect. The cost of having someone else do something like this with him varies from $10 to $25 an hour. Even on the cheap side, we're saving $50 a week.

Third, I'm out walking every day for most of that hour. According to today's paper (which is another bonus -- one of those papers I get paid to deliver is mine, and it's free!), that will add another 10 or so healthy years to my life. How do I calculate the value of that, I ask you?

And I used to pay about $35 a month for a gym membership I never used, because it was so inconvenient. The paper routes I deliver are a lot closer to my home, and because I've signed a contract, I *have* to do the exercise every day, rain or shine, sick or well, grumpy or happy.

And for the most part, I've been happy. Exercise releases natural endorphins, that help dull pain and decrease depression. I also have met several of my customers, all of whom are friendly and generally cheerful.

One customer I talked to yesterday is eighty years old, and still goes snowshoeing! That's what I want to be like when I'm eighty, and having a daily paper route is a step in the right direction.

A common suggestion of get-out-of-debt books is to take a second job. What most of them don't say is that when you look for a second job, it's always good to think outside the box. Instead of looking for another eight-hour-a-day grind in a factory, try something a little lower class, but with more benefits.

Working in a theatre gave me the chance to see a lot of first run movies for free.

Working at McDonald's gave me more than I wanted of employee-discounted junk food.

Working at Chapters over the Christmas rush last year gave me an employee discount on books, just in time to buy gifts for my family of avid readers.

Now I've got a free paper and an exercise plan -- and they're paying me for it!

Think about where you spend your money, or what activities you enjoy doing, and look to those things for a second job, or a retirement income, or even your primary income! Sometimes, the benefits are worth the lower pay. Don't let anyone tell you that a particular job is too "low life," or "beneath your notice," or "just for kids." Only you can decide the true worth of a job to you.

NaNo Post Mortem

2011-12-01T17:36:00.000-08:00

So it's over. Thirty days, fifty thousand words, all done. What next?

Well, first off, the plan outlined in an earlier post actually worked like a charm! I made it all the way through November, and I wrote every single day, and I wasn't sick once, and while I did eat out a few times, I ate breakfast every day at home, and almost all my lunches and suppers (as in over 90 percent of them) at home as well.

I did not gain thirty pounds pigging out on junk food. (I also didn't lose thirty pounds, but that wasn't in the plan...)

I actually have started getting daily exercise, because I signed on for three daily paper routes, and that started a week ago.

My ex walked in to the kitchen yesterday and did a double take at the uncluttered counter. He'd have really flipped out if he'd looked in the cupboards -- one more to go, then the kitchen is organized! And I worked on it during November.

The two major events I've been part of planning are almost done -- the one last week went very well, considering it was our first time. The one this coming Saturday is looking to be better than last year. We're almost all ready -- I have a list of stuff to do tomorrow and Saturday, but I'll still have a fair amount of free time to celebrate with my daughter and her friend, who also reached 50K.

And most importantly, I can envision myself continuing the process of daily writing until this year's novel is done. My plan is to then go back and finish my 2008 NaNo winner, which was abandoned in mid-December of that year. Then it's on to revision for both of them.

So what did I learn?

First off, I learned that when my space and my life are organized, I can be a tortise, and I learned that slow and steady really does win the race. I honestly thought I didn't have it in me to do something at an even pace over a long period. I thought I was doomed to be the hare all my life, and fall asleep or give up just short of the finish line. (Or else burn myself out with a last minute burst of speed that might or might not propel me to a win.)

Second, I learned that what the FLYLady says really is true: I can do anything, fifteen minutes at a time. That's how the novel got written, the dishes and laundry got done, the clutter got pitched, the papers got delivered, the bills got paid, the bed got made... Focus on one thing at a time, for fifteen minutes, and you can get a lot more done in a day than most people do in a week, because all too often our time is wasted wondering what to do next, instead of doing!

Three, I re-learned the power of companionship. I'm not one who likes to journey alone. I will if I have to, but the few times I've done that, I've phoned home every day. I need friends and family to journey with me. This year, I had the girls, I had a bunch of folks over at the Absolute Write Water Cooler, and one friend my age who I met through the NaNo forums. I cheered them on, they cheered me on. We warred with each other, spoke and wrote encouraging words, and the novels got writ. More of my NaNo buddies showed up as winners this year than in any previous year, and I gave out a lot of rep points at the Cooler, and received almost as many in turn.

I need my friends!

Together, these three learnings have given me back my hope. I've been writing since I was six years old. It's always been a part of me. But I don't think I ever really believed that I could become a professional, because of the lack of daily habits.

I now know that I can do it. So it's on to the next phase: actually doing it. Writing every day, revising what I write, having it critiqued and revising it again. And finally, submitting it to an agent or publisher, and dealing with all that comes from that process.

And I know that a prolonged absence from a writing community is not a good idea for me. So I'll keep in touch with the folks from the Cooler, and I'll keep writing, and one day you WILL see my name on the bestseller list!

Happy writing!

Loving My Inner Perfectionist

2011-11-22T08:40:00.000-08:00

I came to an interesting conclusion today. There's a lot of talk about our "inner child," and how he or she can sabotage our well-intentioned efforts to lose weight, eat well, stay within our budget, or even get out of bed in the morning.

The theory goes that instead of beating this inner child into submission, we need to embrace her (or him), reason with her, and allow her the occasional treat. And we need to learn to love her.

Folks who do this say it really works. They've managed to control the urge to overeat, overspend, and oversleep that comes with the simple immaturity of their inner child, all without feeling the grief and anger that comes with beating their inner child (who is really them) up.

I can see the wisdom in this approach, and practice it myself on occasion. Athena is the fun, kiddie part of me. She's important -- she allows me to be silly, to enjoy kiddie entertainment, to relax. I can control her the way I controlled my own flesh kids when they were little -- by being aware of her needs and not exceeding her capacity for endurance or understanding, by giving her the occasional treat, and by explaining in simple language exactly why we need to exercise control. I control her with love, not fear.

But when it comes to "perfectionism," we tend to have a different attitude. FLYLady in particular is against our inner perfectionist. When we find our inner perfectionist gaining control, instead of treating her with love, we treat her like a dirty rag. "The 'P' Word," she calls it. It's a swear word!

FLYLady's the most recent example (for me) of this attitude that I've come across, but certainly not the only one. "It doesn't have to be perfect!" we say.

And we're right to say that -- most of the time.

Look at it this way. If I'm a student, and I score 95 percent on a math test, that's not "pretty good," it's excellent! If, however, I am a surgeon, and 95 percent of my operations go well, and in 5 percent I make a serious mistake, that's 5 out of a hundred patients who are facing serious medical problems, because I, the surgeon, thought 95 percent was good enough.

Or if I, as a writer, only spell 95 words out of a hundred correctly in the book I'm writing, it will be rejected out of hand by any professional editor, and scorned by critics and readers alike. That's one reason why self-published books aren't highly regarded -- the folks who write them are so in love with their own writing that they don't see its faults, and are in too much of a hurry to get published to deal with the perfectionism that is part of producing a truly excellent book. (And I've read a couple of good self-pubbed books that could have been outstanding had the writers gone to the trouble of getting them professionally edited and published.)

We as writers need our inner perfectionist (which the NaNo folks call our "Inner Editor," and who gets locked away during the whole month of November) as much as we need our inner child.

If it's wrong and counter productive to beat your inner child into submission, it's just as wrong and counter productive to beat your inner perfectionist into submission. The way to deal with her, I think, is to give her a name, love her, and explain why she can't always have her way. Give her a chance on occasion to express herself, but set firm limits.

Just as you do when you're dealing with your inner child.

This morning, my inner perfectionist (I'm pretty sure that this is the real Yeshanu, by the way) helped me clean my living room. I started out only wanting to sweep and mop the floors, and realized that I had the time, the energy, and the will to do a bit more.

So I set the limits (we will NOT patch and paint the walls, refinish the coffee table, or buy a new lamp or TV cabinet!), and let her run wild.

The floor got swept. Then she decided to dust (I know, it should have come first and we did end up having to sweep again after). Straigtened out the pillows on the couch. Took down some tacky pictures. Loaded the broken stereo into the car to take to the dump tomorrow. Decluttered some stuff, and put up my creche. Tidied up the toys and hid them behind the TV cabinet (the little kids don't visit very often). Cleared out the old magazines. Mopped the floor.

And the living room looks fantastic! After we finished up, we sat down for a break, and were truly able to relax in our lovely living room.

November is a hard month for my inner perfectionist. NaNo means she's got to be quiet about a whole lot of writing going on, and the pace of everything else in my life means I don't really have time to listen to her. But allowing her out, for a limited period of time and to deal with a single, well-defined project, was a wonderful experience.

I feel a real sense of accomplishment right now, and we had fun, albeit in a very adult kind of way.

Numbers that Shock: One-half

2011-11-12T10:37:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was Remembrance or Veteran's Day, depending on where you live. Today, November 12, is another kind of Remembrance Day today.

Today should have been the day my younger sister turned fifty years old. But she'll never get there--at thirty-one years of age, she killed herself.

She will never see her neice and nephews graduate from university and graduate school, just as she never saw them graduate from high school. She'll never hear David preach a sermon, or Allison play in a concert. She wasn't there to celebrate my parents' fiftieth wedding anniversary, and she wasn't there for dad's eightieth birthday.

She was a writer, but her poems and stories will never be published. She won't ever win NaNoWriMo, or write a novel. She won't ever acheive... Well, what she would have acheived had she lived.

And we miss her. We have a gaping hole in our family that will never be filled, no matter how many babies are born, birthdays and anniversaries are celebrated. A part of each of us is dead.

And it has shocked me to learn that over one-half of all violent deaths in the world are due, not to terrorism and war or drug cartels or domestic disputes, but to suicide. More than one half of all people in the world who die violently do so at their own hands.

More US military personnel kill themselves than are killed in combat, and I suspect the numbers are similar in Canada and around the world.

So today, I remember. I remember when life was bad for me, and I thought at times my family might be better off without me. What saved me was remembering my parents at my sister's memorial service and afterwards, trying to cope with their grief, and thoughts of my children, left to grow up and struggle on their own, with no one to help them understand.

A plea, heartfelt from me to you.

If someone talks to you about suicide, TAKE THEM SERIOUSLY. With Mary, the clues were all there, but the rest of us were clueless. In her writing, in her comments to us, she left little clues, quite probably hoping we'd notice. We didn't, and I for one wish I had, and that I'd told her how much she meant to me.

Even without talk of suicide, tell your family members and close friends that you love them, that you appreciate them. Be specific, and tell them what they do that's so important for you. It will make their day, and it might save their life.

If you are depressed, and feel like killing yourself might be a valid option, GET HELP. And if the first person you talk to can't or won't help, keep on asking until you find someone, anyone, who will listen. Ministers and priests, teachers and counsellors, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, police officers, doctors, nurses, firefighters. Me. Someone from amongst the many people you meet each day will listen, and take you seriously.

Remember that you are loved, and you have love to give. There is help out there. And life will get better, and you WILL be glad you lived through this moment.

All my love and prayers,

Ruth

The Most Famous Guelph Writer, and A Secret

2011-11-11T11:36:00.000-08:00

Today, of all days, I am reminded that no matter how famous I become, I will never be the most famous writer from my hometown. At least I hope not. Even Robert Munch does not have that distinction.

Instead, Guelph's most famous writer is know for one single piece of writing that takes up less than a page. It's a poem, and if you live in North America and have English as your first language, chances are good you know it off by heart:

In Flanders Fields
by John McCrae, May 1915

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Guelph understandably has one of the biggest Remembrance Day observances in the country. About 4,000 or so people convene in the Sleeman Centre to watch a ceremony which involves a couple of hundred participants (vetrans, militia, cadets, wreath bearers, police, fire department, EMS, postal workers...), and which is timed pretty much to the second. If one goes to the Sunrise Ceremony at Colonel John McRae house, it starts at nine in the morning, and we finished just after noon at the cenotaph.

Our guest speaker today was a veteran who had signed up as a "boy soldier" during WWII, and who spent a lifetime in the military. He introduced his son, a retired major, and his grandson, a major currently on active duty. He spoke of some of his experiences during the wars he'd been involved in, but he was a very self-effacing and engaging speaker, and he was more intent on highlighting the contributions of others than he was on "blowing his own horn," so to speak.

For that, Colonel Bayne, I salute you.

He then went on to say that some who served don't count themselves as veterans because they never saw active combat, and told us that if we'd served and been honourably discharged, we were veterans.

And I began to see myself in a new light.

At age 15, I joined Army Cadets. At age 18 or 19, I enlisted in the Cadet Instructors List (CIL), the unit of the armed forces that trained cadets. I was a commissioned officer in the Canadian Armed Forces.

I don't know what my official status is right now. I never formally resigned, instead transferring to the Supplementary Reserve List. I strongly suspect I'm still on it, because I haven't received any discharge papers.

So I'm probably not a civilian at this point. Certainly I haven't considered myself one since I was sworn in as a new officer cadet.

But I've always denigrated my service. Looking around the arena today at the young men and women serving our country, I realized that in my day I had trained many such young people, and that some of those I helped train are still serving.

I began to see my small service as something that had real value for my country.

I have thought for a while that I was born twenty years too early. I know that if I had been born twenty five or thirty years ago rather than fifty-one years ago, I would have given serious thought about serving overseas. I probably would be a real combat veteran by now. Such is my temperament.

So that's my secret. As dedicated as I am to peaceful conflict resolution and restorative justice, I am also a warrior. I would give my life to protect those I care about and those I don't even know, but I won't do it by being a sheild that gets shot at without fighting back.

To everything there is a season,
a time for every purpose under the sun.
A time to be born and a time to die;
a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
a time to kill and a time to heal ...
a time to weep and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn and a time to dance ...
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to lose and a time to seek;
a time to rend and a time to sew;
a time to keep silent and a time to speak;
a time to love and a time to hate;
a time for war and a time for peace.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

I have been priviledged to live in a peaceful place and time. It is my hope that by my words and deeds and by the words and deeds of other, that peace will spread throughout all the world, until one day, the occupation of warrior is no longer needed.

Until then, I honour those who give their youth, and sometimes their lives, to protecting the rest of us.

I will remember.

I'm Committed!

2011-11-05T08:17:00.000-07:00

I came across a lovely quote this morning:

There is a difference between interest and commitment. When you're interested in something, you do it only when it's convenient. When you're committed to something, you accept no excuses, only results.

Ken Blanchard

It was a bit of an eye-opener, really, as it helped me to realize that up until now, I've mostly been interested in the things that mattered to me, not committed.

True, I have at times shown real committment. I am, and have always been, truly committed to doing right by my kids. And it required committment, not mere interest, to finish those last few assignments and get my degree. In fact, it required a change from interest to committment that I'll never forget: I was four assignments short of completing my degree, and all were overdue, and I had exactly one week to finish them all and submit them.

And I was just about to give up when I sat myself down for a talk, and told myself, "I can do this, and here's the plan."

And I did it.

So now, years later, I'm facing the fact that I have two areas of my life that mean a lot to me, but have, until this month, garnered mere interest, and not committment.

If you're a regular reader, you can probably predict what those two areas are. Yes, I'm talking about writing and music.

At the beginning of November, I made a promise to myself that no matter what happened in a given day, no matter how busy I was, I'd find the time to add at least 100 words to my novel. I've kept that promise so far, and it hasn't been easy. Thursday and Friday were horrendous as far as scheduling was concerned. Thursday in particular I was so exhausted by suppertime that I feared I'd once again drop the ball.

But I did it. I pushed myself and I did it.

Last night, we had our first concert of the season. I had no idea how I'd make it through the night--we played Beethoven's Seventh, and playing a Beethoven symphony is like lying down in front of a herd of charging wildebeast and hoping for the best. It's exhausting, at the very least.

But I made it through, of course. Once I sat down on my chair on the stage, there was no other choice. And I realized that we all have a choice when we're faced with really hard things, like swimming lenghts in a pool or playing a symphony or writing a novel or sometimes even getting out of bed. We can give up when we start to encounter resistance, or we can push ourselves on and see it through to the bitter end.

The first option shows we were only interested, the second shows committment.

The other eye-opener last night was an announcement by a member of the BOD of the orchestra that they were trying to find a way to pay all of the players an honourarium. Wha??? They want me to become a paid musician?

And I realized that the jump from dabbling amateur to paid musician required a step on my part: from interest to committment.

And I realize that I'm ready to take that step.

In rethinking my life these past weeks, I have realized that my main regrets from the past were due to not taking my loves seriously enough. I chose to take a science degree rather than a music degree as a teenager because music wasn't something one could make money at. No one told me that as a violist, I'd be in such demand that I could find employment without having to be the best player in the orchestra!

And I've wasted over twenty years of my writing career, just by being interested rather than committed.

Well, the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now.

So I'll go for second best, knowing that in twenty years, I won't regret my decision to commit myself.

NaNo Survival Tips I: Plan Your Days

2011-11-03T19:29:00.000-07:00

It's day 3 of NaNo, and I'm already a day behind schedule. And I'm happy about it, because I'm only a day behind schedule. In former years, I would have been two or three days behind schedule at this point.

Not only that, but most often at least one out of the three days would have been a day where I didn't add to my word count at all. Even the year I won has that pattern--of the 27 days on the graph (I reached the 50,000 word mark three days early!), twelve of them, or nearly half, had zero word counts. This year, I'm aiming for a little more consistency. Actually, a lot more consistency. My number one goal this month is not to write 50,000 words, but to write at least 100 words every single day.

It's going to be a challenge, because while November is normally a crazy busy month for me, this month it's even crazier than normal. Instead of one concert in November and one in December, my orchestra has two concerts in November, and two in December. Instead of planning one major ecumenical event in my community, I'm now planning two, one of which takes place the last weekend in November, and the other the first Saturday in December. I have full time responsibility for my autistic son, who is no longer in school, and I need to plan something for us to do together, so he doesn't end up watching television all month while I write. I'll probably have a couple of days of work at the church office, and I'm filling in on the security checks for a few days, and I'm preaching at a friend's church for two Sundays while she's off having surgery, and I might be preaching a third Sunday at a new church, and...

Every day, something gets added to the list. Plus, I'm making an effort to eat at home, which means meal planning, grocery shopping, and washing up in addition to meal preparation. I continue to work on cleaning up my home, and I'm babysitting my friend`s two grandsons on Saturday.

And I haven't even talked about preparing for Christmas yet, have I?

So why, you might ask, am I feeling so good about this year's NaNo? Why don't I just throw in the towel right now, and say I'm too busy? Do I have a secret magic trick up my sleeve? Am I exaggerating my other commitments? Am I going to lie about my word count? Or is my novel secretly all planned out, and all I have to do is fill in the blanks????

No, no, no, no, and no!

What I have is 24 hours each day. Much of it is used for daily living activities, sleeping, eating, washing, and so on. But I still have lots of time to do other stuff, and I do it all, 15 minutes at a time. Just this evening, I started in on my novel. I wrote for fifteen minutes, then I did a load of laundry. Then I did some dishes. Then I wrote some more. Then I switched the laundry to the drier. Then I finished the dishes. Then I had dessert. Then I came upstairs and wrote this post. The clock just struck ten. Two and a half hours after I started, I've done my daily writing, I've ensured that I have clean clothes and clean dishes for tomorrow, and I've written a fair number of words. And I even managed to get about a half hour of Civ IV playing in there as well.

What I didn't do was waste time deciding what I was going to do next, or how I was going to do it. The decisions were already made and the routines were already in place. I didn't waste time thinking about what I'm going to do tomorrow, or next week, or about what I didn't do yesterday. I'll review tomorrow's schedule (which will be at least as busy as today's) when I get up in the morning.

Nor did I waste much time unproductively staring at a flickering screen, wondering what I was going to write. I didn't have every word planned out, but I knew approximately what was going to happen in my fifteen minutes of writing time. My characters still managed to surprise me, but in the end, I controlled the process, rather than having it control me.

Pre-planning is the key to extreme productivity without stress. When I get up in the morning, I mentally review my day. At that point, the time chunking I do is in large blocks--what is happening this morning, this afternoon, this evening. I get the morning all lined up, the afternoon thought through, but the evening is barely on the radar at this point.

Fifteen minute blocks. Get up, take meds, get dressed, make bed. One block. Go get son from his dad's. May take one or two blocks, depending on how ready he is. Doesn't matter. By the time we get back to my house, it's 8 o'clock, and I have an hour to feed us both breakfast and get things ready for my day. Enough time for me to take two entire fifteen-minute blocks just to sit at the breakfast table and enjoy my cereal. Make my sandwich, tidy the kitchen, gather the things I need for the morning, and off we go!

The rest of the day goes the same. At lunch, I take time to review the afternoon, and schedule my blocks more closely. Travel time is scheduled in--all too often, I encounter those who are late for things simply because they don't build travel time into their schedule! At lunch, I was thrown a curve--I'd signed up to do an afternoon service at a nursing home, and forgotten about it. (Make a mental note to be more proactive about writing things down on my desktop calendar...)

No problem, really. A half hour after that curve was thrown, I was ready for the service (it does help that I signed up knowing that I had a service to do that morning, and that I'd just use the same sermon), and I had time to sit down and have lunch with a friend. In that half hour, I'd outlined the service, and decided what on my afternoon schedule could be postponed, shortened, or cancelled. A meeting at 1:30 went ahead as scheduled, because we had to make some decisions regarding our event at the end of the month, but I went into that meeting have decided ahead of time what precisely needed to be covered, and what could wait for later.

Evening rolls around. I've already planned what to have for supper, and know how long it's going to take to cook. I knew what was in my pantry when I decided on the meal, and I have everything I need on hand. I have time to spare. I'm too tired to write, so I use the time that supper's in the oven to lie down on the bed for a bit and rest up, hoping for a second wind. A healthy supper goes a long way towards restoring my energy. A bath and a bit of a lie-down after supper does the rest. By 7:30, I'm back in action and ready to write!

If you fail to plan, you're planning to fail.

I've always heard that, but never really understood it until recently. I've come to realize that I don't have to go overboard and plan the rest of my life in fifteen minute blocks before I go full steam ahead, but I do need to plan the next day. I need to know, before I leave the house in the morning what I'm having for dinner, and when I have to start meal prep in order to have it on the table on time. I need to know what I'm doing during the morning and afternoon, and what is critical for me to accomplish this day, what is important, and what is merely desirable.

I need to stop at strategic points in the day (I use mealtimes for this), and think about the next two or three hours. At that point, the general becomes specific, and a three-hour block of time gets broken down into fifteen minute sprints.

Then I can concentrate on each task, knowing as I do so that everything I'm not doing at that moment will get done in good time.

So that's my secret to conquering NaNo while maintaining a schedule that makes most other people's heads spin. Planning. Not obsessive-compulsive, perfectionist-type planning (no, I do not have the entire month's meals written down on a schedule somewhere, and yes, I am still, as always, open to a change of plans), but a secure enough outline that I'm not putting energy into panicking and running around aimlessly moaning, "I'm so busy, I don't have time to think!"

I always take time to think, because I know that if I take the time to think before rushing headlong into my day, the day will go smoothly, and I'll get everything done that needs doing.

Happy writing!

It's All-NaNos Eve

2011-10-31T14:55:00.000-07:00

Since I'm too poor right now to afford candy for the kiddies, I'm celebrating this evening in my own style--sitting here at home, waiting for the clock to strike midnight, and wondering, when it does, what I might put down as the first words to a brand new novel.

And also thinking about this post by a guy named Chuck, who seems to think he has this NaNo thing all figured out, and considers himself an expert on writing.

So, because I have a few hours to spare and need to keep my mind occupied, in rebuttal to many of his points and agreement with some, I will say this:

1) Writing requires writing.

Well, duh. People who endlessly talk about writing aren't writers unless they also put some of those words down on paper, or into a word processing program, or write them in the sand with a stick, or prick their finger and use blood on the wall. Otherwise, they're wannabes.

If you're a wannabe, maybe what you need is a deadline and a whole lot of friendly folks from all over the world to spur you on. If so, you may just need NaNoWriMo.

2) Writing requires finishing.

Who says? I've written many partials. Some are just the beginnings of what may turn out to be full novels, or stories, or non-fiction books. Some of them are just bad ideas that will eventually be trashed (if on paper) or deleted from my hard drive (if on computer).

If you write and don't finish, you're still a writer. You need to finish to publish, at least in most cases. But if you write, you're a writer, and if you don't finish, chances are pretty strong that you've learned something about writing in the meantime.

3) Discipline, With A Capital "Do That Shit Every Day, Son."

Okay, I'll admit that discipline helps. A lot. But is it exactly necessary?

No. I'm about as undisciplined as you can get, and I've still finished one novel, and "won" one NaNo. During the NaNo I won, I got behind on some days, then rushed to catch up. Then got behind again, then another rush.

The tortises win more races, 'tis true, but we hares do win sometimes. (And I am working on more discipline--it's not a bad trait to have!)

4) The magic number is 1666.

Yep. That's the average number of words per day you need to write if you intend to write 50,000 words over a 30 day period.

But it's an arbitrary number, not a magic one. The magic number is actually "1". Don't believe me? Sit down to write a coherent sentence. Start with the first word.

Bet you couldn't stop until the whole sentence is out, now, could you?

The first word of any writing session is always the "magic" one, because it leads to more words.

As for 1666 (or 1667 every third day), the reality is that very few of us are average. Some days, you'll write 5000 words (and those are really magic days for most of us), and some days you'll write none. The trick is to make it all average out. If you write no words for twenty-nine days in a row, and you manage to crank out fifty thousand on day 30, congratulations! You've hit the magic number, too!

5) The Problem With 50,000 Words

Um, he's just plain wrong here. It's true that in some genres, 50,000 words would not be considered a publishable novel. But as Chris Baty points out in No Plot? No Problem!, several well-know works of fiction are about that length, including The Catcher in the Rye (not that this particular book is readable, but it was published and continues to sell well), Of Mice and Men, Brave New World, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

Hmm. It seems publishers would disagree with Chuck.

Furthermore, my own personal belief is that as e-books become more and more accepted, the length of novels won't be as important. Publishers of paperbacks don't tend to like books shorter than 90,000 words not because they're inferior, but because consumers are reluctant to shell out ten bucks for a skinny little book, and a thicker book also automatically garners more of the all-important shelf space, making the book more visible to consumers.

As e-book popularity grows, the length of the book will become much less important. E-books are dropping in price, to the point where many are only a buck or two, and folks will shell out two bucks for just about anything. (And if you don't believe me, take a trip to your local dollar store...) And shelf space no longer matters nearly as much as an author's willingness to market the heck out of his or her book.

6) The True Nature of "Finishing"

Actually, the true nature of finishing depends on what your goal is. My goal for the NaNo I actually "won" was to complete 50,000 words of fiction, and to have fun. In that sense, the partial book I wrote is finished. I won't be working on it again. It doesn't have an ending, it's never going to be published, but it is finished. I've let it go.

If you want something more along the lines of a complete novel that's submission-ready, of course you aren't going to be finished at the end of November! You've only just started.

But then, having a submission-ready novel was never the goal of NaNoWriMo, and never will be.

7. Draft Zero

Here, Chucky-boy is just plain silly. No, your NaNoWriMo draft is NOT a zero draft, it's a first draft. The idea that a first draft should be more complete than a NaNo draft is daft, and the fact is that some folks can turn out a very good first draft indeed in thirty days.

8. Quantity Above Quality

This is one of the most misunderstood parts of NaNo. NaNo was not really created for folks who have no trouble sitting down every day and producing two thousand words of high quality work, or even two thousand words of crap.

It works best for those of us whose inner editor is so insistent on "high quality" that no words get written. Ever. Those of us who previously considered a writing session a failure if we didn't turn out a polished, ready-to-submit manuscript with the first draft.

Writing quickly, without regard to quality, bashes down that roadblock of perfectionism, and enables us (and yes, I'm one of those writers) to get the words out.

And when we do, we're often surprised at how good the book we've written really is.

One of the regrets I have with the NaNo I "won" is that I deliberatly wrote a book that by its very nature is unpublishable (because it includes characters and worlds that are the property of other writers). I did it that way because I was in a horrible slump, and realized that the only way I'd get any words written at all was to remove even the possibility of publication.

And what I wrote turned out to have a plot and a theme that was so resonant to me, and writing that in parts was so good, that I might have gone on to do more work on it, if I'd had any chance of publishing it.

But that isn't why I wrote it, and it acheived its purpose by restoring my confidence in my ability to write a good story.

9. Beware "Win" Conditions

I'll just quote him here. I wouldn't have been so crass at the end, but he's right.

If you complete NaNoWriMo, I give you permission to feel like a winner. If you don’t, I do not — repeat, awooga, awooga, do not — give you permission to feel like a loser. This is one of the perils of the gamification of novel-writing, the belief that by racking up a certain score (word count) in a pre-set time-frame (one month for everybody), you win. And by not doing this, well, fuck you, put another quarter in the machine, dongface.

Every year, I have to reassure people who are afraid to even start that the only losers are the ones who are so afraid they'll fail that they don't even start. If you write one single word more in November than you would have writen without NaNo, you've won. If you made some new friends and had a little fun, you've won.

That's why, when I refer to my official win, I put the word "win" in quotation marks. Because I've won every single year I've entered. November has, for the last seven years, been the most prolific writing month of the year. I expect this pattern of winning to continue.

10) We're Not All Robots Who Follow The Same Pre-Described Program

True enough. NaNo isn't for everyone. What confuses me is this: If NaNo isn't for you, Chuck (and seems from your post that it's not), why are you wasting so much time and energy blogging about it? Spend some time blogging about something you enjoy, for Heaven's sake! Or even (gasp!) writing another novel!

11) November Is A Shitty Month

Well.

Excuse us for not all being American, and having Thanksgiving to deal with. Nor does everyone in the world celebrate Christmas with a huge month-long shopping spree.

The point of having it in November, btw, was because it is a crappy month for Americans. The weather's not great, so you don't feel left out by your buddies who are heading off to the beach. You've got so much else to do that time spent alone writing a novel feels more like a treat than torture.

It's all in how you look at things...

12) The Perfect Is The Enemy Of The Good

Right again, of course. That's the whole point of NaNoWriMo right there--to take the pressure of perfection out of the picture, and allow the goodness to happen.

13) Total Suckity-Ass Donkey Crap Is Also The Enemy Of The Good

Not necessarily. Think of your first steps. Not very sturdy, and you fell down a lot.

Or your first printing. Probably didn't look like anything recognizable.

Or your first words--the ones only mom could understand.

But you experimented, and learned, and if you kept practicing, you eventually became able to walk and chew gum at the same time, and print your name so that most folks could read it, and speak in a manner that gets your message across.

Why do we think writing is different? We think that because we've already learned to spell, and write in complete, gramatical sentences, that we should be able to write a decent story.

BUT THEY'RE TOTALLY DIFFERENT SKILLS!!!!

You have to learn to do it suckily before you learn to do it well. And the writer who tells you that his or her first novel was a runaway success is NOT telling you about the hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, of words that were written that will never see the light of day.

I've been writing since I was six years old. Intentionally, and not just for school.

And I'm still learning new skills, and sometimes I write suckily.

But with everything I write, I learn. And the next think I write is less sucky.

So, if NaNoWriMo can teach you anything, it's that you're almost certainly going to write a lot of stuff that sucks before you write anything good. And every NaNo is a step towards being less sucky.

14) You Have Permission To Suck -- Temporarily

Um, just who in Hell's name do you think you are?

First off, no matter what I write, it's not ME that sucks, but my writing. And if I keep writing (with the intent to improve, that is), OF COURSE that sucky writing is going to be only temporary.

But even if I write for my own amusement, and every single thing I write is sucky, your permission matters not at all, sir.

I'm going to skip over the next bunch of points in order to indulge in a bit of a rant.

Most of the folks who do NaNo know what it's all about, and engage in it for the right reasons. But on the Absolute Write boards, and in blogs like this, there are those who think that because it's not for them, it's a useless and even harmful exercise for everyone.

I don't get it. They're ranting about the "rules" of NaNo being too restrictive, and not conducive to good writing, yet the rules they set out for others are far more restrictive and crushing than any of the actual rules of NaNo, which, for the most part, are more along the lines of official suggestions.

And Chris Baty and friends set up the challenge, so they have a right to set out the rules. If you don't like them, that's your perogative, but they do work for most of us who participate, and if they don't work for us, we disregard them. There's even a whole section on the NaNo forum for "rebels," folks who, for one reason or another, find it necessary or desirable to modify the "official" rules.

End of rant, because Chuck's last point is one that needs to be emphasized.

25) November Is Just Your Beginning

Now, for some, it may be the beginning of a life without writing. Been there, done that, may or may not have bought the tee shirt, but it's not for me. The world can live without my words.

Fair enough. I am not a better person than you because I write, and you are not a better person than me because you don't write.

For those of us who do write, November is also the beginning.

If you get to the end of the month with a manuscript — finished or not — in hand, celebrate. Do a little dance. Eat a microwaved pizza, do a shot of tequila, take off your pants and burn them in the fireplace. And then think, “Tomorrow, I’ve got more to do.” Because this is just the start. I don’t mean that to sound punishing — if it sounds punishing, you shouldn’t be a writer. It should be fucking liberating. It should fill your heart with a flutter of eager wings: “Holy shit! I can do this tomorrow, too! I can do this in December and January and any day of the goddamn week I so choose.” Don’t stop on November 30th. You want to do this thing, do this thing. Your energy and effort can turn NaNoWriMo from a month-long gimmick to a life-long love and possibly even a career. Let this foster in you a love of storytelling made real through discipline — and don’t let that love or that discipline wither on the vine come December 1st.

Those words, I can agree with wholeheartedly. They bring tears to my eyes.

November, each and every November, is the beginning of the rest of my life as a writer. And that, my friends, is why I'm impatiently waiting for midnight. Beginnings are magical times, and the fact that I'm beginning again doesn't take away from the magic, any more than celebrating Christmas or birthdays or the first really warm summer day gets old.

Happy new beginnings, friends, and whatever you do, may you have joy in the task!

It's That Time of Year Again!

2011-10-29T07:59:00.000-07:00

Yep, the time when everyone goes bonkers with fear that they might catch a cold or the flu. And there's some pretty strange and outright bad advice going around, so I thought it might be good to post some antidotal common-sense type advice that will (we hope) keep us well.

Note that I am not a doctor or a nurse, just a regular human being with a few brains in her head who reads a lot. This advice is not meant to counter anything a trained health-care provider says--if we conflict, go with the advice of the person who's trained and paid.

But I doubt very much if any health care provider will take issue with anything I have to say here, so here goes:

1) Be aware and accepting of the fact that as a human being, made of flesh, you are going to get sick at some point. Don't panic, as long as you're not dead! Colds and most flus aren't death sentences any more--they're usually no more than minor inconveniences.

2) You'll get over the inevitable faster if you admit it and take care of yourself while you're sick. If you're sick, stay home!!!! Don't go to work because you feel "kind of okay," wait until you feel well. Don't send kids to school with "just a cold." First off, you will get better faster if you're not wearing yourself out while you're sick. Second, you'll bless everyone else by keeping your germs at home.

3) The two lists I've seen about flu prevention both miss my number one, most important precaution.

GET A FLU SHOT!!!! In Ontario, they're free and available at your doctor's office now. If you don't have a family doctor, there are clinics just about everywhere--call your local health unit on Monday ('cause today's Saturday and they're probably closed). The year after I go the flu for real (and not "stomach" flu, but real, honest-to-goodness influenza), I started getting the shots every year. I haven't been sick with the flu since, and even my incidence of colds has gone down.

If it's not covered by provincial health insurance (because you live somewhere else), investigate how much it costs. Being sick with influenza can keep you off work for a week or more, and make you feel sluggish for even longer. Is it less than a week's pay to get the shot? Then get it...

What are you waiting for???

3) One of the lists I read started with "Demand (their word, not mine) that any visitors or guests who enter your home wash their hands right away."

Um, right. NOT!

Now, washing hands is a good thing, but it's YOUR hands you need to wash if you want to avoid germs, because it's (hopefully) YOUR hands that will be going near your mouth and face and food. Unless your guests are holding your newborn (in which case I'd say, "If you want to hold the baby, you can wash your hands in the bathroom. I've set out fresh guest towels just for you."), I wouldn't worry about their hands, except to invite them to use the washroom before a meal. (Once again, suggest, don't demand. "I've set out some guest towels in the bathroom, if you'd like to wash your hands before we eat." Then they'll seem like complete boors if they don't wash, and you haven't demanded a single thing, or even made them feel uncomfortable.)

But like I said, it's YOUR hands you really need to worry about.

Wash after you use the toilet, before you eat, and before and during food preparation. Before and after visiting someone in the hospital, visiting a doctor, etc. Use common sense. Washing your hands CAN get excessive, but most people don't go nearly that far, or even nearly far enough.

Use soap and water. A study I read done by a soap company looked at the difference in health outcomes in a third world country after distribution of different types of soap. The control group was not given any soap. One-half of the remainder was given plain, ordinary soap with instructions on how and when to wash. The other half was given antibacterial soap, again with instructions.

Both soap-using groups had better disease outcomes than the control group. But there was NO DIFFERENCE between the two different types of soap. What matters, therefore, is not that the soap has antibacterial agents in it, but that you use it.

4) Get enough sleep. Once again, numerous studies show that adult North Americans don't get anywhere near enough sleep. Six to eight hours minimum, folks. It will help you recharge your immune system. It will keep you alert so you don't have as many accidents. And it will keep you from getting overly grumpy, which could keep you out of prison...

Okay, so maybe not that last, but you get the idea. The proper amount of sleep is important in maintaining your overall health.

5) Eat healthy amounts of healthy foods, especially fruits and vegetables. Forget about processed "fruit-flavoured" snacks, and go for an apple. A smoothie is great, a real banana is even better. Carrots and peas and beans and salads...

I'll stop now. I'm getting hungry.

I've seen plenty written about how important vitamins and trace minerals are for your heath, but I've never read a study (which doesn't mean there aren't any, just that I haven't read them) that shows that a daily pill will keep you healthy. Vitamin pills can't replace real vitamins, direct from the source, IMO. And they don't taste nearly as good, either.

6) Stay hydrated. Drink enough water. Water, folks. Not fire-water, or cola, or tea or coffee. Just plain water.

And use a re-usable water bottle when you do it (or a glass), so that we can keep our environment healthy, too.

7) Stay out of places with lots of sick people if you possibly can. Some of the advice on the lists I've read tell you to stay out of places like grocery stores as much as you can, but that's just silly. Sick people don't generally go to the grocery store, they go to the hospital and the doctor's office. So unless you really need to go, stay out of those two places.

DO NOT go to the emergency room for a simple head cold. One, it wastes taxpayers' money. Two, it wastes your time, because you'll be put way, way down on the triage list, after the person with the sprained baby toe, and definitely after the guy with the stab wound, and the woman in labour and all the other fun people you'll get to meet. Don't go there just to pass the time or read a book, either. (I've never done this, but apparently a few people do.)

Read your book in the library, if you must get out of the house.

If you're sick with non-life-threatening illness (you can breathe okay, you can talk, you're not terribly disoriented, and you have no or a low-grade fever) try PHONING your doctor for advice first. Wrap yourself in a blanket, drink lots of water, have some chicken soup, and read a good book or watch an old movie. You'll be well in a day or two.

8) Finally, be a little wary of zapping your cold or flu with too many OTC medications. First, read the instructions carefully. I have some meds that say it's okay to take them every four hours, but when you read further, you find out you can't take more than three doses per day.

Second, don't take them so you will feel "well enough to go to work." Meds DO NOT make the illness go away, they just disguise it. Your body is still sick and it still needs the time to heal. You may actually be sick longer than otherwise if you take meds and continue with your daily routine, heedless of your body's real needs. Second, you're still contagious, so other people can still get sick from you, no matter how good you're feeling.

Stay home, take time to get well... (Wait. I think I've said that before.)

Seriously. I think a huge part of our problem with infectious diseases is our insistence that we are machines who can "bash on regardless." We're not machines, we're living organisms, and we'll live longer, healthier lives if we respect the difference.

Are You A Minister Yet?

2011-10-27T13:31:00.000-07:00

Every so often, someone will ask me that question. What they usually mean, of course, is, "Are you ordained yet?"

The last time I heard that question, it was in a diner in a small town I've never before been through, and will likely not be through again, at least for a while. I don't even know the name of the person who asked it, or where I'd known her from. She might have been from a pastoral charge where I served as a student, or one of the ones I occasionally visit as a supply preacher. I'm good at recognizing faces, and voices, but names I don't always remember, especially if I go to a church where no-one wears a name tag, and I don't learn the names in the first place!

The distinction between the question she voiced and the question she was really asking is important. The friend who was with me at the time actually started laughing, knowing that for me, the question was hard to answer because the answers to the two questions are dramatically different.

No, I am not ordained.

Yes, I most definitely am in ministry.

At the time, I was driving her up to a town where her father-in-law resides, so that she could be with her husband who had been hospitalized while visiting his father. The next day, I would be baby-sitting her grandchildren, and on Monday, I'd be in the church office behind the administrator's desk, taking her place. This is ministry.

On Thursday, I conduct a service/bible study at a local retirement home. Not many folks come out, but the ones who do are so fanatical that the thought of the (ordained) minister of our church taking my place for a Thursday has them having palpitations. This is ministry.

Today I walked the grounds of a local retreat centre with the land manager, discussing how this year's Live Nativity Scene will play out, and on December 3rd, we'll put on this pageant for over 500 guests. This too is ministry.

Whether it's starting a Messy Church this coming winter, or being our church presbytery rep, or simply listening to someone who needs a shoulder to cry on, I'm engaged in ministry.

I'm even engaged in ministry at home--making dinner for an ex-husband who's had a stressful day (I do this for him twice each week, and he does it on Saturday, when he doesn't work), or taking care of my autistic child, or laughing and praying with my two older children, or checking up on my parents. Loving our families is ministry.

So yes, I'm in ministry. But I'm not ordained, and at this time, I won't be pursuing that path. I'm too busy...

One (Baby) Step at a Time

2011-10-22T14:35:00.001-07:00

Wednesday morning, I found I just couldn't do it.

I got up a little later than usual, as I didn't have to go get Robin from his dad's or feed him breakfast, and I wasn't feeling great to begin with. I faced the bed and told myself, "Rise and shine, Ruth! Get dressed right down to lace-up shoes."

No. I couldn't do it.

"Make the bed?"

Nope. No go.

"Eat breakfast?"

Eeew!

"Okay. Baby steps here. How about a sip of water and your meds?" (I take two pills, both in the morning.

Yes. I can do that.

A little while later, I was sitting at my computer wasting time with CivIV or some such game, and I felt strong enough to get dressed.

Once dressed, of course, I had to make the bed.

Then I realized I was hungry, and headed downstairs to have my breakfast. And my morning routine was completed only about a half hour later than usual, because I was willing to take baby steps.

All too often in the past, I've looked at a task taht seemed overwhelming, felt I couldn't complete it to standard, and so didn't even start. I've got lots of novel ideas, and more than a few first (and even some second) chapters hanging around, but only one novel to which I've typed, "The End."

It seems that in order to be able to type those magical words more often, or to live in a clean house, or to balance my budget, I'm going to have to go back to taking baby steps.

Can't write a whole novel in one sitting? How about a chapter, or a paragraph, or even a single sentence?

Can't clean a whole room in one go? How about a 1 foot by 1 foot area of counter?

Can't pay a whole bill when it's due? How about paying what I can, and planning to pay the rest ASAP. (And explaining to the creditor what I'm doing...)

Very few people have huge chunks of time or energy or money to do large tasks. All we're given as mere mortals are little bits and pieces, never enough individually to do the job at hand, but if we use them instead of wasting them, the job will eventually get done.

I think there's a quote about that from a book I read somewhere:

Oh, yeah.

"The master was full of praise. 'Well done, my good and faithful servant. You have been faithful in handling this small amount, so now I will give you many more responsibilities. Let's celebrate together!'" and "To those who use well what they are given, even more will be given, and they will have an abundance. But from those who do nothing, even what little they have will be taken away." (Mt 25: 21 & 29, New Living Translation)

I'm FLYing!

2011-10-19T16:15:00.000-07:00

A good friend of mine has been urging me to check out FLYLady, a site that she claimed would help me organize my home and my life, something I've been trying to do for ages. Or at least since yesterday...

Anyhow, I have, in the recent past, made some respectable progress towards de-cluttering and organizing my house, but it's still nowhere near where I want it to be, so a week or so ago, I did follow my friend's advice, and have since become a devotee.

Not a fanatical one, mind you--as with other home organizing books I've read and sites I've visited, I still take what I think will work, adapt others that seem to need some tweaking, ignore those that aren't applicable, and leave until another time those that are too expensive or too hard to do right now.

But it isn't the actual de-cluttering and cleaning methods that keep me coming back. It's the philosophy.

FLY stand for "Finally Loving Yourself." I realized that having a messy home full of broken junk, sink overflowing with dishes and counters so cluttered I couldn't cook was a form of self-hate. I realized that if I truly loved myself, I would make an effort to clean up and cook decent meals, just as if I were a guest in my own home who I wanted to impress.

And the results?

I reorganized my dining room to be more functional before checking out the site, but it continued to develop clutter, and the kitchen still wasn't clean enough to cook a meal. But after checking out the FLYLady site...

Step One: Shine Your Sink. Which you can't do if the sink is full of dirty dishes. So I did a load of dishes. Then another load. Then another load. And I put them away once they'd dried. Then I cleared the clutter off the counter, putting the small appliances that I don't use every day (most of them) in a cupboard that's actually perfect for that purpose. A little scrubbing of counters and sink, and I had a kitchen I could use!

I've managed to do that one simple step every day for a whole week, and guess what?

I HAVEN'T EATEN OUT ONCE THIS WEEK!!!!

The caps and the bolding and the exclamation points say it all, I think. And because the kitchen is clear and I'm using the dining room to eat, I'm more conscious of moving the clutter out before it has time to accumulate into mountainous piles of crap that's mostly garbage. So I've had the ex-husband over for dinner twice this week. I cooked a crock pot full of winter veggies drenched in maple syrup and ginger (do as the recipe says, folks, and use all that ginger!) that was apparently so good the kids didn't leave me any. I made a second pot tonight, and while veggies aren't really my thing, I ate a full serving and a bit.

But the real cap of the week was Sunday. I walked into the house after church and did a quick double-take, because for a split second, I wondered if I was in the right house!

I'm continuing to work on my house--I still have the office, bathroom, upstairs storage and basement to clear out and clean up. And of course, then I'll be doing a second round of the house, paintbrush and curtains in hand.

Once all that's done, I'll truly be able to say that I've conquered my CHAOS (Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome), and I'll have a house that I truly enjoy living in and showing off!

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-10-10T09:05:00.001-07:00

It's been a rough couple of weeks in our town--I've spent a lot of time and energy supporting a friend who's had a real run of bad luck. As I explained to a couple of people, it's payback time--when I was going through my rough times, this friend and many others were there to hold me together. Now I can do it for her.

Sunday morning's sermon featured a story about a man who had journeyed to Colombia, where he saw poor villagers--the men sitting and chatting in the sunshine, smoking, the women sitting on front porches of brightly painted houses, washing dishes, peeling potatoes, nursing infants, and children swimming in a muddy river. He noted that these people didn't have a lot of things, their environment was not pristine, their food less than the best. But there was more joy in that village than he'd ever seen on the streets of any North American suburb, where kids had expensive video game systmes, where we throw out more good food than some people eat, where both men and women are fully employed.

They had joy because they were thankful for what they had. We have so much, I think, that we don't even notice it any more.

A case in point--as part of my "101 Things" project, I've been cleaning out my house. Today, I got the kids over and we cleaned out my front hall closet. I found the boots that I didn't wear last winter because they were buried under a mound of stuff. I have enough paint to cover all the walls in my house--twice! I've twice asked for paint coupons from my co-op (they supply the paint, I do the painting), and twice started and not finished the job. I found two pairs of running shoes--and I was just about to go out and buy another pair because the pair I've been wearing are worn out. I found my black dress shoes, that have been missing for over a year. Lots of brooms and mops, some good, some ready for the dump. Stuff that should be in the car (like the gas can), stuff that should be in the basement (like the paint), stuff that needed to be thrown out, and stuff that should have been given away a long time ago.

How can I be thankful for my stuff when I don't even know it's there? Or when I can't get to it?

So now, thanks to my kids and a couple of hours' worth of work, I have an organized closet.

And I'm thankful.

Guess What I'm Up to Now??

2011-09-23T06:21:00.000-07:00

So this is my first post in almost two weeks, when I'd resolved to post more regularly. Just like me, I might have thought, except...

I spent much of those two weeks thoroughly cleaning and rearranging my dining room, and considering what the rest of the house is going to look like when it's done. That means I:

Got rid of a load of garbage

Mopped the floor and washed the walls

Re-imagined a bookshelf as a pantry (my built-in pantry is too deep and dark for me to see what's inside it)

Re-imagined the pantry as storage for tools and small appliances that don't get used every day (it's a BIG pantry, after all, and perfect for this use)

Emptied out the grungy, algae-filled fish tank and cleaned it

Moved the fish tank stand to the other side of the dining room and set up a bigger tank, which I then filled with my four adult guppies and half million or so babies, as well as a pleco and a cory catfish

Cleaned off the table, and took two baskets of papers and books up to my office, as well as a few stacks of books that had been on the bookshelf

Brought the bar table with the cast iron foot upstairs (with the help of my autistic son), covered it with a nice vinyl tablecloth, and filled it with plants, all properly potted and watered

Put a nice tablecloth on the table

Washed the windows

Took down the faded posters stapled to the walls

Hung some nice pictures

Collected all my art stuff and moved it to the storage space under the fish tank

Arranged my cookbooks, gardening books, and art books on spare space in the new "pantry"

It took me just about the full two weeks because I was doing it in between living the rest of my life, and (or so it seemed) holding everyone else in my universe together. Just the usual...

But now I have a dining room that I like to eat in, plus healthy plants, plus a really nice looking fish tank, plus space to do art and the ability to find what I need in the way of art tools and materials. Add that to the fact that my living room and bedroom are organized the way I like them and occasionally have been know to revert to a "clean and tidy" state, and that's three rooms of the house that are livable. Six to go, including kitchen, entry way hallway and stairs, office, basement and bathroom...

And (surprise, surprise!) I've started a new project. Well, sort of new, anyhow. I came across a reference to doing 101 things in 1001 days, and after looking it up, decided that it might help me keep track of my progress on some of my life goals.

Now I know I started "school" back a while ago, and haven't really reported on any progress since then, but this will tie in with it, so it's not really starting something horribly new. Also, most of the 101 things I picked to be on my list were either on my immediate "to do" list, or have been on my "someday I'm gonna do this" list for a long while. Some others are quite simple and fun things that I never would have thought of doing, that don't take much time, and heck! I'm in it for the experience.

I broke my list down into sections like "Health and Fitness", "Finance", "Writing", etc.

So here's a sampler of my goals:

1) Lose 50 pounds. 1001 days is a workable length of time, and this will get me down to my goal weight. Thanks to the internet, I can develop a plan that will work for me. Related: Participate in the 200 sit-ups project, Get in the best shape of my life, Go without fast food for a month.

2) A bunch of goals that I NEED to do, but have been putting off due to finances: See a chiropractor (I recently injured my back), Get my eyes tested (last time was at least three years ago), Go to the dentist for a check up (last time was years ago--I had to have an emergency filling replacement recently, but no check up or cleaning was done).

3) Getting my finances in order, including goals for becoming stable, putting aside regular savings, donating regularly to my church, and controlling my buying habits.

4)"Go and Do" Goals: This is the largest section, but most of these are one-offs, fun things that will only take a day or two (or even a single session) to complete. But the fun things are here: Sleep in a yurt, Go kayaking, Ride in a hot air balloon, and so on. Also some cleaning goals in here (I might have given them their own section, but I didn't): Give away all my unwanted books, Get rid of 100 things, Clean and organize the house, then Paint the house.

5) Travel goals, because I stay at home too much. I'd like to Go on a Cruise, Go on a Road Trip, Visit a National Park, and Visit a New City, possibly Boston.

6) Food and Eating goals, separate from the Health goals: Make a pie on Pi day, Try a new recipe every month, and so on.

7) Art and Music goals: Learn all of the Suzuki viola repetoire, Learn to draw well enough to Draw a self-portrait, and others.

8) Writing goals: Of course! Participate in NaNo, and win this time! Also NaBloPoMo. Complete the Artist's Way, which I've started a few times and never really finished. Write a non-fiction book, Publish a novel.

9) Reading goals: Not too many of these, because I really don't need goals to motivate me to do this, unless the goal is to actually do other things instead of reading! But I'd like to read the Koran (or Qu'ran), and a book on Buddism that my son-in-law loaned to me a while back. Also, I'd like to read a book in French, and I have two candidates: Harry Potter and guess which book?

10)Photography goals: Picking up this hobby again would bring me great pleasure, especially since digital photography can be so much cheaper (due to lack of film and development costs) than old-fashioned film photography. So I've got a few goals relating to photography.

11) "Make and Build" goals: Again, a category of mostly fun, one-off stuff. The thing that's going to take the time is knitting this sweater, but what ya gotta do, ya gotta do!

12) Learning goals: Taking a Spanish class, Learning archery, Learning how to sew, Learning to Zumba dance. These, of course, tie in closely with my "Jackboot Masters of Everything."

13) Movie goals: Because what's life without a good movie attached? The primary goal here is to attend the midnight premiere of a movie, and I've got the movie all picked out. Only this time, I'm going to get at the tickets early enough to take my daughter, because ten years in purgatory for getting only one ticket for the Return of the King showing (that was all they had left), is long enough.

Living On Nothing (Almost)

2011-09-10T16:18:00.000-07:00

This week has been a real eye-opener for me. I've never had things fall together so easily with regards to finances, and considering I don't and will not be getting a job, and am not going to applying for any government assistance beyond the tax rebates and credits I get already, that's saying something.

What did happen is that due to some effort on the part of my ex, I'll now be getting a fair amount in spousal support every month so that I can stay home and care for our autistic son. Add the almost monthly payments from various levels of governments, and I'm almost surviving.

All I need to do is cut my expenses.

Right...

I started out this morning asking myself, "What can I get for free?"

That question was in part brought on by my reading this weekend of the book Free: The Future of a Radical Price, by Chris Anderson. Although it's two years out of date (and a LOT has happened in those two years, especially in the book publishing area), it still contained some thought-provoking ideas, the most disturbing (but not surprising) of which, to me, at least, was the likelihood that as consumers get used to free, they'll resent paying anything at all for electronic information, including books and music. So how's a home-based writer supposed to make money?

I'm still thinking that through, but there ARE options, and they're good ones. Merchandising, public speaking, teaching, and so forth are all ways writers make money while giving away books. And the upside of free is that (hopefully) people will actually read my stuff. Which, really, is the only point of writing. If nobody reads my stuff, or if everyone who does read it hates it, I'll just fantasize in my head and spend my time playing viola or Sims.

And really, my basic income, while not excessive, is enough. And isn't that what we pray for? Give us THIS DAY our DAILY bread. Nothing here about retirement plans, or well-stocked pantries, or even enough money in the bank to pay the bills tomorrow.

Just enough for today. Which I have, with thanks and praise to God and my ex-husband.

So I stopped thinking about what I could GET, for free or otherwise. Instead, the question becomes, "How can I reduce my costs of living to as near zero as I can get?"

For some things, I may be looking at getting stuff for free, or trading stuff I have but don't want or need for stuff I want and/or need. Or re-purposing stuff I already have but don't use or need into something a little more useful. Or simply reviewing the need or want and figuring out if I really did need or want what I think I did.

Once I changed the question, answers started appearing if by magic. I got a book from the library about home organization that's so clear and simple even I can do it. The author starts at the entry way, and says that there are five things every entry must have, including a "landing strip" for keys, wallets, purses, bills, etc. I don't have one--I use the kitchen counter, which is awkward when I need to wash dishes (which I do at least once a week...).

I also got a book about sewing simple gifts, and one of the projects is a hanging with pockets that's so simple that even I could do it. I thought about adding a valence at the top with curtain hooks facing out to hang keys on (that courtesy of a book on sewing simple curtains I read a short wile ago), and voila! I will post a picture of my "landing strip/wall art" when it's done and hanging up. And the good part is, it will cost me some time, but I have all of the fabric and notions I need to make the thing.

I needed a fruit bowl that would go with my kitchen. I have newsprint, flour and water in abundance. I'll take a picture of the paper mache bowl when it's done...

(And did I mention that of all the free things most of us have access to, the public library system has to be at the top of the list, value-wise?)

I also realized that I need to give at least as much as I get. I'm not emotionally cut out to be a freeloader, and even though I'm providing real value to society by keeping my son out of a group home, I need to do more than just line up at the food bank. I need to give back.

So I thought about what I have. My record player is broken (thanks to said autistic son), so the records are being offered up on the altar of Kijiji (actually, I just checked my email and am arranging pick up as I type this...). The old, broken washing machine went just as fast, and will be gone from the house by tomorrow at this time, hopefully. These things are of real value to someone else, and worth less than nothing to me, due to the space they take up.

In return, a few months ago, I got a six-year-old washer and dryer set from someone who had upgraded their appliances. All I had to do was talk a friend into loaning me his van to pick it up. (And when the van broke down on the 401, who did he call for a ride home? Not the taxi company, that's for sure...) I also got a good used computer, which has been re-homed at my ex's school.

This fall, I'll be looking at my free time, too. I already do some volunteer work, but there's room for a bit more, especially if I can find something my son and I can do together.

It's not quite a return to the barter economy--I'm not giving directly to the person who's giving to me, but to someone else. And there is a place for money. But the real skill is in knowing when to give and get for free, and when to pay or charge.

So Long and Thanks for All the Fish...

2011-09-09T10:20:00.000-07:00

I have an audition Sunday for orchestra. The Board of Directors, along with the Music Director, decided in the spring that all players must audition, I think as more of a placement and coaching thing than as a "you have to pass or you're out" kind of thing.

But you see, I don't know for certain, and as the least accomplished member of the orchestra (and I can say this with no pride and no exaggeration), if it so happens that it's a pass/fail, situation, I will almost certainly fail.

So I had to decide over the summer how I would handle it if that was the case. I'm a charter player in the orchestra. I haven't played every year, and I miss too many practices, but I'm one of the reasons the orchestra actually exists at all--it was founded by a friend of mine so that people like me would have a place to play. But I have to admit that the orchestra has improved (a lot!), and I haven't. Because I haven't been practicing, just playing.

And I decided that if I didn't "pass," instead of complaining, I'd ask to just play at practices, and not concerts, and re-audition after the first concert. In the meantime, I plan to practice my fingers off.

Which is where the fish come in.

My daughter is in the midst of training as a Suzuki teacher. One thing that HER first teacher did was have "fish" charts, where the fish had a hundred scales that could be coloured in, one for each scale or practice passage played. Ally made up a blank scale chart with 103 scales, and I photocopied it a bunch of times, and now I'm doing scales and practicing one particular passage in a Seitz concerto 103 times. I've been able to play that concerto movement all the way through for years, but never well. So my goal it to master that to performance level, so I've broken it down into passages to practice.

As well, I am (of course) practicing the passages of Beethoven's 7th that have been designated for the audition.

And an amazing thing has happened--after only an hour or two of concentrated work, I'm already sounding better.

20 scales down, 83 to go...

Numbers that Shock: 10,000

2011-09-05T11:03:00.000-07:00

The book jacket blurb for Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers begins:

There is a story that is usually told about extremely successful people, a story that focuses on intelligence and ambition. In Outliers Malcolm Gladwell argues that the true story of success is very different, and that if we want to understand how some people thrive, we should spend more time looking around them — at such things as their family, their birthplace, or even their birth date. The story of success is more complex — and a lot more interesting — than it initially appears.

Except that it isn't complex at all, though I did find it fascinating. It turns out that birthdate and birthplace, family culture, and yes, even intelligence and ambition, have only one function in success: to allow the would-be successful person to reach that magic number.

10,000.

Gladwell cites a study done in the early 1990's with a group of music students at the elite Academy of Music in Berlin. The school's violinists were divided into groups according to how well they played. The truly elite students had the potential to become world-class soloists. The second group was merely good — Gladwell doesn't say so, but knowing music as I do, these players would go on to become orchestral players and private teachers, much as my daughter aims to do. The third group were students who would likely not have a professional music career, but who would end up teaching in the public school system.

The students were all asked the same question: Over the course of your entire career, how many hours have you practiced?

Most of these students started playing at around five years of age. At that age, they might have practiced fifteen to thirty minutes a day, or two to three hours a week. But by age eight (the same age my daughter decided she was going to be a professional music teacher), differences started to emerge. Some students were practicing more than six hours a week by age nine, eight by age twelve, and by age fourteen, two or more hours a day. By the age of twenty, these top students were practicing, which Gladwell defines as "purposefully and single-mindedly playing their instruments with the intent to get better" for over thirty hours a week. By the age of twenty, these top performers had reached that magic number: 10,000. Ten thousand hours of purposeful practice.

In contrast, the future teachers had totalled a mere four thousand hours, and the good students about eight thousand hours.

The same result was obtained with pianists, and when Gladwell scratched the surface of successful people as diverse as famous musicians, computer geniuses, hockey players, and chess grand masters, he found the same number cropping up. Ten thousand. That's how many hours of purposeful practice it takes to become truly masterful at something. Your age, your gender, the place and era into which you were born, your economic status, your intelligence and your natural passion for an endeavour — all of these things will help you, but only insofar as they gain you the opportunity to put in those ten thousand hours of practice.

The study of music students showed something else that is of enormous interest to me. In the entire study, there were no students who were "naturals" or "geniuses," gaining status and ability without putting in the prerequisite hours of practice.

More importantly, at least for me, there were no "grinds," students who worked harder and put in more hours of practice than their peers, without gaining ability.

10,000 hours is the only thing that's standing between me and my dreams, and I can't really blame any innate lack of ability for not being a better writer/artist/musician/researcher/scientist.

Gladwell says it takes a person about ten years to accomplish this feat. But starting from zero, and working purposefully for five hours a day, the actual time needed is five years, 175 days. (And I'm not starting from zero, at least in math...)

Ten years is a more realistic number, but even then, I realize that at age 51, I'll still only be 61 (and hopefully have lots of good years left in me) by the time I acheive mastery in whatever it is that I want to master. And to be honest, I'm partway there already in anything I'd care to try my hand at.

And a short note to the naysayers: No, I'm not so unrealistic as to think that I could, for example, become a world-class basketball player. My age, my gender, and my height are all against me. But if I wanted to, I could practice and become very good indeed.

Nor am I blind to the fact that the reason many people never acheive excellence is because they're too busy trying to live and survive. I think that one of the major aims of any just world order would be to give everyone that chance, though.

But I cannot any longer avoid the striking reality that if I so choose, I can become truly an expert at something, and that if I end my life being only moderately talented, it's my own damn choice.

I think one of the truly sad things about humanity is our addiction to the ideas of "fate" and "talent." Belief that it takes "talent" to succeed has kept many, many more people from succeeding than lack of opportunity ever did. Perhaps it's just because we've been fed this bs for so long, or perhaps it's human nature to wish to avoid taking responsibility for our lives, or maybe it's just easy to pretend that our lack of will to practice is due to lack of talent and not to the choice we've made not to practice.

Because it is a choice. Not an easy one, I grant you. In talking to my daughter, I realize that the choice she made not to be a top student was indeed conscious, and not due to lack of faith in her abilites as a cellist. She wants to spend time with friends and family, she wants to pursue other interests. So she's chosen NOT to be in the top group at her school

But it was a choice.

In my case, I too have a choice. My kids are grown. I have lots of interests and activities to fill my time, but I do have a burning desire to be really good at a few things, or maybe even only one thing.

My question to myself: What will it be, and am I willing to take the hours to purposefully practice that skill or skills?

The Sounds of Silence

2011-07-19T04:01:00.000-07:00

The more observant amongst you, my gentle readers, will have noticed that I haven't posted in nearly a month. (It's okay if you didn't notice, really...)

I just wanted to pop in to explain what's going on with me, and what's not.

First, I'm not giving up the blog. (Sighs of relief all around. Thanks.)

Second, the lack of posts was quite deliberate, and not related to having no material to post. In fact, I have two posts already written but not posted in my notebook right now.

They're going to stay that way until September, because I've decided that I need to take a short sabbatical.

You may have noticed that I was bouncing around for a while in the Spring. I noticed it too, and what was happening in the blog was nothing compared to what was happening in my life. I'm at a crossroads right now, and I'm not sure which of the many branches before me I need to take. And it's painfully obvious that I can't take them all.

So I decided to take a break, and just think for a while instead of do. So I started cutting out things that were distracting me from thinking, and the internet was the first thing to go. Right now, except for this blog posts, I've cut my internet usage down to banking, email, and occasionally reading those blogs to which I subscribe.

No Absolute Write. No Stumbling. No blogging.

Just time outside, and time thinking.

And so far, I'm happy to report, it's working. I'm beginning to get some clarity about my direction, and I've actually started working on my fiction again.

I have just over a month to go with my self-imposed internet exile, after which I'll be back. See you then!

Being Poor With Flair: Rights and Responsibilities

2011-06-24T05:15:00.000-07:00

I've noticed, through my years of living, that a certain sort of person is likely to insist on his or her rights in any given situation.

Specifically, the person most likely to loudly demand their rights is also the person most likely to deny that they have responsibilities. And I've noticed that it's more often poor people who demand rights, while middle class and rich people understand and fulfil their responsibilities.

Now, I do understand that as a poor person, your rights are more likely to be overlooked by the authorities, and by other people in general.

BUT (and this is truly a huge BUT) you can do a great deal to prevent the worst of this trampling by living responsibly.

You have a responsibility first and formost to yourself. If you take care of your health and your finances, you'll be less likely to need to demand your rights to quality health care and to social services.

You have a responsibility to your spouse if you have one, and to any children you have begotten. If you fulfil those responsibilities without undue complaint, you'll be much less likely to have to defend your rights in a family law court.

You have a responsibility as a citizen to vote and to obey the laws of your city, state or province, and country. If you fulfil those responsibilities, you'll be less likely to need to defend your rights in a court of law.

You have a responsibility to every other person with whom you interact to treat them with respect due them simply because they're a human being. If you do this, you'll be less likely to need to demand your right to be treated with respect in return.

You have a responsibility to your employer to do the best work you can do while you're being paid to work. If you fulfil this responsibility, you'll be less likely to need to demand your right to unemployment pay.

Note first that I said, "Less likely." Life isn't perfect, or fair, and even people who behave themselves are going to get knocked about sometimes. It happens to everybody. Get back on your feet, get moving again, and in due time you'll get over it.

But my observations have been that folks who loudly insist on their rights without doing their best to fulfil their responsibilities tend to be both poorer and unhappier. They often think that the world is conspiring against them--and usually, they're right. Because they in return are conspiring against the world.

So stop the conspiracy! I've said many times that the only person in the whole wide world that you can change is you. If you change yourself and stop demanding your rights all the time, and instead focus on your responsibilities, you'll find that bit by bit the world will come to trust you, and stop hitting you back.

Dot and the Meaning of Life

2011-06-22T15:06:00.001-07:00

I was going to write something witty and interesting and useful, but I drove to Toronto and back today, so I'm not feeling very witty or interesting or useful at all. But while stumbling around, I ran across this video:

Notice that it's only after Dot faces what's after her and does something about it that she finally can rest.

And if that doesn't say something about tackling your finances (and other problems in life), I don't know what does.

(You can find out more about Dot here. Almost makes me want to get a cell phone...)

Some Tips for Changing Your LIfe

2011-06-21T18:49:00.000-07:00

First, a question. Why are we bothering to change our lives anyway?

I can't believe that I would actually quote Ayn Rand, but here it is. Even people I disagree with will say, often on a regular basis, things that can't be argued with. She said, "You can avoid reality, but you cannot ignore the consequences of reality."

And if the reality is that you need to change your money-handling habits, you'll be suffering the consequences unless and until you change. To put it another way, if we continue to do what we've always done, we'll continue to get what we've always gotten. Fear, and self-loathing, and out-of-control bank charges.

However, if we change, we can work towards a new life free of the fear and limitations and degredation caused by our poverty. So we're going to change.

But change is hard, and the process can take a long time, and we aren't, as a race, hard-wired for waiting.

Plus, change HURTS. Because we have to face the fact that much of what we learned from our beloved (or maybe not-so-beloved) parents about how to handle money was WRONG. We have to admit we've been making mistakes, mistakes that have cost us dearly. And as humans, it goes against the grain for us to admit we're anything less than almost perfect.

Changing your money habits is not going to be easy right from the get-go. You WILL be knocked off your feet a few times. If you can accept this, and realize that the only way you can truly fail is if you give in, give up, and go back to your old way of life, then you'll be well on your way to succeeding.

Some tips that won't make things easier, but will make it more likely you'll eventually succeed:

1) Don't give up. How many times did you fall down as a toddler when you were learning to walk? Many times, and yet unless you were born with a physical disability, you learned how to walk at some point in your first two or three years.

2) Don't expect perfection right away. When you learned how to walk, first you sat up, then you crawled (or scooted on your bum). Then you stood up, with help. A few steps towards mommy's open arms, and soon you were walking. Within days, maybe even hours, mommy couldn't keep up with you any more. Another image: airplanes navigate by approximation. They head in the general direction of their destination, and it's only as they get close that they get more exact.

3) I'm suggesting things in this blog that have worked for me. If one or more of my suggestions doesn't work for you, try something else. There's nothing "wrong" with you or how you're doing it--you're just different from me, and require different techniques to overcome your difficulties. Read up on learning and personality theory, and identify how you learn and interact with the world. We're all different, and we all approach the subject of money differently. That's okay.

4) Expect resistance. From your family, your friends and acquaintances, co-workers, banker, creditors. They wll resist not because they want and need you to stay the way you are. They will resist because we humans instinctively shy away from big changes. And if one part of an equation (in this case, you) changes, then in order to maintain equilibrium, all of the other parts (them) have to change as well.

Here we have a very important learning: You cannot directly change anything or anyone other than yourself. You cannot change your spouse, your children, your elected officials, your community, your country, the world. You can only ever change you.

But if you change yourself, everything and everyone you have contact with will have to change with you.

Perservere. Make a new, happier life for yourself. You deserve it, and so does everyone else who will choose to remain in your life.

Being Poor With Flair: Taking Responsibility for Your Bank Account

2011-06-20T10:46:00.000-07:00

I'll be covering each of the 5 points raised in the Cracked article by John Cheese at some point over the next few weeks. Since it's "responsibility week" (I've decided to do theme weeks on this project), I thought I'd address the author's first point.

Now first off, each of his points is, in its own way, absolutely correct. I don't disagree with a single thing he's said in the article. However, there are coping strategies that can be learned to deal with the drawbacks of being poor, and that's what I'm going to blog about.

So, the bank is out to get your money.

Of course it's out to get your money. That's what "profit" is--the differences between what the customer pays for services and what the service provider has to pay to provide them. It's the capitalist way, and if it weren't for profit, there wouldn't be any banks, or stores, or farms or ... Well, pretty much anything. We'd be doing every thing ourselves, and we'd all be poor.

Now, we need to look at just exactly what this $35 (or $40 if you use my bank) fee is. It really isn't a charge for you to use your own money. (Not that there aren't such charges. It's just that this isn't one of them.) What it's called by my bank is an Insufficient Funds Fee, or NSF fee. The bank is charging you because you did not have any money to use, and you tried to use it anyway.

Let me be quite clear on this one: It's entirely your fault, unless the bank has made a calculation error or one of your creditors took out money when they shouldn't have. In my experience, this rarely happens. Mostly, it's me losing track of what needs to be in the bank at any given time in order for the debits not to bounce back and bitch-slap me in the face.

The good news: Because it's our fault, we can fix it. And without too much trouble really.

Most advisors will tell you that the way to stop this sort of nonsense from happening is to have a "cushion" of one to three months expenses in the bank. When you've stopped rolling around on the floor and crying or laughing (whichever you prefer), I'll tell you a few steps that will come close to eliminating the problem once and for all, and are not entirely unrealistic for someone living paycheque to paycheque.

First, get yourself a calendar from the dollar store, or print one off on your computer. The calendar should have one page per month (so you can see the whole month at a glance), and squares that are big enough to write in.

Write in all automatic monthly or weekly or bi-weekly payments, and put a red "P" or whatever on each payday. Also write in any post-dated cheques you've written (not that you SHOULD write post-dated cheques, because apparently in Canada at least, they're against the law, but again, we're living in the real world here...). Also any other cheques you've written, especially to someone who's notoriously bad at cashing them. (But for those guys, I'd try to arrange paying in cash, first.)

That way, you're not relying solely on your memory to remind you that hydro comes out on the fifteenth and that collection agency payment comes out on the first Friday of the month.

Second, get a bank account where you can check your balance on line. Check the balance daily, preferrably before you leave home for the first time that day.

If you can't do that, be very, very meticulous about keeping track of cheques and debits and automatic payments and cash withdrawls and bank fees and...

Personally, if I didn't have online access to my bank account, I'd switch banks. It's not worth the headache.

Third, once you've checked your balance for the day, subtract from it any payments scheduled to come out before payday, and any cheques you've written. That's the amount you have to play with.

If you can, take that money out in cash, put it in your wallet, and pay cash for everything. Leave the debit card, and especially the chequebook, at home.

Yes, I know Mr. Cheese said that some businesses no longer take cash, but the last time I checked, those businesses did not include variety stores, fast food places, or gas bars.

I would only use my debit card if a) you are really good at basic math, and b) you have a really good memory. (Since both of these skills are incredibly useful, and since they can be learned by pretty much everyone, I'll cover them in future posts, but for now, use cash.)

If, at the beginning of the day, you do the math and the balance is negative, you have two choices:

a) Borrow enough money to cover the payments, plus maybe a little extra if you need gas or food. But remember that it is borrowed money, and don't ask for more than the bare minimum to get by until payday. Get that money into the bank right away.

Be aware if your bank has a holding period for items deposited via bank machines, or for cheque deposits. If it does, get to the bank during operating hours, and deposit the money, in cash, through a teller, who should credit it to your account that second.

Be aware that if you're depositing the money on the day the payment is supposed to come out, it may already have bounced, but it may still take a day or two for the NSF fee to show up. That's why you should be checking daily, and working a few days ahead of any bills due out.

b) The second choice (and again, it's only a choice if you're working a day or two ahead), is to call the creditor and explain your situation. Ask if they can hold the withdrawl until your next payday.

If you don't end up doing this every single month, and if you call a couple of days in advance, they're usually willing and able to do that. If you are doing it every single month, phone them up and have the payment date permanently changed to coincide with payday, if you can.

Finally, if you do make a mistake (and you will), you again have choices:

a) If you've only been hit with one fee, I'd suggest you suck it up. You made a mistake, and you'll have to pay the penalty. That's what we do with our kids, and that's what happens to us as adults. It's called "Life."

b) If you get hit with multiple NSF charges for a single mistake (e.g. You spend five dollars too much on gas. Your hydro bill bounces, and the bank deducts the NSF fee. Then, because the NSF fee put your balance down lower than even the least of your cheques and payments, every single one of them bounces, and you get hit with a new NSF charge each time), phone the bank and talk to them. Don't beg--it's demeaning and unnecessary. Simply explain the chain reaction that led to a -$200 balance from a $5 mistake, and that although you understand that you made a mistake, it shouldn't really cost you that much, and ask them to reverse all but one of the NSF charges.

Remember that the person you're talking to was not responsible for the charges. Don't argue, swear, yell, cry or beg. The charges are automatically applied by a computer that has no forgiveness built into its programming. Fortunately, human beings are nicer than that.

The main key to keeping your bank account in the black is taking responsibility for what goes on, and taking prompt action to correct matters when you've made a mistake. The faster you deal with problems, the smaller they are.

Being Poor With Flair: The First Step

2011-06-19T12:54:00.000-07:00

And the first thing you have to do as a poor person (or a rich one, for that matter) in order to truly enjoy and get the most out of life is...

Grow up!

Okay, so maybe that's a bit harsh, since I assume that most of you really are adults, both in age and in maturity. However, each of us has some areas of growing to do, and I learned (usually the hard way) that if you're poor, and if you want to enjoy life despite being poor, and even more so if you want to escape the maze of poverty, you need to really put some effort into the process of self improvement.

I've learned over the last couple of decades that despite the fact that many of my woes were caused by the actions or inactions of outside persons or forces, and despite the fact that there were and are lots and lots of people and organizations out there who want to help me, there is only one person in the entire universe who has the power to change my life for the better.

And that person is me.

I have to take responsibility for my own life and my own problems, no matter how or by whom they were caused.

I've known, and still know, a lot of poor people in my life. Those who are most unhappy with their situation and most stuck are those who spend their days blaming others for their predicaments. Instead of acting to make a better future for themselves, they react to negative situations without thinking, often going from one disaster to a worse one.

I'm disabled. My brother hacked my bank account and stole all my money. The company I worked for folded and there are no other jobs around here that pay enough to support me in the lifestyle I'm accustomed to living. I lost a bundle on the stock market when it crashed. My wife took the kids, the house, and half my paycheque...

You get the drift. There are countless ways the world knocks you down. You get hit by a car, and while you stumble around dazed, a freight train comes out of nowhere and flattens you. Life really isn't fair!

No, life isn't fair. It never has been, and never will be. So the first step in growing up and becoming an adult is accepting that fact, and learning to stop moaning about it.

Step two is realizing, deep down in your gut, that no one, absolutlely no one else on earth (except for God, if you believe in God), cares more about your future than you do. If you won't do at least some of the work to help yourself, no one, not even God, can help you.

There's a joke about this: A woman (we'll call her Ruth) prayed to God daily that she would win the lottery. "God," she prayed, "I really need this money to pay of my student loans and my kids' student loans and my husband's credit cards and to help my daughter go to graduate school and to set up a trust fund for my disabled son."

Day after day, Ruth prayed earnestly to God.

Finally, she heard the voice of God replying to her earnest prayers.

"Ruth," God said. "Meet me halfway on this, will you? Go out and buy a ticket!"

Resolving to take responsibility for your life and to act on your own behalf after thinking through the alternatives is like buying a lottery ticket, with one very big difference.

The difference is that instead of having almost zero chance of winning, your chance of winning is 100%.

So go look in the mirror, and say to yourself, "Self, it doesn't matter whose fault it was that I'm where I am now. It doesn't matter how or why my life got broken. The only thing that matters is who's going to change things, who's going to fix things. And that who is me. Starting right this minute."

A New 365 Project: Being Poor With Flair (Day 1)

2011-06-18T07:44:00.000-07:00

I stumbled upon an article on Cracked.com the other day about being poor, and after some thought, realized it could be the basis for a pretty awesome 365 project that would fit right in with the purposes of this blog. So without further ado, I bring you the first post in the "Being Poor With Flair" project.

Day 1: My Qualifications

I think it's important, when you're getting advice from someone, that you know what their qualifications are. So here are mine:

I'm poor. I've been poor for a long time--ever since I moved out of the family home on my own at 19, in fact. I've made a lot of mistakes along the way. Fortunately, I have the unusual quality of being able to learn from my mistakes. I won't say I never make the same mistake twice, but eventually, I'll change my ways and start making a different mistake.

I've been in debt up to my eyeballs--still am, in fact. I've declared bankruptcy, and am beginning to rebuild my credit rating. I have two master's degrees, and I'm employed part-time in a temporary job that has nothing to do with my degrees. For most of my working life, I've had jobs that didn't require any degrees.

I've been on welfare and unemployment, and I've worked my butt off (literally in one job) at part- and full-time employment of many sorts.

I've lived with my parents, with my husband and children, with a roommate, and by myself.

I have a disabled child.

I'm involved in church, a community orchestra, and other assorted volunteer endeavors.

As of right now, I have about fifteen dollars in the bank, and ten dollars in my wallet, and a fifty dollar grocery card.

In five minutes or so, I have to start work. Right now, my job entails working from home.

All of the above are mixed blessings and curses. I've learned a lot and had a lot of fun in my life, despite having no spare cash most of the time. I've also cried, raged, and considered suicide.

I've endured, then thrived. I'm glad now that I didn't give up, kept learning, growing, changing. Because now I can say that I doubt that I'll be poor forever, and it won't be an inheritance or a lottery win that gets me out of the hole. It will be me, and the skills I've learned along the way.

Lilac Daze

2011-05-28T10:33:00.000-07:00

I smelled them before I saw them. The peaceful, sweet, spring-is-here-despite-the-clouds-and-rain smell drew me on. I topped the rise, and the trees gave way to a meadow dotted with lilac bushes. The largest of these, royally clothed in purple splendour, was easily ten fett high and twice that in diameter. I hurried down the path twards it, not stopping until my face was buried in flowers. I inhaled peace and serenity, and the tension of the past week flowed down through my body, through my legs and toes into the ground, utterly destroyed by the drug of scent.

Lilac Daze, Crayon on Paper by Ruth Cooke
Click on image to enlarge.

I Kidnapped A Friend Yesterday

2011-05-23T11:05:00.000-07:00

...and we went for a drive.

I asked her if she wanted to go on Wednesday or Thursday, and she reviewed her schedule for the weekend and said Sunday after church would be fine. By the time it got to Sunday, of course, she was waffling, because she couldn't find her jewelry for the wedding that's taking place in a month and a half, and it might be in one of the storage units which she and her husband rented because they bought a new home but haven't sold the old one yet and so they called in a stager who told them they needed to get rid of most of their stuff, put down new carpet in the bedrooms, paint the bedrooms and the kitchen cabinets, and...

So with her permission (granted with the provisio that when we returned I'd go with her to look for her jewelry before she had a complete meltdown), I took her away from all the chaos and we went for a drive to a vacant plot of land on Lake Ontario just so that we could read and take photographs of a sign and a couple of historical plaques.

Crazy, no?

Here's the monument:

Here's the sign:

Yes, we went to the site of "Camp X," where the "Man Called Intrepid" trained spies during World War II, including a young man by the name of Ian Fleming. We chose this little jaunt because she has some family ties to Sir William Stephenson and Camp X.

As we drove, we talked. Not about church (and her job), or about all the stressors that we are labouring under at this time, but about our family history. Interesting stories of immigration, struggle, and triumph. Stories of things kids and parents have done to amuse us. We talked about our hopes for the future, too.

And a funny thing happened throughout the course of that day.

I came back from the trip with a whole lot of character traits and quirks I could put into my stories to make them funnier and more exciting to read. I gained some much-needed confidence with regards to the small business idea I'm thinking about. I also came back refreshed and ready to write daily until my novel is finished..

And we both found a measure of peace in the midst of the storms. I think the best illustration of that was her attitude when we searched the storage areas and didn't find her jewellry. "Oh, well," she said. "I guess it's just going to wait until we move in two weeks."

No panic. Just calm, rational thought that could only come after she'd taken some time away from the chaos.

In our 24/7 world, we sometimes believe that humans should be like machines--able to work constantly unless we're eating or sleeping. We praise workaholics, despite the fact that they have higher rates of heart disease and family strife. We chide ourselves when we don't work as hard as we think we should.

But we can't and shouldn't work constantly. It isn't just that constant work is bad for us physically and mentally. What it kills even more than bodies and minds is souls. We lose perspective. We're unable to solve problems because we can't think outside the box. We don't have time to try anything new. There's too much at stake if we screw up.

We need to take time, a whole day every week if we can manage, or, like this guy, a whole year in every seven. We need to do this not so that our bodies can rest, but so that our minds can rest and recharge. So that for that day, and for the rest of the week, we can think, instead of react.

It's The End of the World As We Know It...

2011-05-21T16:30:00.000-07:00

...and I feel fine!

No earthquakes. No floods. No dead bodies everywhere. And unfortunately, none of the crazies have been taken up to heaven to be with their god and leave the rest of us alone. *sigh*

And the CDC had even come out with a blog post about what to do in case of the Zombie Apocolypse. I was so looking forward to putting the plan into action.

NOT!

I'd like to say that I don't understand why so-called holy men (it's almost never a woman) predict the end of the world, but unfortunately, I do.

It's buried on the ebiblefellowship site, which has already taken down the "end of the world" prediction page. Not that I expected any less, seeing as how it didn't happen.

But they still haven't taken down this page. It's their donation page, and it was live right up to and beyond the apocolypse. Just in case they change the wording, I'll quote what was on there up until at least the time of this blog post:

Donations to EBible Fellowship are no Longer Accepted

EBible Fellowship is NO LONGER ACCEPTING DONATIONS due to the shortness of time until May 21, 2011. If you still wish to make a donation, please make it to Family Radio (see below).

For all those who have given over the years, we thank you for your faithfulness in assisting to get the Gospel out into all the world.

Donate to Family Radio

Although EBible Fellowship has no affiliation with Family Radio, we do believe them to be a Biblically based ministry used by God for the furtherance of the Gospel. Contributions can be sent to them at:

In addition, you may donate to Family Radio through their secure donation form.

That's right. Despite the fact that the end of the world was coming when they wrote this, one part of their conglomerate (which they claim isn't affiliated to the other part. Like Hell...) was and is still accepting donations. Apparently, Family Radio intended to continue even past the end of the world.

Which tells me that the perpetrators of this scam didn't believe a word they wrote. It was only a scam to get money out of ignorant god-fearing folks. Unfortunately, it worked rather well on some people. A man took out his life savings to put up billboards all over NYC, I'm told, and I read about a couple who stopped paying their mortgage and saving college funds for their three teen-aged children because they thought it wouldn't matter past today.

As far as the perpetrator is concerned, he should be charged and convicted of fraud, since it's patently clear that he lied in order to obtain money, and innocent if ignorant folks are going to suffer big time because of his duplicity. I wasn't counting too much on the world ending today, so I didn't get myself in deep water financially or anything, but I'm sure that some folks will be in torment for far longer than the five months the tribulation was supposed to last because of this idiot.

And for the victims, I have only this to say: Wise up! It's fine to be a conservative or evangelical Christian, but fundamentalist Christians who believe this sort of nonsense are the laughingstock of atheists everywhere. Get an education in science and world history and textual criticism. Start questioning authority, especially the authority of anyone who claims to know the mind of God on any matter. And be doubly suspicious if they not only have a direct line to God, but claim that God wants you to give them all your money.

I'm a Christian, and I'm passionate about my religion. I love and serve God (or at least I try to...). I genuinely believe that if a society is to function optimally, there needs to be a religious cohort present. Certainly I don't know of any society from the beginning of recorded history until now that has successfuly functioned without one.

So it makes me truly sad and angry to see folks who might have been helped and comforted by having a religious faith become passionate unbelievers because of stupid nonsense spouted by greedy and/or ignorant preachers.

“If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea." (Matthew 18:6, NIV)

ETA: I wrote this post, and had to come back to edit it, because someone on the Absolute Write forums linked to this article.

I will quote the writer:

This is what religion encourages: fear based on imaginary terrors.

One nutcase, with about ten followers, and people who don't know any better take them as representative of all religions.

If you are an atheist, please have the intelligence to realize that the overwhelming majority of religious folks are not like this, nor does most religion encourage "fear based on imaginary terrors." If you're so inclined, I give you a challenge: find a mainstream denominational church with a liberal bent and attend services for a few Sundays in a row. I'm not hoping you'll convert to Christianity if you do this, but I do hope it will educate in the matter of the wide diversity of Christian beliefs. You can also read some of my former posts on this blog, many of which are sermons I actually preached to good reception.

I have no real qualms with atheism, but fundamentalist atheism scares me as much as fundamentalist Christianity or Islam or Judaism does. And so I say the same to you as I say to the religious folks: get educated!

Are You Ready (For the Rapture)?

2011-05-20T04:33:00.000-07:00

So apparently, I won't be blogging tomorrow. Or ever again. Because it has been declared in the Bible (as interpreted by one solitary nutcase who's done this sort of thing before) that tomorrow, the rapture begins. Earthquakes. Fire. Torment for five months, then Judgement. And zombies. Lots and lots and lots of zombies, as all of the humans who have ever lived will be raised. The good folks (Or: Christians of Right Thinking) will go immediately to heaven. The bad folks will just lie there until Judgement day, five months down the line.

So I guess I'm down for five months of torment before shunted off to Hell forever.

If you've read past posts, then you know that I am a Christian. So why, you ask, would I consign myself to the damned?

Well, in the first place, I don't consider the Bible to be the "Word of God." In fact, one of the few clear statements in the Bible says quite clearly that the Bible (which didn't exist as a closed Canon until more than three hundred years after Jesus died) is who (not what) the "Word of God" is: "And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth." (John 1:14, NRSV)

So I don't consider the Bible to be the "Word of God." The Bible is neither historical nor scientific fact.

The Bible is not God's revelation to us. Rather it is the story of our search for God in a world that often does not make any sense. And if I read more of the Bible than is quoted in this article about the rapture, I come up with a far different picture of God, and of God's plan, than the end-of-the-world fanatics.

First of all, we can define that illusive thing called "love": "Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends." (I Corinthians 13:4-8a, NRSV)

This has to be one of the most beautiful things ever written. Well done, Paul!

And now, to cross-reference with some other quotes:

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him." (John 3:16-17, NRSV)

So, since I do believe in God and in Jesus Christ, maybe I won't be tormented with the unbelievers?

But there's more to consider:

"You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy. But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Matthew 5:43-48, NRSV)

Taken together, these readings give me an entirely different picture of God than the God portrayed by the proponents of the rapture. God loves us. Love seeks to heal and build up, not destroy and torment the loved one.

The problem is, of course, that the Bible was written by humans. It often says more about human temprement and longings than it says about God, and I like to think that the parts where God torments "his" enemies is more reflective of human nature than of Godly nature.

Because one thing has been abundantly clear to me for a number of years. If I live in a universe where God destroys whole cities and even the whole earth, including children and animals, because "He's" fed up with sinners; if I live in a world where God condemns half the population to be of less worth than the other half because of one supposed sin committed by one woman at the beginning of time; if I live in a world where homosexuals are created (by God, one supposes) with attraction to partners of their own gender but are consigned to Hell if they give in to such attractions, then I don't need to be condemned to Hell.

I already live there, and God is not God of the heavens and Lord of All Good, but the Devil Incarnate and evil beyond the human imagination.

Fortunately for me, my experience of God is more in line with the Biblical writers who write about God being love, rather than those who write about a God of judgement. And while I'm very human and sometimes get mad enough to wish my enemies to perdition, I'm glad that I live in a world where God is better than I am, and has infinite patience with sinners. Because I'm not perfect, and I need God's love and forgiveness just as much as anybody eles.

And in that case, I'll be back tomorrow with another post. Unless it's really sunny out, in which case I may just enjoy "rapture day" with a nice picnic in the park.

Falling Off the Wagon, Getting Back on the Horse

2011-05-19T07:24:00.000-07:00

I am, as usual, trying to make multiple changes in my life at once. To no one's surprise, I am not acheiving my goals fully in any one area. Hence the lack of blog posts for the last few days.

Other changes I'm trying to make right now:

1) I'm trying to lose weight. I've decided to take this verrrrry slowly, with the first step being that I will eat breakfast every day, and that most days it will be a healthy one. I'm finding this the easiest to keep, because now I have a "breakfast buddy." Every morning, Ally barges into my bedroom, all chipper, and tells me it's time to get up and have breakfast.

To my surprise, I'm usually ready to actually get up! Some mornings, we've had breakfast and gone for a walk, which is even better.

2) I'm trying to get back into the habit of writing every day. This is where the blog-a-thon was supposed to help. Except that one day, Blogger was down so I coulnd't blog. And the next day, we had this big concert and I was at the church from eight-thirty in the morning until eleven at night. And the next day I was too tired. And by the next day, it seemed pointless, since I'd already failed the challenge.

Except that it isn't pointless. In those two weeks of blogging every day, my followers increased four-fold (from two to eight...), and my readership also increased greatly.

So I know that it's worth the effort, and even if I miss a day or two, I need to get back on the horse and keep riding.

3) I'm trying to clean up my house. I thought Ally would be good here, and I'll admit, she has cleaned up the kitchen to the point where I can actually use it for cooking. However, she did that by dumping all the stuff that was in the kitchen that shouldn't have been there into the hallway, so now I have a mess in the hallway.

From which I learn that while having a partner can help you stay on the wagon (see #1 above), having the wrong partner can knock you off it. Furthermore, the right partner for one endeavour might not be the right partner for another endevour.

4) I'm thinking of starting a small business. After coming in second for yet another plum job (when there was only one plum to pick), I'm beginning to understand that my qualifications either aren't recent enough, or aren't exactly what employers are looking for with respect to the positions that interest me. It may well be that if I want to avoid asking, "Do you want fries with that?" for the rest of my working life, I'm going to have to pull up my sleeves and get to work for that lazy, good-for-nothing boss I see in the mirror every morning.

The good news is I have an idea that a) involves using equipment I already have or can borrow for a while, b) I can do, and c) I would truly enjoy. More later if I decide to go with it!

On to market research...

Adults Are So Stupid

2011-05-14T05:15:00.000-07:00

A fundraiser concert for victims of a fire happened last night at church. I was working hard in the church office all day, doing the regular duties needed to keep the church running as well as keeping track of the money that was coming in for the fund, photocopying signs and stickers for the envelopes and inserts for the envelopes and anything else that needed doing. I went into the office at 8:30 am and with the exception of two short breaks for lunch and supper, was there until 11 pm. So no post yesterday--I hope you'll forgive me.

It was a great time--the band was Corduroy Road, and a few years from now, when they're swimming in Grammies and Juno Awards, I'll be able to say not only, "I knew them when..." but, "They're friends of mine. I've taken singing lessons from the lead singer."

The chief songwriter in the band, who is also the father and ex-husband of some of the victims, last Sunday apparently asked his wife (the singing teacher), "I'd like to raise about five or six hundred dollars. Do you think we'll get that much?"

He didn't know our folks then as well as he knows them now. We had that much before the service let out last Sunday, and three times that much before the band even played a note.

Another church member and I had a bet--She thought we'd raise five thousand. I was more conservative and said twenty-five hundred. We were both low. It truly was an amazing night.

But one thing made me really sad.

Someone organized a silent auction as part of the evening, and some wonderful treasures were offered for sale, including a set of ten beginner cello lessons from my dearest darling Ally. No talent or cello necessary, just desire to learn to play a beautiful instrument. And you don't even have to stand up to play it!

It didn't go.

Typical was one conversation I had with a friend:

Other Person: I wonder why the cello lessons didn't sell. It was such a wonderful idea, and Ally's a great player.

Me: Why don't you buy them? Put five bucks in the pot--Ally would be delighted to teach you!

OP: Me? Play the cello? Ha!

A five-year-old can do anything. He can dance. She can sing. He can fly like superman. She can save the world.

A five-year-old can draw, paint, garden, play the cello.

An adult knows better.

We can't fly like superman or save the world. We can't really heal boo-boos by kissing them away.

And we certainly can't draw, can't dance, can't sing, can't play.

We've learned so much about living, but we've forgotten how to learn.

Adults are so stupid sometimes.

Ask And It Shall Be Given

2011-05-11T19:10:00.000-07:00

A heartwarming story out of our town today:

On May 1, a friend's children and ex-wife were left with only the clothes on their back after their apartment and belongings werre destroyed in a fire.

My friend and the band he's part of decided to hold a benefit concert at our church in order to raise funds to help out the family. The concert was announced in church, and afterwards my friend asked his wife (also a band member), "Do you think we'll raise $500?"

Well, I've been in the church office all week, and people have been almost literally throwing money at me. I go to the bathroom, come back, and find a cheque or an envelope on my desk or even on my chair. Half the incoming phone calls are asking about the concert, and, "Who can I make the cheque out to?" We had $500 by the end of the Sunday service, and it just keeps coming. We'll probably have three times that amount before the band plays a single note.

Our folks are like that. In fact, I find that most folks are like that. People don't like to give to a "general fund" where they don't know how the money's used. But tell them that the money is for a specific purpose that tugs at their heart strings, and the purse strings open up, too. The person to person connection really does matter.

This whole affair has got me asking myself: I wonder if I held a "special appeal" to help pay off my student loans, if it would work. Hmmm....

Probably not, but it's a nice dream.

At any rate, I'm looking forward to Friday. The band always puts on a good show, and I'll be with a whole bunch of generous people whom I genuinely like. Who could ask for anything more?

An Alien Conspiracy

2011-05-10T18:40:00.000-07:00

This weekend my mom and dad were visiting, and a friend of Ally's came over to visit. After a few minutes in A's company, my dad said to me, "Is it my imagination, or is she nuts too?"

That statement got me thinking. Ally has three very close friends of long standing, for twenty-somethings, that is. J and Ally have been best friends since the age of ten, and A and M apparently went through grade school together. The two pairs met and bonded in the first year of high school. They're all four of them somewhat geeky, musical and very insane. They start to get the jitters if they're separated for too long, and they get outright depressed and bitchy if the separation is longer than a week or so.

Whence the origin of these four girls?

The only explanation I can come up with is that an alien scientist took a fertilized alien egg and divided it into four semi-separate parts, which were then implanted in the wombs of four unrelated and unsuspecting human victims.

The girls find this conspiracy theory amusing, and admit that it has merit. However, J not so innocently noted that I have far too much knowledge of the plot to have been ignorant of its presence.

However it turns out, I think I've proven that aliens exist and are using humans as guinea pigs...

The Problem With This Statement...

2011-05-09T19:00:00.000-07:00

Blogging every day is really stretching my thinking muscles. I don't want my posts to be insubstantial pieces of fluff about what I had for breakfast (toast, if you really care...). At the same time, there's not a lot of time to research and write in-depth posts. And I notice that I'm jumping around quite a bit, probably because if I wrote on the same topic every single day, I'd soon exhaust it. Plus, I'd get bored pretty quickly. For those reasons, I'll probably slack off on the pace a bit when May is over. But for now, it's a good challenge for me. I'm really proud that I made it through last week without missing even Mother's Day!

Today's post comes courtesy of a statement on this site. They say:

Why do I need The Staff Recommends?

Because deciding what to read is a difficult proposition. Each year, better than 175,000 books are published, and you’re going to read what, 10? 15? 50? Books can be pricey, a real investment of money and time—you can’t afford to choose poorly. Or, you’re going on vacation and packing space is limited. Do you want to be stuck with a dud? The Staff Recommends makes sure you’ll have a dud-free reading life.

There are a few problems with that statement. Yes, there are a lot of books published every year. No, I don't have time to read them all. Then again, unless they're employing one heck of a lot of readers, neither do they. They're only reading a small percentage of the books publihsed, and even then they're probably skip reading.

And they only read books that are sent to them by publishers. And the publisher send them, hoping to get them featured. And if they are featured, the publishers pony up. It's advertising, plain and simple.

Books are expensive. That much is true. But I have a few weapons that keep me from making "mistakes" when I purchase a book.

1) When I buy a book from a bookstore, I'll read at least a little of it in addition to the jacket blurb in order to see if it's something I'd like to read. If I can do this, I almost never end up with a "dud."

2) I find reviews on the web from fans who read books that are like the ones I read. I generally read several such reviews if I'm considering purchasing a book by an author I haven't read before. These reviews are not paid for. They're not advertising by publishers in any way, shape or form. They're from fans who have read the book and enjoyed it.

3) If I decide I'd like to read a book, unless I know absolutely that I want it on my shelf (like any book written by this author), I'll check the public library for it first. If I enjoy it enough to want to read it more than two or three times, and I have the money, I'll go and buy it.

4) I don't consider having a "dud free reading life" to be a realistic or desirable goal. Sometimes, I have to read something I don't like and analyze it in order to find out why I like what I like.

5) Last but not least, I find that while allowing someone other to myself dictate what I read does open me to a wider book selection that I might otherwise peruse, most of the "duds" I've read have been the recommendations of "experts," or alternatively wildly popular books. (DaVinci Code and Twilight come to mind...)

The moral of this little sermon is this: If you really want to avoid "dud" books altogether, don't read. If you want to widen your reading list, and are willing to take a few chances, instead of reading the recommendations of paid critics, enter your likes and dislikes into Stumble, and start looking for reviews of books on topics that interest you. I can guarantee that you'll find some good ones.

Happy Mother's Day!

2011-05-08T20:29:00.001-07:00

Mom and Dad's wedding, October 1959. I was born 10 months later...

A Few Jokes for Church Folks

2011-05-07T19:15:00.000-07:00

I've been celebrating Holy Humour Sunday all of this week (not that I'm loathe to tell a joke any time :p), and I've got a few jokes for y'all:

In a small Texas town, a bar began construction on a new building to increase their business. The local Baptist church started a campaign to block the bar from opening with petitions and prayers. Work progressed right up till the week before opening when lightning struck the bar and it burned to the ground.

The church folks were rather smug in their outlook after that, until the bar owner sued the church on the grounds that the church was ultimately responsible for the demise of his building, either through direct or indirect actions or means.

The church vehemently denied all responsibility or any connection to the building's demise in its reply to the court.

As the case made its way into court, the judge looked over the paperwork. At the hearing he commented, “I don't know how I’m going to decide this, but as it appears from the paperwork, we have a bar owner who believes in the power of prayer, and an entire church congregation that does not.”

And another:

Q: How many church members does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: Change? Change??? My grandmother paid for that light bulb!

And lastly:

A minister was walking down the street when he came upon a group of about a dozen boys, all of them between 10 and 12 years of age.

The group had surrounded a dog. Concerned lest the boys were hurting the dog, he went over and asked “What are you doing with that dog?”

One of the boys replied, “This dog is just an old neighborhood stray. We all want him, but only one of us can take him home. So we’ve decided that whichever one of us can tell the biggest lie will get to keep the dog.”

Of course, the reverend was taken aback. “You boys shouldn’t be having a contest telling lies!” he exclaimed. He then launched into a ten minute sermon against lying, beginning, “Don’t you boys know it’s a sin to lie,” and ending with, “Why, when I was your age, I never told a lie.”

There was dead silence for about a minute. Just as the reverend was beginning to think he’d gotten through to them, the smallest boy gave a deep sigh and said, “All right, give him the dog.”

Sometimes "jokes" can hurt. Sometimes they're intended to hurt. But a lot of times, a joke can help us examine a side of ourselves that would be too painful or divisive to approach any other way.

Like change within the church. Or how and why we pray. Or what really is a sin. These topics can be too heated to discuss openly, but a joke can gently nudge us to start thinking on our own, gradually freeing us to openly and intelligently discuss topics that were once taboo.

And so I leave you, dear readers, with questions raised by these jokes.

How do you feel about the changes our moder world has wrougt in our religious institutions? How and why do you pray? What do you pray for? And do you really believe God will answer you? What is sin? What is the difference (if any) between a lie and a tall tale? When is it okay to lie? (And if you've never had children, think carefully before you answer, "Never!") (If you have raised children, you'll know that, "Never!" is not the right answer, if you answer the question honestly...)

A Weekend to Be Thankful

2011-05-06T16:27:00.000-07:00

I just came back from supper with my parents at Swiss Chalet. It's not a common occurrence any more--Mom and Dad live a good three to four hour drive from where I live now, and I don't see them all that oten.

At dinner, we got talking about how a few of my close friends are going through some very difficult times, and how they don't have, and never had, any significant parental support. I hugged my mom (who was the one sitting next to me), and said to both my parents, "I'm so grateful you're my parents. You may not have done everything right, but you tried your best and you love me."

My heart swelled at that moment. I'm grateful that at fifty years of age, I still have two parents who are still married to one another. I'm especially grateful because I really wasn't expecting to be in this position at this point in my life. Both my grandfathers were dead by the time I reached sixteen, and by the time I was twenty-three, my parents were the elder generation in the family. My kids, by contrast, are twenty, twenty-two and twenty-five, and they still have three grandparents!

Dad, being Dad, used to predict his death. "I've only got twenty years left, tops. Ten years, five years..." He stopped that nonsense a few years back, when he'd outlived even his most generous predicitons. In September, God willing, he's going to be eighty, and even my optimistic self didn't expect a former smoker with high blood pressure and a history of heart disease (he's had a quadruple bypass) to live that long.

Mom, at seventy-five, is beginning to slow down. That means she's no longer chair of fifteen million committees at church and at presbytery. Instead, she's cut it down to one or two. Plus UCW. Plus choir...

I don't know how I got to be this lucky, and I don't know how long it's going to continue. Mom almost died a year and a half ago when her liver got infected, and Dad's mental condition is slowly but obviously heading downhill.

There will come a time, maybe sooner, maybe later, when I will have to face the rest of my life without parents. But this weekend, I have them both with me in the same city. Tomorrow morning, we're going to the market. Tomorrow evening (probably after a good long afternoon nap), we're going out for dinner. I'm going to enjoy my time with them, and make sure they know that they're loved and appreciated too.

Books I Almost Read

2011-05-05T19:34:00.000-07:00

I figured I'd give you an update on my reading list. I've been sort of skip reading two books this week, which is how I read when what I'm reading either doesn't grab me, or grabs me a bit too hard. The books evened out to one in each category this time around:

Catcher in the Rye is one of those books that's on every list of "must reads" that I've ever seen, so I thought I'd put it on my list for "school." But nobody told me it was about a self-centered adolescent boy who thinks he knows everything to begin with and in consequence learns very little in the course of the story. It's self-indulgent crap, or at least it would be if written as an autobiography. At least the parts I've managed to force myself to read are like that, and it sure doesn't make me want to read more. I loathe adolescent angst and self-indulgence. When my kids were that age, I told them after the first episode to cut it and skip to age 20. It didn't really work, but since my kids were pretty level-headed and outward focussed to begin with, I didn't have too much of the crap to deal with.

If I'm reluctant to live through it with my own children, whom I love, I'm not going to suffer through the angst of a fictional kid whose attitude makes me dislike him within the first paragraph. So strike that one off my list. I've got better things to do with my time, like pick lint out of my navel.

(ETA: I found this abridged version on-line a few hours after I posted. Would have saved me a couple of hours of trying to slog through the book if I'd found it last week...)

2) My Sister's Keeper, by Jodi Picoult, is an example of a book that grabs me too much for me to read front to back in one sitting. Anna is a thirteen-year-old girl who is also going through adolescent angst, but I find it easier to sympathize with a character whose angst is caused by the fact that loved or not, she's basically an object to her parents, a who was conceived solely to be a blood and marrow donor for her older sister, who has leukemia.

I've actually read, in a number of short sessions, most of the novel. And it's raised some interesting questions for me to consider. Is what Anna's parents did moral or right? Without a matching donor, their eldest daughter would have died. But a healthy child was made to undergo medical "treatment" without her consent in order to save her sister's life. Should authorities have stepped in on Anna's behalf earlier than they did? Would doctors really condone such a thing? And at what age is a child able to give informed consent? Because in the end, it's the older sister who tells Anna not to donate, indicating that the rights of both children may have been violated.

Hefty questions, and a tear-jerker of a book.

It's Working!

2011-05-04T08:27:00.000-07:00

Even in just four days, writing every day is working, both for me and my blog. I'm starting to think ahead about future posts and the direction(s) I might like this blog to take. I've also increased my modest readership, according to my stats page. Not that 13 page views a day is great or anything, but it's double what it was last week.

Today is a theme day down at the blogathon, and the theme is "My Five Favourite Writing Books." Hard, hard, hard. I have a couple of dozen books on my shelf about writing, not counting the ones on writing sermons, and they all have their good points. I also found myself wishing that the topic had been widened to include favourite writing sites online, or other resources. But then this post would be a few thousand words long, instead of a few hundred.

So, here's my list, at least for today:

1) I'd be remiss if I didn't include at least one book by Jenna Glatzer on my list. Jenna's been a friend, cheerleader and inspiration to me for the past six years. If I succeed as a writer, it will be her fault.

I chose Outwitting Writers' Block because I'm a sucker for exercises that jog me out of my usual ways of thinking, and have me look at problems from different angles.

2) Speaking of looking at things from different angles, Ariel Gore's book How to Become a Famouse Writer Before You're Dead does just that. For those of us with a wide streak of individualism, this book is a treasure. I do hope that Ariel updates sometime soon, though, because despite a copyright date of 2007, it has very little about using the internet in the book, and that avenue for publishing has exploded since then.

3) I'm a fantasy writer when I'm not writing non-fiction of various sorts, and my favourite resource by far is The Rivan Codex by David and Leigh Eddings. It's not a book about writing fantasy per se. What it does is give you all the background texts that David and Leigh wrote for their Belgariad series. It's like watching a real painter paint instead of reading a book about technique. It's both unique and valuable because of that. Even Tolkien's background books (as good as they are) aren't quite as valuable to me as The Rivan Codex, because throughout the book Eddings makes comments about how things changed in the final writing and why.

4) If Jenna was the kick that got me writing again after years of absinence, Chris Baty and Nanowrimo are the kick that got me to actually complete a second novel a couple of years back. No Plot? No Problem! is a great book for getting you out of the swamp that keeps you from putting words on the page (or screen) and back into the habit of writing daily.

5)Finally, as proof that editors aren't infallable, and that their judgements are only human, this book or one like it should be on every writer's reading list:

It will give you the courage you need to keep writing when the world seems to be telling you that your work isn't good enough and you should stop and do something easier, like build rockets.

It's Time For A Change

2011-05-03T16:22:00.000-07:00

I went. I did my duty and voted. And the candidate I voted for did not get elected, and that's okay by me. Because I know that within my riding, each person got one vote, and each of those one votes was equal to every other vote cast.

But it was apparent this morning that the ratio of one person to one vote does not hold across the country. Because sixty percent of the Canadians who cast votes yesterday voted AGAINST the Conservatives. Yet they won a majority.

Some votes, it would seem, are more equal than others. And that's just not fair, or democratic, or Canadian. We need to re-think our system of electing representatives so that it's more truly representative.

I doubt Mr. Harper will read this, but just in case he does:

Sir, you may have a majority of the seats in the House of Commons, but you are not the choice of the majority of Canadians. Please keep that in mind when you're creating policy. You DO NOT have a mandate to steamroll ultra-Conservative policies through parliament.

I don't think Elizabeth May will read this either, but just in case she does:

Congratulations! And please, over the next four years, work on a policy that includes more than just environmental issues. I'd like to see the Green Party become a truly full-fledged political party.

And to the survivors in the Liberal Party:

WE WANT JUSTIN! WE WANT JUSTIN!

(And for those Americans who don't know who I'm asking for, and to those Canadians who were hidden in a barrel during the sixties and seventies (or not born yet), I'm not talking about our girl from Stratford...)

The One Thing You Shouldn't Forget

2011-05-02T14:39:00.000-07:00

My son and his boyfriend moved into their first very own apartment yesterday. They had the mattress for the bed stored at my place for a number of months, along with various and sundry other essentials like the dishes, kitchen utinsils, table and chairs, lamps, and so forth.

Wednesday, we boogied on down to the end-of-the-month half-price sale at the Re-Store, and they bought a couch and armchair.

Saturday, they went to Ikea and bought the bed frame.

They thought they were ready to move in.

They did move in.

Today, they had to go shopping again, early in the day. Because they forgot something.

You see, you can survive in a new apartment without a bed or blankets, as long as you have a floor. You can live without food in the fridge or dishes in the cupboard--that's what Pizza Pizza is for. You can even (if you're male at least) survive for a few days with no clean clothes and no soap.

But don't, don't, don't forget the toilet paper!

The One Word Post

2011-05-01T11:14:00.000-07:00

Ha! Gotcha!

Not really a one word post, but really short and to the point. And in the end, if you only read the very last word of the post, you'll have gotten the point.

First off (and this is not the point of this post, merely information), I've joined a challenge from this blog to write one blog post per day for the month of May. My main purpose in joining the challenge is to get into the habit of writing every day, instead of defaulting automatically to Sims 3 or Sims Medieval when I get on the computer. I'd also, of course, like to attract more traffic and followers, but I figure I can only do that if I have quality posts up. Which means I have to write every day.

Anyhow, the main point of this post is this:

Democracy only works if everyone participates.

If you're Canadian, then get out of the house tomorrow and...

VOTE!!!

And that's the word for today.

Art for the Soul

2011-04-28T05:03:00.000-07:00

It looks like at least one of the three skills I learn this year will be art-related, on account of the fact that I've sort of already started.

First off, you need to know that for most of my life I've considered myself to be one of the masses who "can't draw." About twenty years ago, I ran across a book called Drawing With Children by Mona Brooks. Since at that point I had young children I was attempting to homeschool, I read through the book, and decided after reading to use the method to teach my kids to draw.

I drew along with them.

I actually (gasp!) liked what I drew. I kept drawing.

Then Real Life hit in the form of a return to university, and I stopped drawing. Forgot that I could draw.

A month or two back, I decided to rejoin a group at church that I'd been briefly part of some fifteen years ago (also before university) called "Art for the Soul." When I was first part of the group, it was a dedicated watercolour painting group. Let me tell you, I don't get along with watercolours. Not for me the washed-out look, or paint that doesn't stay where I put it! But Art for the Soul had evolved, and they welcomed me and my pens and my markers (as long as I don't use the scented ones) with open arms.

So I'm drawing again, and finally accepting that a realistic style just isn't my thing any more than watercolours are. I still aspire to learn how to draw at least semi-realistic figures, but only as a stepping stone to better looking flat style drawings that I prefer to do.

Anyhow, I'm having a ball, and spending time outside of "class" actually doing "homework." I convinced my daughter and her friend to join the group as well, and last week I dragged along my son's boyfriend. Which means that in a few short weeks, I've doubled the size of the group.

We had a woman come in and do a workshop where we painted irises on slate. I bought two slates, one for myself to paint and one for whichever of the kids wanted it--Ally took it over. We used acrylics, which I enjoyed, but the woman was old school and if she didn't like what you did, it wasn't right. She also violated my sense of possession by actually taking the brush and messing up my work a couple of times.

I put up with it because I knew she was only there for the day, and she did teach me some things about painting, but if I had a teacher like this on a regular basis, I'd give up. If this woman's methods are indicitave of how art is taught in some schools, it's no wonder most people don't draw!

In the introduction to her second book, Drawing With Older Children & Teens, Brooks tells the story of a young woman named Noel, who was three when she started instruction at her preschool. She was shy and spoke no English, and for weeks she hid in her cubby. One day, however, she felt safe enough to join the class, and from there her drawing took off.

The change didn't just affect her drawing--once she felt confident being part of the class, she bagan to interact with the other kids at the daycare even when it wasn't drawing time.

At age seven, Noel returned to her native Japan, and in high school eagerly enrolled in drawing classes. But her American-trained teacher was of the same school as our workshop leader, and Noel's confidence quickly declined, to the point that she felt she really couldn't draw. Like me, she preferred "flat style" drawing, not the more realistic shaded drawing.

She came back to the States briefly at age 15, and talked to Brooks about the problem. Brooks showed her a picture of a horse, and asked if she liked it. Noel liked it, but thought her teacher would criticize it.

Brooks told her that the painting had been done by Picasso!

There is no one "right" way to draw, any more than there is a "right" style of music or writing. There is only art, and art is interpretation of what is seen and heard, not a photocopy.

This weekend I'm up to my armpits in culture--on Saturday, the orchestra I play in has a dress rehearsal and a concert, and on Sunday, our group is having an art exhibition at church. Hopefully someone will remember to bring a camera, and I'll have pics of some of the stuff I've done to post!

Week 1 Summary, and a Question

2011-04-24T17:48:00.000-07:00

So I'm finished my first week of "school," and things are going reasonably well. I'm finished my first book and started on my second, John Shelby Spong's book Why Chirstianity Must Change or Die. I've had this book for years, but it's mostly been on the shelves of one of my two elder children, so I haven't had a chance to read it yet. I'm not expecting any big revelations--I've read some of his other work, and this seems at first glance to be more of the same. And while he wrote the book for a lay audience, I already have theological training that takes me beyond that level. But I do hope that in reading the book, new questions will arise for me to tackle during my year.

As far as some of the other "requirements" are concerned:

1) I tried setting my home page to the Wikipedia random article, as suggested. It drove me nuts within the first two days, and I switched back to Google, where it will remain. I use Google half a dozen or more times per day, and having it as one of my multitude of bookmarks instead of my home page was, to put it simply, a pain in the a$$. And far too many of the random articles that came up were one or two line "stubs" with no real substance to them.

Instead, I have Stumble, which I use for about ten minutes at a time whenever I go on the web, which is at least twice a day. While a lot of what comes up is just cute kittens, I've also read a lot of good articles that I wouldn't otherwise have read. And about half the time, I end up at least once on a random Wikipedia page. So if the point is to read things you wouldn't necessarily read, and broaden your horizons, I consider stumbling to be an acceptable substitute.

2) I can't afford a gym or health club, or a trip abroad for that matter. So, since the good weather is finally here (touch wood!), I'm going to be walking three or more times per week. Did twice this week--not so great. But I did spend Monday night doing some fairly hard physical labour helping a friend clean a really, really dirty house. So I'll call that done, and do more walking next week.

Eventually, I hope to have some kind of home gym to do weights and maybe something like yoga, but this is a start.

3) Posted more than twice on my blog, though I didn't manage yesterday. Today is the post you should have gotten yesterday. Have some exciting plans for the future of this and my other blogs, but they're only in the embryo stage at the moment.

4) I have to check out The Economist at the library. If the content is too American, I'll be looking for a Canadian equivalent. But I will be looking to subscribe to some weekly journal or other in the near future.

Now on to the choices.

Languages: I have to choose a language to learn. I'm going to choose either Spanish or French, depending on whether or not I can find some conversation partners for either language. More on this later.

Three new skills:

My list of possibilities so far includes:

A martial art
Belly dancing
Aluminum can crafts
Drawing realistically, specifically the human figure
Sewing
Swordfighting/fencing
Archery
Skydiving
Model building
Music composition
Knitting/Crochet
Fishing
Racewalking
Acting
Web Page Design
HTML coding
Arcylic Painting
Clay Sculpture
Social Networking (using Twitter/Facebook, etc.)
Making homemade organic cat food
Carpentry
Wood carving
Hunting (bow)

That's a pretty eclectic list, I know. But all of the above skills have some things in common:

a) I either have never done them before, or I have but never did them well and have forgotten how because it's been so long

b) Most of them require either materials I have on hand or can lay my hands on cheaply, and instruction available locally that isn't horribly expensive. The better options (and the ones I'm most likely to select) are free or nearly free. Some of them (bow hunting, skydiving) are expensive, but have appealed to my sense of whimsy for so long that eventually I'm going to give them a try.

c) I can believe that the options above are or will be by the end of the year within my physical and mental capabilities.

There are some ommissions to the list that others might think would be definite inclusions. I don't have learning to play a musical instrument on there. That's because I'd like to develop my viola and piano skills to a higher degree, and as soon as I'm employed, I'll be taking singing lessons again, too. That's enough of that area for now. So no instruments, and if you are tempted to suggest opera singing, well, what do you think I was doing in my lessons when I had to quit? :D

So my question to you all is: Do you have any suggestions for skills I might learn during the next year? Cheap is obviously preferred, easy not necessarily so.

Some Thoughts About Push

2011-04-20T06:45:00.000-07:00

"First thing I see when I wake up is picture of Farrakhan's face on the wall. He is against crack addicts and crackers. Crackers is the cause of everything bad. It why may father ack like he do. He has forgot he is the Original Man!" (p. 34)

Precious seems to know almost nothing about Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, except that he condemns drug abuse and "crackers" (Southern slang for Whites). Farrakhan is like a god to the abused and neglected teen: "I jus' want to lay down, listen to radio, look at picture of Farrakhan, a real man, who don't fuck his daughter, fuck children." (p. 58)

Precious is like millions of other lost souls--confused about why she is singled out for abuse and poverty in a world where it seems that everyone else has it better than she does. And she begins, as we all do in such situations, to play what I call "The Blame Game."

I has to be (and usually is) someone's fault that we're so put upon. Someone other than ourselves, that is.

So far, so good. Precious seems to recognize, on some level, that the abuse is not her fault. A father should not have sex with his daughter. Mothers should be fixing dinner for their children, not the other way around. White people have a disproportionate say in what happens to Precious, and welfare workers don't really care about her or her dreams--they only care about getting her off welfare, despite the fact that prematurely ending her literacy classes and sending her out to do menial work for a living condemns her and her children to repeat the cycle of poverty and abuse.

But along with blaming others comes the attitude that the person who caused the situation should be the one to rectify it. Of course that doesn't happen--why would the abuser change a system that works so much in his or her favour?

When that doesn't work, often what follows is a complete "renunciation" of the values of the oppressor. I put renunciation in quotes, because often what the abused person comes up with is a mirror image of the values that led to the oppression in the first place.

Such is the case with Farrakhan and his Nation of Islam: "First, the program starts with number one. That is number four. The first part of that program is that we want freedom, a full and complete freedom. The second is, we want justice. We want equal justice under the law, and we want justice applied equally to all, regardless of race or class or color. And the third is that we want equality. We want equal membership in society with the best in civilized society. If we can get that within the political, economic, social system of America, there's no need for point number four. But if we cannot get along in peace after giving America 400 years of our service and sweat and labor, then, of course, separation would be the solution to our race problem."

Let's go back to the fifties, when separation was the norm, only instead of white people having all the good stuff, black people will have it. Instead of black people being criminals by nature, more like monkeys than man, devils in the guise of humans, it's white people who are devils, criminals, and not "Original" humans, whatever that's supposed to mean.(Citations and quote here.)

It's typical fundamentalist dogma that requires little thought on the part of participants, and not much more from the leaders. It holds tremendous appeal for the masses, who have not, as a rule, been taught to think (or do) for themselves.

Precious manages to break free from this fundamentalist mind trap with the help of "Miz Rain," who teaches Precious not only to read, but to question and think. It's hard work, that questioning, that thinking. It's even harder work to pull herself free of the cycle of abuse and poverty that she's found herself in, because although she finds friends and helpers along the way, she realizes that it's Precious Jones who has to do most of the work--no-one can do it for her.

And she finds that her helpers aren't all (or even mostly) shining examples of the Perfect Black Man. Most of them are women. They're "faggits." They're hispanic. They've got rotten teeth. They're loud-mouthed and bossy. They've been abused, just like her. Some of them (gasp!) are even white.

When she accepts the imperfections in her friends, Precious can begin to accept them in herself. When she opens herself up to love from others on the margins, she can begin to break down the prejudices that enslave her more thoroughly than her mother ever did.

One of the questions I've asked myself over and over again is, "Why do people, especially people on the margins and the unchurched, turn to fundamentalist religion rather than more moderate and thoughtful religion?"

And I think Precious may have helped answer that question just a little bit. When we're hurt, we want the hurt to stop. Now! And we don't want to waste a lot of time or energy to get it to stop, because we don't have a lot of time or energy to spare. We want to box ourselves in and protect ourselves. We want to curl up into a ball and have the world go away.

But the world doesn't go away when we close our eyes and repeat the magic phrase, "There's no place like home." Instead, it just goes on hurting us.

More thoughts on this later, of course. I've only just begun to scratch the surface here. But Push was a good opening choice for my readings and thinking. I have some additions to my reading list because of issues opened up during the reading:

Freedom Writers (which I haven't read yet)
Oliver Twist (ditto, believe it or not)

My suggestions for other readings would be Alice Walker's The Color Purple, which I've read a couple of times, and her short story "The Welcome Table".

The First Book

2011-04-18T06:58:00.000-07:00

My daughter pointed out something I'd already realized--that in order to make this course of independent study equivalent to a master's degree, I'm going to have to do the thinking and the writing to go along with the reading. Otherwise, I'd just be reading a bunch of books, and how is that different from normal?

Besides, after reading the first book on my reading list, I found I wanted and needed to integrate what I've read, and I do that best through writing.

Saturday afternoon, less than one day after "enrolling" in this course, I found myself at the library, looking for books to occupy me for the next three weeks, that being the loan period. I headed over to the classics section and grabbed a bunch of fiction that looked interesting. Wandered through the non-fiction sections, pulling stuff that looked like it might fit with my course of study, or that held wisdom I'd like to accumulate.

Went home, and pretty much at random picked Sapphire's novel Push as my first read.

There's nothing terribly original in Push. I've read The Color Purple and The Outsiders, and I know about Freedom Writers. I keep up with the news.

Despite the lack of originality in the overall concept, Push deserves every single bit of praise that's been heaped on it. Because Precious, from the first page to the last, is a real, living person to the reader. Over the last few days, I've had to keep reminding myself that Push is fiction, not a real story about a real person.

Except I know that when I say that to myself, I'm telling at least a partial untruth.

There really are kids who are sexually abused, beaten, neglected, enslaved. By their parents, more often than not.

There really are kids who sit in class day after day saying nothing, learning nothing. The teachers don't help because they've got 30 other kids, most of them noisy, to draw their attention away from the quiet one. And they don't get enough help, and nurses and psychologists and teacher-librarieans are the first positions cut by budget fanatics who want to save money. No matter that somewhere down the line, we will end up paying a whole lot more...

Doctors don't report suspected abuse, because spending time investigating and writing reports and testifying in court takes time away from treating patients, and often it's unpaid time at that.

Social workers have heavy caseloads, programs are full to overflowing, and self-improvement isn't a worthy life goal in a society where money does all the talking. The only goal is to reduce the caseloads as fast as possible, and that means slotting the victim into some sort of workfare, rather than helping them realize their full potential.

And there are very few countries on earth (are there any, really?) where kid's voices are taken seriously, and where kids have the same rights as adults.

I fouund a decent study guide for Push. I'm going to take some time today and tomorrow to answer and enlarge on a few of the quesions in it. I'll post my ruminations on Wednesday.

In the meantime, I'd encourage you to read the book if you haven't already, and join me in the discussion.

I'm Going Back to School!

2011-04-16T19:38:00.000-07:00

Sort of.

I was Stumbling around the net the other day, and came across this post. I read it. Then thought about it. And realized that while I couldn't afford to do everything on the list, I could certainly afford to to anything with a $0 price tag attached, and that it would be a pretty good substitute for playing Sims. Well, some of the time, anyhow.

Now I already have two master's degrees. I don't really need any more. But that doesn't mean my education's over by a long shot. There's a lot I haven't seen, heard, done, or read. A lot of things that I'd like to do before I finally kick the bucket.

You'll find online or in bookstores literally hundreds of books that tell you what you should do or see or learn before you die (or reach the age of thirty, whichever comes first.) If you took them at their word, you'd be spending every single minute of your time watching movies or travelling to far-flung places or reading books, and you'd starve to death before two months passed, because you wouldn't have time to eat.

This list is a little different. For one thing, there's a specific time period involved. One year (though in my case, it'll take longer due to the financial aspects.)

There's a limit to what needs to be done or learned. 20 fiction books, 30 non-fiction books, 3 new skills, 1 language.

And the skills and the books and the language aren't dictated by the author of the post. You can choose what suits you best, which means that everyone's "freeform master's degree" is going to be different.

In my case, I can forsee the non-fiction reading being along the lines of religion and society, religion and science, and a few economic and business texts thrown in. The fiction I've already decided will be classics I haven't read before.

I'm hoping that I can somehow upgrade this jackboot master's programme into a doctorate, which means I'd have to have a theme of sorts, and a topic for a thesis that would develop into a book. Most likely is something to do with the place of religion in society. I wouldn't get the piece of paper, but that isn't the point. The point is, in my case, to produce some original writing on the topic that may somehow be worthy of publication, and might make some contribution to the debate on the place of religion in modern society.

Looking down the list, there are a couple of things that I've already got well covered. Basic presentation and public speaking skills, for one. Been doing presentations of many sorts, and doing them well, for decades now. I don't think toastmasters is going to be able to teach me what I don't already know. Writing well is another skill that I've already acquired. Though I may well read the suggested text, Bird by Bird, as it's available in my public library.

On to what I can start to do, right here, right now.

Blogging is the most obvious choice. I have three blogs right now. One, "Death by Trumpet", I haven't used in years. It was devoted to a particular novel I wrote for November National Novel Writing Month (NaNo) in 2009. I didn't finish posting the book, and I haven't used the blog since.

There's "Confessions of a Slob" which details my somewhat haphazard approach to cleaning and re-organizing my house.

Then there is this blog, which was originally intended to collect my pearls of wisdom on self-improvement, actually became an outlet for publishing some of my sermons (I did tell you I had some public speaking experience, didn't I?), and is now being re-purposed to become the vehicle for this experiment in self-education.

It actually won't change all that much except for one thing: I hereby commit to posting at least twice per week--once on Wednesday, and once on Saturday. And the scope will be somewhat widened--I may publish sermons, or musings on what I've read, or my answers to strange and wonderful philosophical quesions from this blog, or...

So the blog will still be, I hope about building an awesome life. It just won't all be sermons. (Don't y'all deafen me with your cheers, now!)

Music to My Ears

2010-10-05T12:22:00.000-07:00

Over at RevGalBlogPals, some questions were asked that if answered, will tell you folks a lot about me. So here are the questions and answers:

1) Do you like to sing/listen to others sing? In worship, or on your own (or not at all?)

Yes. Just yes.

2) Did you grow up with music in worship, or come to it later in life? Tell us about it, and how that has changed in your experience.

My parents didn't have the kind of professional training that my kids have, but they are musicians just the same. They've sung in the choir my whole life, and when we came home from church, our conversations would sound more like bad opera than normal conversation. We had a piano, organ, autoharp and recorder, and as technology improved, my dad would always buy the latest recording and playback equipment.

Not much has changed in fifty years. Due to time constraints, I'm not in the choir, but I take vocal and piano lessons from our Music Minister, and I sing at times. My kids sing or play during worship, too, when asked.

3) Some people find worship incomplete without music; others would just as soon not have it. Where do you fall?

I can actually appreciate both. I'd rather have no music than bad music, meaning music that espouses a theology that's diametrically opposed to what I preach and believe. What matters most to me is the spiritual energy in the sanctuary or worship space.

4) Do you prefer traditional music in worship, or contemporary? That can mean many different things!

Yes. Handel, Bach, Jim Strathdee, and so on... Contemporary or classical, doesn't really matter. I love singing the "old favourites" just as much as I love singing contemporary hymns. It's all music to my ears.

5) What's your go-to music ... when you need solace or want to express joy? A video/recording will garner bonus points!

Here's hoping the link turns out properly...

So that's my take on worship in music. I went to a seminary where the music prof stated that the prerequisite for a Master of Divinity should be a Bachelor's degree in music. One of my kids has grown up to be a professional musician, who will be graduating with that B.Mus. in the spring. The eldest is a very talented amateur, who is presently in his first year of M.Div. studies. We have more instruments in our homes and more up-to-date recording equipment than my dad does, and the collection keeps on growing.

The beat goes on, indeed!

Talking About Church With My Daughter and My Mom

2010-09-07T07:51:00.000-07:00

I had a long talk on the weekend with my mom and my daughter Allison, aged 22 years. The question was, "Why aren't more young people going to church?" It isn't that they aren't spiritual. Having worked with a number of 20-somethings over the past few years at the theatre, I know that that just isn't true. And some of the materils I read from the local Unitarian congregation got me thinking--they have fifty members, and fifteen children enrolled in their children's program, which is a much higher ratio than any mainline Christian church I've been to in a while. Why are they turning to the Unitarians, and not the churches of their parents and grandparents?

My mom and I noted that many churches are now located in "mature" areas, where few if any young people live. Yet instead of facing reality and serving the surrounging population of seniors, they'd rather moan about how the Sunday School is dwindling. Usually this is accompanied by memories of the "glory days" of the late fifties and early sixties, when the building was full to overflowing with kids.

But not only are fewer people regularly attending church as in those days, there simply aren't as many kids! Large families are not the norm anymore. Schools that were full to overflowing when I was a kid have closed their doors. The baby boom generation is not young anymore--we're now approaching senior citizen status. It provides a tremendous opportunity for the church, but not the one the church seems to be looking for.

Allison remarked that "Christianity has a bad name among 20-somethings." This was the statement we unpacked in the car on the long drive home from her grandparent's house.

First off came the expected comment about how what they read in the bible, what they learn in school and in the world, and what they see their elders actually doing are all at odds with one another. My daughter told me that she had learned the lesson that I'd taught--that the bible must be put in the context it was written in order to understand it, and was never meant to be read as literally as some Christians read it, but that most of her age-mates didn't have that advantage. I got a warm fuzzy from that--apparently, things that I've taught my kids actually stuck, because they actually listen to me and respect what I say!

We talked about how a few vocal conservative evangelical Christians are getting all the publicity. The group that wants to burn the Qur'an is getting a lot of press right now. That group contains fifty people, far less than my liberal United Church family. And most of us would disagree-some of us quite strongly-with what this group is doing. But they get the press, and we remain silent. I've heard a lot about the government reaction to this (thankfully, negative), but there seems to be silence on the part of the mainline churches. My mother asked, "Does this mean we have to make more noise?" and my daughter's immediate answer was, "Yes!"

From the environment, to gay rights, to justice for native peoples, to the authority and place of the bible, the majority of the United Church is actually in step with what most 20-somethings believe, but they don't know it because we don't tell them! We need to speak out, often and loud, in order to say, "This is what we believe, and why, and we're proud to be different!"

The second thing she told me is that our worship rituals are incomprehensible to outsiders. We stand up and sit down in random places, sing songs that have theologies that don't relate to real life. God is omnipotent, omnipresent, and always good. Viewed that way, Haitian earthquakes or flooding in Pakistan are incomprehensible. Since the flooding and the earthquakes are real and verifiable, our views of God must be skewed, they reason. Then we recite randome words like zombies--all together, but not really thinking about what we're saying or why. We need to re-think our worship, and if we decide that it's fine the way it is, we need to do a much better job of orienting new folks to the worship service. And like it or lump it, if an "old favourite" doesn't really reflect what we believe, it's time to change the words or stop singing the hymn. "Onward Christian Soldiers" is no longer in our hymn book. The omission caused much controversy, but given the current climate, I'm glad it's not in there anymore. It doesn't reflect who we are or how we want to be in the world.

I got a vision when she was talking about the incomprehensibility of our service of doing an "alien" worship service--one where the "usual" order of service wasn't followed. Sitting in a circle. Asking questions and inviting discussion instead of preaching. Singing popular songs instead of hymns. Talking in text speak, or about video games. Think on this--we want to invite 20-somethings into our midst, yet most of us don't even speak their language, and most sermons aren't addressed to their concerns. How would it feel to most regular church attendees? I've tried "alternative" services before--ones that invited participation, ones where I used Power Point or drama or storytelling. In general, they were well received, but some folks sat in the back, arms crossed, and most folks agreed that they'd only like it "once in a while." The familiar was far more comfortable, even if they got more out of the alternative. But we didn't discuss at all the concept that the familiar to us isn't familiar at all to those outside our "in-group," and constitutes a barrier.

Of course at some point during the service, we ask for money, and don't give any information about what it's for. Something about the "General Fund," whatever that is, and the "Mission and Service Fund," which sounds a bit more promising, but still really general. Think about this--would you rather pay an extra $100 in taxes, or would you rather donate $100 to the building fund of a local hospital? Even though hospitals in Canada are funded with tax and health care premiums, we'd still rather donate directly than pay extra taxes, because we know where our money is going! So why don't we tell people, on a week-by-week basis, where their money goes?

No wonder the ones that come in don't stay! They don't really understand what's going on, and no-one thinks to teach them, or they believe (often rightly) that we only want them to serve us, and not the other way around. Sometimes it seems that the only things we really want are their bodies in the pews, the contents of their wallets in the offering plates, and their kids enrolled in our Sunday Schools. In support of this statement, I read JNAC report from a United Church which will remain nameless, not to protect the guilty, but because it could be the JNAC of a vast majority of the United Churches I know. The report talked about falling attendance, and aging parishioners. It talked about how "alternative" services had been tried, but with no success, but how the congregation was willing to change if it would pull younger people in. That's hopeful, as far as it goes, but then it spent a lot of time on financials, and how it takes x number of younger givers to replace 1 older giver who has died.

The report admitted that they had only talked to members. There was no indication of any contact with the outside world whatsoever--no statement of how the congregation was involved in local mission or outreach. There was no asking, "How can we meet their needs?" Instead, the only question asked was, "How can they meet our needs?"

I've got news for you folks--the world isn't here to meet our needs. We're here to meet the world's needs. And if we want more people to join us, the first thing we have to do is let them know who we are and what we're really here for.

The Letter and the Spirit

2010-08-22T09:01:00.000-07:00

Scripture Reading: Luke 13: 10-17

Let me get one thing straight before we get started here: The leader of the synagogue was right. Jesus was breaking the law of the Sabbath, and in the synagogue in the presence of the faithful, no less!

I mean, it’s really clear--one of the few laws in human history that was actually written in stone. “Six days you shall labour and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work--you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns.” Exodus 20, verses 9 and 10. Number four on the top ten laws of all time list. Couldn’t be clearer, really, and here Jesus was, breaking the law, right after teaching about it!

When we read texts like the one from Luke that I just read, all too often we read into it two thousand years of Christian interpretations, not all of them good interpretations. We lose the sense of Jesus as a Jewish teacher teaching to Jews, and see him as a Christian, trying to convert the Jews, or condemn them.
But there were no Christians present that morning. Christianity as a movement was born at Easter, and Easter hadn’t happened yet. There were only Jews and more Jews, and Jesus here was very definitely breaking Jewish law.

Perhaps you’re now thinking, “Maybe this Jewish law was just a little too strict. Maybe it needed breaking.”

The problem with breaking a law is that it can be a slippery slope. When is it okay to speed? Or run a red light? Is it okay at three in the morning, when there are no other cars on the road and no one to see? How about at three in the afternoon, outside a public school? If you leave breaking the law up to people’s discretion, how can you trust that they won’t kill somebody? Instead of posting a speed limit, why not just post a sign that says, “School ahead. Use your discretion!”

Perhaps because what some people consider careful isn’t really careful enough?

It is the same with this law about work on the Sabbath. It’s actually a law that makes very good sense. A Sabbath day is not only a day to connect with God, but a day to recover from the rest of the week, to nurture family and other relationships, a day to meditate and focus on what needs to be done the coming week. It gives even slaves and animals some respite from toil.

As we read through the gospel according to Luke, we get the sense that everywhere Jesus went he was accosted by people wanting to be healed. It was non-stop. And this Sabbath morning, the synagogue seemed to be full of more people wanting to be healed. Jesus needed a day off.

And more than that, as the teacher that day, he was providing an example for every person present.

Preachers know about this. No matter whether the minister wants it or not, no matter even if the congregation realizes it or not, the minister is looked upon as someone who should be providing an example worth following. And most of us do our very best to be a good example.

And here Jesus was, breaking the law!

Of course the leader of the synagogue is going to take action and condemn him! Otherwise, the members of the congregation might go home thinking it’s okay to work on the Sabbath, and pretty soon, the synagogue will be empty because everyone is working. And there will be greater incidences of burn out. And families will fall apart because the parents won’t have time to nurture their relationships with their children and with one another. And people won’t have time to volunteer any more because they’re working.

And none of this is conjecture, either. It has happened, it is happening, because many people refuse to take a day off to commune with themselves, with God, and with each other.

That’s what the synagogue leader was worried about when he was condemning Jesus for healing on the Sabbath, and it’s hardly fair to label him as a villain just because he was upset about Jesus breaking the law.

Let’s fast forward two thousand or so. To last week, to be exact. Last week, a boat called the MV Sun Sea was escorted into port in Vancouver. On board were 492 Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka, and even before the refugees set foot on land the fur started flying.

Canada has an embassy in Sri Lanka, and Tamils in Sri Lanka can and do apply for immigrant or refugee status from their home country. There’s a process, and a line-up that can take years, and these 492 people decided to skip the line-up, get on a boat, and hope that somebody somewhere would take them in. They tried Malaysia and Australia before making the long voyage north to Vancouver.

They were well stocked, and the ship was fitted out, if not in a comfortable fashion, at least in a livable one. Women and children had separate quarters, sleeping and eating areas were separate, there was adequate food on board, and adequate sanitation. Only one person died on the voyage, and it appears that none of the refugees had TB or any other of the communicable diseases that are notorious for arriving on such ships.

This was a well-planned and financed escape, not a spur-of-the moment voyage into the unknown.

The fear is that the voyage was financed by the Tamil Tigers, a rebel group outlawed as a terrorist faction by both the Sri Lankan and Canadian governments. There is fear that even if the refugees aren’t Tamil Tigers, they’ll be forced to pay money to the Tigers in order to ensure the safety of their families in Canada and Sri Lanka. There is fear that these refugees are just the start of a mass exodus and that soon we’ll be over-run by boats from Sri Lanka. Indeed we know there are more boats following. One has already landed.

The refugees jumped the queue, and took matters into their own hands instead of following procedures that are in place to get them here. They also pose a risk to our society that some say is unacceptable.

But today, as two thousand years ago, there’s another side to the story. The law is not the be all and end all that it seems to be, and sometimes risk is necessary in order to ensure justice.

Because our laws today have as their basis the same underlying principle as the Ten Commandments. A few weeks ago, we heard the tale of the Good Samaritan. A lawyer asks Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“What is written in the law?” Jesus says.

“You shall love the Lord God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.”

That isn’t a Christian interpretation of the law, by the way. It’s a paraphrase of some verses in Deuteronomy and Leviticus.

Love is the basis of the law--love for God, self, and neighbour.

And what Jesus was showing and telling the congregation that Sabbath was that NO ONE lives strictly in obedience to the letter of the law. We all understand that not only is it impossible to do so, but that if we do so in the face of the distress of our neighbours, friends and families, we are keeping the letter of the law, but violating its spirit. If your donkey is thirsty, you give him a drink, Sabbath or no Sabbath, because it’s the right thing to do.

Jesus saw a woman who had been crippled for eighteen years. It’s true, she probably could have waited another day or two, except that then she’d have to stand in line with the rest of the crowd. Being crippled, she’d probably be pushed out of the way. Maybe the disciples would have overlooked her. It’s possible she might have died waiting.

Or maybe Jesus looked at her and thought, “You’ve waited long enough and suffered enough, lady. I’m going to help you right here and now.”

And wasn’t the Sabbath a great day to set her free? Won’t she keep the Sabbath much more closely now, knowing that it’s the day that she was set free!

Jesus understood that the spirit of the law was the whole reason for the law in the first place, and that if you keep to the letter of the law but destroy the spirit, then the law is worse than useless.

And so I return to our Tamil refugees.

I admit right here and now that I have a somewhat personal stake in this. With the permission of a friend of mine, I’m going to tell you a little bit more about why we should treat those refugees with compassion and respect, and allow them to stay in Canada.

I met Darzian on an internet message board for writers that I’ve frequented for many years now. Two years ago, he posted about what life was like for him as a Tamil in Sri Lanka. Like all citizens of our modern world, he had to carry ID. Unlike Canadian ID, though, Darzian’s ID didn’t say he was Sri Lankan. It said he was Tamil.

This automatically gave the police the right to stop and question him, and detain him at whim. If detained, he could have been tortured, or held without trial or bail. Darzian wrote that typical questioning might include where you live (with further questioning if you live in the “wrong” place), where you’re going and why you’re going there, what your occupation or work is…

Can you imagine our police having such power over a segment of our population?

This is part of an “emergency rule” that has been going on for years. The government tells its critics that they only want to weed out the terrorists. To do so, they also put a larger percentage of the Tamil population in internment camps, which they say they will disband as soon as they’ve determined whether or not the residents are members of the Tamil Tigers. The camps are still in place, years after they were set up.

I’m wondering about this time if anyone here is getting a sense of déjà vu? Perhaps those of you who are old enough to remember, or who have studied history, might be hearkening back to the Second World War.

And maybe you’re thinking, “Is it really THAT bad?”

In May 2009 the Sri Lankan government launched an offensive against the Tigers, and tens of thousands of innocent Tamils were slaughtered because the Tigers were using them as human shields. Neither the Tigers nor the government seemed to care that innocent people were being slaughtered.

Yes, it is that bad.

And the situation that the refugees will return to if deported to Sri Lanka is sufficiently severe enough that we need to look beyond the letter of the law to the spirit.

Darzian writes, “I hope that these individuals are not sent back because they will have no life if they are. They will be detained at the Sri Lankan airport and then tortured in jails. I can say with a fair degree of certainty that any Tamils deported from the boat will not see the light of day again.”

I might be inclined to thing that he’s over reacting, except that both our government and the United Nations have cited the Sri Lankan government for human rights abuses, and everything he says has been substantiated as far as is possible by accredited international observers. Maybe we just ought to take the time to listen to and believe my friend.

It is not the spirit or the letter of our law that we EVER deport people, even people who have been convicted of murder, back to a place where they face almost certain torture or death. And these people have not been convicted of any crime--in fact, even those calling for their deportation admit that the majority are almost certainly real refugees and not terrorists.

Just as the woman who had been crippled for eighteen years jumped the line and was healed on the Sabbath, these refugees today are asking to be let in now, instead of being processed in order.

And Jesus answered that perhaps she had a right to do so, because she‘d waited so long. Our refugees have dealt with the same sort of problems.

Darzian’s father came to Canada four years before he and his mother and sister did. He came first, as the men on the MV Sun Sea did, to get established--to find a job and a place where the family could all live together. Then the remaining family members applied to come to Canada, sponsored by Darzian’s father. It took 1 ½ years. Given the situation in Sri Lanka, that would have been 1 ½ years of constant danger. Eventually, Darzian had to get out--being male, he was possibly subjected to greater scrutiny by the authorities. In addition, he was ready to go to university, and that’s something he couldn’t do in Sri Lanka. He obtained a student visa for Malaysia, and spent one semester there.

One Friday about a year ago, Darzian’s mother got a call telling her to present her passport, her daughter’s passport, and her son’s passport at the embassy on Monday morning. Missing that deadline would have meant months more of waiting, and Darzian was in the middle of nowhere in Malaysia.

They did it. Darzian wrapped up his life in Malaysia in less than a day, and on that Monday morning they were at the embassy with their passports.

That wasn’t quite the end of the harassment, though. Even at the airport, with passports and visas in order, they were detained and questioned.

It took over 1 ½ years even though they had a family member in Canada with a job and a home who would take responsibility for them. Imagine how long it would take, how many hurdles would have to be jumped, if he hadn’t had a father already here. The refugees on that boat are desperate. They don’t want anything particularly special--they only want the chances that we’ve been given by virtue of our residence in Canada.

The ability to leave home and walk down the sidewalk without fear of being arrested for no reason. The chance to travel on public transit without fear of the vehicle exploding. (These are Darzian’s own reflections, not mine.)

In Darzian’s case, the freedom to pursue higher education, with the goal of becoming a doctor.

I invited Darzian and his family to join us here this morning, but he wrote back that he and his family were going to be enjoying another freedom many of us take for granted.

He and his family, far from being a drain on the welfare system that some critics believe refugees to be, have worked hard, and they bought a house. In Toronto. This weekend is their moving day.

When someone jumps out of line, as the crippled woman and the refugees did, our first reaction is to behave exactly as the leader of the synagogue did. “Get back in line! Obey the law!”

But if we enforce the laws without thinking about the reasons behind them, we run the risk of destroying the very things the laws were meant to protect--peace, freedom, and sanctity of person. We run the risk of condemning others to being less than God has called them to be, simply because we are afraid.

And we become, like the leader of the synagogue, a hypocrite who would condemn others for breaking a law that he himself did not keep.

For there is not a person here this morning in this sanctuary who cannot trace their presence on this continent to immigrants or refugees. Even the ancestors of the Native Canadians migrated here thousands of years ago. Human beings are not native to North America.

Each and every migrant came in search of the same thing that the refugees on board the MV Sun Sea are seeking--prosperity for themselves and their children, and freedom from oppression. We are not different from the people who came on that boat. We’ve just been here longer. It would be hypocritical of us to suggest that the Tamils go back to their own country.

An automatic appeal to the rules won’t work in this case, or in other cases where people are so desperate as to risk their lives and take a long, uncertain sea voyage rather than stay in their countries of origin. We need to look at each person as an individual in need, just as Jesus did with the crippled woman, and treat them according to that need, and not our convenience.

And we need to view the boatloads of people arriving on our shores as a wake-up call. If we have peace and freedom and prosperity here in Canada, but do nothing to aid poorer and less fortunate countries in their search for the same things, then the boats will keep coming. We can’t stop the boats by treating the migrants on the MV Sun Sea harshly or by turning them away, any more than Jesus could have stopped the line ups of desperate people needing to be healed by ignoring the crippled woman.

We can only stop the boats by making the voyage unnecessary.

Amen.

Preached at Trinity United Church, Guelph, Ontario on August 22, 2010

On Being Cheerful

2010-07-27T12:51:00.000-07:00

I went to the grocery store today to get a few things, and found what I wanted without much trouble, including a bag of apples that was reduced in price.

I chose a regular check-out with an honest-to-goodness-real-living-and-breathing cashier instead of the self check-out, because that reduced bag of apples would have meant that I'd have had to call for a cashier anyhow. And the real cashier had a grocery bagger.

So I got into line, and the cashier rung up the person ahead of me, and the bagger bagged her goods, and I got to the front of the line with my groceries, and...

The phone rang. And the cashier talked for two or three minutes with the person on the other end. And the bagger ran off to help another customer. And I was left standing, unable to do anything at all, while the cashier talked to whoever was on the other end of the phone.

Most of us, in that position, would be a tad impatient. Our self-talk would go something like, "Why did they put this lady on cash, if they're only going to take up her time talking to her on the phone." (Actual transcriptions from my thoughts, really. It was apparent she was talking to another employee about how to do something.) Or, "Where did that bagger go? How's he going to help me if he's off helping someone else?" (Another actual transcription...) Or, "Why did I choose this line-up? I always make the wrong decision when it comes to choosing line-ups!" (Yet again...)

And then I overheard another employee wish my bagger (who had returned)a happy birthday, and he cheerfully responded that he'd had his birthday off last year, and didn't need it off again. And the cashier got off the phone and apologized saying that there had been a problem with her log-in number. And I realized that I had a choice.

I could say, "Poor me! They wasted my time with their trivial matters!" and be grumpy.

Or I could choose to be cheerful, and let it slide. I chose the latter.

When the bagger had difficulty getting my groceries into the bag, it became apparent to me that while eternally cheerful, he clearly had a disability. I helped him bag, and showed him how he might manage to fit all of the heavy stuff into a bag like mine without crushing the light stuff.

And my groceries bagged, I wished him a cheerful happy birthday, and moved on. As I was leaving, an announcement came on the PA system wishing this particular employee a happy birthday. He'd gone ahead of me, because he was taking his break, and he turned around and looked right at me with a big smile on his face, and raised his hands in the air. I smiled and cheered back.

My cheerfulness made his day, I'm sure. But more importantly, it made mine.

Another Look At Miracles

2010-07-26T15:50:00.000-07:00

Scriptures: Exodus 3 & 4, Luke 5:1-11

I am the child of a scientific culture in the modern era.

When I was very young, I watched on television as a human being walked on the moon. The moon is not made of green cheese.

When I went to see the doctor, the doctor poked needles in me, vaccinating me against viruses that caused disease. Illnesses were the result of infection, or of our own body cells going haywire. Illness and disease are not caused by evil spirits, or witches’ spells, or the wrath of God.

I am the child of a scientific culture in a modern era, and despite the fact that I have read many, many fantasy novels, I do not believe in magic. In the words of Mr. Dursley, a character in the Harry Potter novels, “There is no such thing as magic!”

I am also a Christian, raised as a member of the Untied Church of Canada, by parents who have attended church their whole lives. I received a bible for Christmas when I was seven years old. I still have that bible. I still read it.

And in it, I read stories of miracles that many have interpreted in ways that to me speak of magic. “Put your nets down in deep water,” Jesus says. “But we’ve fished all night and found nothing!” Simon replies. But they do as Jesus says, and of course the fish are there--so many that they almost sink the boats!

Water into wine, loaves and fishes, blind men seeing and lame men walking, snakes and rivers of blood and who knows what else--the bible is full of stories of things that look like magic, and the scientific child in me finds it hard to believe.

So the scientists in our world, who want to believe as much as anybody else, go searching for the causes behind the so-called miracles in the bible. The “blood” in the water may have been iron deposits. One only needs to look at the scum I clear out of my tub on a regular basis to realize that’s not so far-fetched. The fish were always there--maybe Simon and friends just hadn’t put their nets in the right spot. Or maybe they swam up when Jesus was talking. The lame person might have had the capability to walk all the time, but not the courage. The blind person? Scientists have discovered a type of blindness that’s caused not by any defect in the eyes, but by a person’s mind--they believe they can’t see, and so they can’t!

And so we demystify the miracles, and Jesus becomes at once more believable, and less like God. Our scientific minds are satisfied, but spiritually, we’re left empty. The miracles aren’t miracles after all.

It was on a Sunday not too long ago, as our minister was reading the story from Luke that I just read to you, that I realized where the true miracles were in these stories, and was able to see more clearly how God has acted in them and throughout history.

Has anyone here tried to change something in their lives? Perhaps you’ve tried to give up smoking, or drinking, or eating food that’s bad for you. Perhaps you wanted to become a nicer person, and speak more kindly and gently to others.

If you’re anything like me and the other human beings I know, you’ve fallen down quite a few times. Relapsed. Sworn at someone when they cut you off on the freeway. Took that one drink at a party because everyone else was doing it. Ate at McDonald’s because you were in a hurry, and nothing else was around. You fell down.

And maybe, if you’re like me, there were times when you were about to give up. “It’s too hard!” we say. “I can’t do it alone!” And someone comes along, and encourages you with a kind word, or maybe even a harsh one. Someone cooks you dinner, or takes the drink away and gives you a soda, or sits with you while your friends go out for a smoke, and a miracle happens. You have the courage to continue your struggle. That person, sent by God, has inspired you to do what you have to do to make yourself a better person.

And that Sunday morning in church, I realized that the miracle in this story had nothing to do with the fish. The fishermen had given up, and Jesus encouraged them to cast out their nets one more time.

Such a simple thing. The fish were there, but the fishermen wouldn’t have caught them without that encouragement.

And Moses. Excuses by the dozen, that guy.

I can’t do it!

Do it!

I can’t!

You will!

Oh, all right God! You’re more stubborn than I am. I’ll do it, but you’ll see! It won’t turn out right!

And a miracle happens--inspired and upheld by God, it does turn out right. The slaves escape, the blind see, the lame walk, the fishermen catch fish, and everyone has enough to eat.

I find that view of miracles infinitely more inspiring than any belief in magic. Because I know that magic isn’t real, and closing your eyes and chanting spells won’t solve any of the world’s problems. But if you believe in miracles, if you RELY on them and on God, miracles will happen.

I have many friends I’ve met on the internet and nowhere else. I have a friend named Pam, who at the age of 22, was in a motorcycle accident, and lost her right leg. From then until just recently, she’s been in a wheelchair. At the end of this March, she walked. Since October, she’s been posting on a message board about the new computer-assisted knee she was going to get for an artificial leg. The knee uses the computer to compensate for changes in elevation automatically--one of the things our brain does without us even knowing that keeps us (usually) from falling over. But with no flesh leg, no nerve pathways between the brain and the foot, an artificial leg can’t do that. Pam’s new computer assisted knee can do that.

It’s science, not magic. It’s also a miracle--a miracle that Pam believed it could happen and maintained her optimism through good times and bad. A miracle that when the technician who was handling her case suddenly quit, an new guy came took the case who was even better than the first guy. A miracle that scientists have persevered and discovered enough about the mind and how it works, and computers and how they work, that they could put this together to help my friend Pam.

Miracles like that occur every day, in every nation. To watch men walk on the moon, or to watch the Berlin Wall finally come down, or to hear about the end of Apartheid in South Africa--these were all miracles that occurred in my lifetime.

To watch the miracle of a healthy baby being born, when the mother has all sorts of health problems, to have a child with a disability make a huge leap in development, or even just to watch the ordinary unfolding of human life--these are all miracles.

All too often, we pray for magic. We want our debts to magically disappear, our health to magically be restored, our grandchildren to magically be better behaved and more attentive to us.

Let’s pray instead for miracles. To be inspired by the living God to work towards health and wealth and happiness for ourselves and others. To find joy in our lives everyday, no matter how bad the circumstances. To bring joy to others everyday, no matter how ill and grumpy we may be.

There is no such thing as magic. But there are such things as miracles. Let us go out and receive miracles, do miracles, be miracles. In the name of the miracle who was the Christ. Amen.

Preached at various retirement homes, July 2010

Edited to add: This is what I'm talking about when I talk about miracles. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/dean_kamen_previews_a_new_prosthetic_arm.html

Choosing to Believe

2009-03-25T10:17:00.000-07:00

Preached at Alma United Church, March 22, 2009
Scripture John 3: 14-21

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have life everlasting. For God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.”

We love those words, don’t we? Many of us, most of us, maybe even all of us here this morning can recite that passage by heart. We have it embroidered and hung on our walls. We sing those words as an anthem sometimes. Some have t-shirts or bumper stickers that simply say “3:16,” and some even have it on their license plate.

We’re comfortable with verses 16 and 17. The familiar words lull us to a peaceful sleep like a mother’s lullaby.

But to those of us who believe in the love of God for every person on earth, verses 18 and following are a slap in the face, a car alarm going off outside our bedroom window just as we’re closing our eyes.

I’m not one of those people who believe that you can divine the whole meaning of scripture simply by reading the text. I personally find that I get a lot more out of the readings if I learn a bit about what was happening when the text was written, and this passage is no exception.

The Gospel According to John was written about sixty years after the death of Jesus. The Christian community by this time had grown from a few dozen vagabonds wandering about the countryside to hundreds, even thousands of ordinary people, with more choosing to join this strange cult every day. The fledgling community crossed boundaries, counting amongst its members slaves and masters, poor and rich, prisoners and jailers, Jews and Gentiles.

Because it crossed boundaries, because it didn’t fit into any of the neat categories in the Roman Empire, this new religion was perceived as a threat by Roman and Jew alike.

The Roman Empire was held together by the worship of the Roman gods and of the Emperor. Only Jews were exempt from the requirement to make sacrifices to the Emperor, because they were a pre-existing group that was likely very important to the economy of the empire.

The Christians were at first seen as a Jewish sect, but as more and more Gentiles converted, without the requirement that they also convert to Judaism, the Jewishness of the sect was called into question.

They began to attract the attention of the authorities, probably not because of what they did do, but because of what they didn’t do. They didn’t go to the temples, and they didn’t make sacrifices, which means that they didn’t buy sacrifices.

A letter from the Governor Pliney to the Emperor Trajan makes it clear, at the end, that economic considerations were at least as important as the correct form of worship. He talks of persecuting Christians, and of how many of them have repented of their “folly” and returned to the fold of Roman religious practice:

“At any rate it is certain enough that the almost deserted temples begin to be resorted to, that long disused ceremonies of religion are restored, and that fodder for victims finds a market, whereas buyers till now were very few.”

This letter was written about twenty years after our gospel passage for today was written—an eye blink in an era when things didn’t change very quickly.

John was writing to a community under siege, one where fathers tried valiantly to win their children back to the old ways, because following the new way often literally meant death on a cross, or being torn apart in the arena by wild beasts, or some other horrible death. He was encouraging them to be steadfast in their faith, and assuring them that their goodness would be rewarded, even after death, while the evil deeds of their oppressors would be punished. He was trying to keep them from taking the easy way out and converting back to the old religion.

He was probably also more than a little frustrated—after working with someone new to the faith for months, perhaps years, bringing them to the point of baptism, then having them say to the trial judge, “Well, I used to be a Christian, but it was all so much silliness. I’m not one any more.”

I don’t know about you, but I’d be depressed if I taught someone about my faith, came to care about them and see them as a brother or sister in Christ, only to have them say it was bunk when put to the final test.

But scripture is just words on paper if it only applies to something that happened two thousand years ago, and once we understand who John was talking to and what he was trying to say, we have to ask ourselves if the passage has any relevance in today’s world.

And my answer is, “Of course it does!”

We are once again a community under siege. Oh, we’re not likely to end our days in an arena with wild beasts tearing out our throats, but as we look around the church today, we can’t help but notice that the church is less full than it was this time last year, last decade, last century. We see also that the hairs on the heads of the remaining pew occupants are a little greyer (unless they’re gone altogether), and we wonder what’s happening and how can we reverse the trend.

And we increasingly live in a world where faith in a higher power of any kind is ridiculed. The new gods of science and the economy crowd out any space for things that can’t be observed in the laboratory or bought in a store.

In the not-to-distant past, atheism was a choice an individual made. But recently, it’s become a religion of sorts on its own. A new campaign by atheists has bus shelters in England plastered with posters saying, “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

It’s a disturbing trend, at least to me. Yes, I know Christianity and other religions have been advertising for centuries. We invented door-to-door sales, and if you don’t believe me, read the Gospel of Matthew. And organized Christianity hasn’t always lived up to it’s promise as God’s greatest gift to humanity.

But organized atheism disturbs me in a way that organized religion does not, because it is, at it’s very heart, based on dishonesty. Not dishonesty about what it is atheist believe in, but about the fact that atheism is, in fact, a system of belief and not of verifiable fact.

It’s true—there is probably nothing scientists can do to prove that God exists. Short of Godself appearing physically on Earth in a form that humans of every age, race and religion would recognize immediately as God, that proof will never be ours.

But it’s also true that there is nothing scientists can do that can prove that God DOES NOT exist. The belief that God does not exist is just that—belief, not knowledge. Hence the word “probably” in the ads. But people who wrote those ads only put that in to avoid criticism. They believe there is no God, but unlike Christians, who talk freely about belief as opposed to knowledge, they KNOW.

And people who KNOW, as opposed to believe, have a sordid history of trampling the rights of their fellow human beings. Hence the abuses that fundamentalist Christianity, Islam and Judaism have wreaked throughout history. If the atheists thing they’re exempt from this unsavoury human trait, they need only examine the history of Communist Russia to disabuse hemselves.

But it’s more than that. People who believe in a higher power, of whatever religion, have something to keep them in check, even if they KNOW. What happens if you believe that humanity is the highest form of life, and that once you’re gone, there’s no-one to answer to?

You bottle the second most needed element for life, water, and sell it back to the very people whose wells you drained, all the while thinking up schemes that will make that most precious commodity, air, turn a profit. You give loans to poor countries on the condition that they gut their health care and education systems, stop producing food for their own people and grow cash crops instead, for which you will, of course, pay less than the cost to produce them. You feed cow offal to other cows because its “economical.“ You sell land mines while piously denouncing them, you draft children at gunpoint and teach them to go out and kill their neighbours and friends.

A world without God is a world gone mad.

I can’t help but think that at some level this organization of atheists is the Emperor striking back at those who would step back from the world and shed light on the evil deeds being done by those whose unbelief frees them “to have fun.” We speak out against injustice and even if we imperfectly embody the justice we seek, still we hold ourselves to a higher standard than just “having fun.”

But even knowing that we are under attack, still like John we need a response to those of our friends and neighbours who once worshipped here, but do no longer.

And here I have an answer, because I’ve had to talk myself through the “Why should I believe?” a few times. Hold on to your hats, though, folks, because there’s logic involved:

The atheists say there is no God, and that we’re wasting our time on Sunday morning. The ads seem to imply that we Christians are always looking over our shoulders to see if God is watching us, and are therefore unable to enjoy life. They say that religion is a blight, and much evil has been done in the name of God.

To this, I reply:

There may indeed be no God. If there is no God, I’ve lost a few hours sleep each week. However, in return for that loss, I almost always get something in return. Hugs from a friend or twelve, lunch after the service, good music, inspiration to carry on despite the odds being stacked against me… I’m sure each person here could make their own list. It’s not a bad return on investment, even if there is no God. I’ve lost nothing.

Nor have I been unhappy. In fact, my faith has pulled me through some pretty tough times. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I might not be alive today if I didn’t believe, even at my lowest, that God loved me.

Again, even if there is no God, I’ve gained by my faith, not lost.

On the other hand, what if there IS a god? What if belief really is the gateway to life everlasting? In that case, the one who believes in God gains everything, while the one who does not believe loses everything.

I’ve seen people destroyed because they didn’t believe that anyone loved them. I buried a sister who killed herself for just that reason. Belief in a power higher than oneself is, and has always been, a matter of life and death.

I’m not a biblical literalist. There are not very many passages in the bible that I believe to be the true, unvarnished Word of God. There is always human translation, interpretation, and mis-understanding mixed in. But here, in this passage the Word of God shines through so clearly that pretty much each and every Christian can proclaim without a shred of doubt in their hearts:

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have life everlasting. For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.”

The car alarm is going off, waking us from our peaceful slumber. Those words are not a lullaby—they’re a call to action. It matters, this belief in God. We need to tell the world.

Amen.

Phelps Bashing and Other Hobbies

2009-02-08T07:52:00.000-08:00

Once again, over at AbsoluteWrite, the subject of Fred Phelps and his gang of loonies has come up. The press over there is uniformly negative, and with good reason. While some of the members over there are Conservative in their viewpoints on homosexuality, it’s possible that not a single one of the 26,000 plus members on the board agrees with his tactic of picketing military funerals to get his point across.

But I’m saddened and dismayed at the vehemence that some of the anti-Phelps crowd, both on and off the board, displays.

They hope that someone pickets his funeral, when it comes, though they disagree with picketing funerals as a general rule.

They hope that when it does come time for him to meet his maker, that he’ll be resigned straight to the depths of Hell.

I’m sure some of them, deep down, think he should be stood against a wall and shot, or stoned to death.

There’s a link on the board to an article written by a journalist about Phelps. The article was written as work-for-hire, meaning the author does not own his work. The paper he was working for does. The paper refused to publish the work, and no wonder—it was poorly written, and made such broad statements as, “Where any family counsellor will assert that a child who strangles pets has almost certainly been brutalized as well,” without so much as a single citation to back up his words. At this point, we’re not even sure who, exactly, the author is talking about—Phelps, or his son Mark.

The paper he worked for, quite rightly in my opinion, refused to publish the work. This was within the rights of the paper, and no insult to the author. Every day, companies pay writers for work that may never see publication for a variety of reasons. As long as the writer is paid the agreed-upon fee, that's their right.

So how did this document come to be published, and available on the web for all to view? The author, claiming he was owed additional compensation for his work (despite having been paid the full amount agreed to in his contract) filed suit in court. The document was appended to the suit, therefore making it a public document. Within hours, parts of the document were published in rival papers (who published it in stories about the lawsuit), and the text of the whole document, including the lawsuit, was available for public viewing on the internet.

An order was obtained by the paper to have the suit sealed so that the Clerk of the District Court could no longer make copies, but no such order was issued to anyone else who already had a copy. The damage was done, and the work was effectively published, without the permission of the copyright owner.

I personally don't believe that the author was trying to get more money out of the publisher. Two things have me convinced that the purpose in filing the suit and appending the document to the suit was to get around the strictures of the law without actually breaking it. One: the document was made public on a large scale within a span of less than 48 hours of filing the suit, and two, appending the document to the suit wasn't truly necessary. The author was filing suit for unpaid overtime, and how the document itself could aid his cause in this is a mystery to me.

I go into such detail about such shady ethics because I’m trying to show that in trying to combat one evil, those who are willing to resort to such tactics are sinking to his level, and even sometimes below it at times.

Combating hate with hate doesn’t work, friends. It only breeds more hate, and the cycle continues.

I follow a man who tried to break the cycle. This is what he says about such circumstances:

“Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.”

“Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”

“Judge not, that ye not be judged.”

“The measure you give will be the measure you get.”

Do unto others, not as they have done to you, but as you would have them do to you. The measure you give will be the measure you get.

Those are truly chilling words, if you think about it. Have you ever consigned someone to the depths of Hell because they did something so heinous it was beyond your comprehension?

Have you ever actually crossed the line and done something cruel to someone because they truly deserved it? You get what you give.

Those words aren’t idle dreaming. They’re true. So many times, I’ve given evil and had it come back on me in one way or another. And so many times, I’ve given love and also had it come back to me, in one way or another. I prefer to give love. It doesn’t end up hurting so much.

I have to say that I truly pity Fred Phelps. A life dictated by overwhelming hatred can’t possibly have that much joy in it. A life directed by the fear of the wrath of God means he has little time to contemplate the everyday wonders that show the love that God has for him. He must hate himself as much as he hates me and my lesbian and gay friends.

And so, a prayer. May God fill the hearts of Fred and all who hate with joy and peace and understanding and love.

Love will cast out fear and hate.

Only love will cast out fear and hate.

Turning the Text Upside Down

2009-02-02T06:26:00.000-08:00

Scripture: Luke 14:16-24

Yesterday I had the joy of attending the 50th Anniversary of a church in Toronto where I had been Minister of Christian Education a number of years ago. The current minister of this church was enrolled in a doctorate programme for ministry at an American university, and he invited one of his professors, an African-American preacher from Chicago, to come and preach to us.

He preached on this text, the parable of a man who gave a banquet for his friends, and ended up having his servants bring in the blind, the lame, the crippled and the poor in order to fill up the seats at the table. I’ve heard sermons on this text before—I’ve even preached a few myself. But I’ve only heard and spoken sermons on this text from my own white, Canadian middle-class background. To hear the perspective of an African-American on this text was both eye-opening and liberating for me.

His main take on the text, the whole point of his sermon, could be summed up in the phrase, “You don’t belong here. This banquet was made for others better than yourself, and you’ve just been invited to fill the tables.” Or, to paraphrase George Carlin’s “Refrigerator” sketch—“If you don’t eat it, we’re only going to throw it away.”

Coming from a liberal white Christian background, I grew up believing, and still believe, in the inherent worth of each person. Every person is created in the image of God, and every person is loved by God.

As most from my background do, I’d extrapolated that belief to a belief that we all belong at the banquet table, that we all have a right to be there.

Except I knew, deep in the depths of my heart, that the right to be there didn’t really apply to me. I know who I am—I’m a person who lusts, whose financial affairs are a mess, who separated from her husband and left her kids to his care, who is wasting her life working for a movie theatre instead of preaching the gospel as she’s been trained to do. I’m a slothful glutton who eats and sleeps too much, and runs away from hard work.

There are times when my faith in the church has faltered. There have even been times when my faith in Jesus Christ and God have faltered. Merciful Heavens, I still haven’t figured that one out, and can’t tell you for sure exactly what I believe about God!

I don’t belong at the table, and I know it, and it will always be that way, and nothing the liberal feminist theologians can say has helped me believe otherwise.

And for the first time in a very long time I felt liberated. I don’t belong at the table. Nothing I can do can change that fact and earn me the right to belong. And that’s true of the folks who worshipped with me that morning, and of everyone throughout the world who sits down to eat at the banquet that God has prepared. We all have our secret sins and passions, things that make us unworthy to be at the banquet.

It’s a gift we did not, and can not, earn. We’re at the table by grace alone. We don’t have to prove ourselves better than those who aren’t there. We don’t have to prove ourselves better than those who sit beside us. We don’t have to be perfect or anywhere close before we can go to church and sit amongst the congregation of the faithful.

Unworthy as I am, God has compelled me to come to the banquet and eat. I’ve been snatched out of the alleyway where I’ve been hiding, and dressed in my rags I’ve been seated in a chair where a rich, powerful person in beautiful clothing should be sitting instead, eating a meal that is beyond anything I’ve ever experienced.

I don’t belong there, but by God’s grace, I’m there anyhow. The only choice I have is to enjoy it, or not.

I will choose to enjoy.

Amen.

People of the "Yes!"

2009-01-19T09:13:00.000-08:00

Scripture Readings: 1 Samuel 3:1-10; John 1:43-51

Carl Allen was a “No” man. Ask him out for a drink at the local pub, and he’d almost certainly say, “No.” Ask him to a party, or to stay late at work, or to help out with a project that’s too big for one person alone, and the answer would always be the same.

“No. No, no, no, no, NO!”

And what did Carl do instead of saying, “Yes?” Why, he sat at home watching bad television and DVDs randomly selected from the video store.

His wife left him, and his friends almost gave up on him when he missed the engagement party of one of them. Late one night, he dreamed of himself lying on the sofa dead, while his friends drank his last beer and stared down at him, trying to determine if he really was dead. They had trouble doing this, because in Carl’s case, there wasn’t really all that much difference between dead and alive.

This is how the movie Yes Man starts. It’s an exaggerated version of the start of the book it’s based on, also called Yes Man. The book is the true story of a year in comedian Danny Wallace’s life, a year that begins with Danny realizing that saying, “No” has gotten him nowhere fast.

The book and the movie aren’t about particularly unusual people. There are hundreds, thousands, millions of people in the world whose life consists of waking up in the morning, eating breakfast, commuting to a job they don’t particularly enjoy but don’t hate enough to leave, doing the job, commuting home, having supper, watching television, and going to bed. Carl Allen was one of those people, and despite his seemingly glamorous career as a comedian and television producer, so was Danny Wallace.

People of the “No” have been around for a long, long time. How many women before Hannah refused to leave their sons at the temple? Refused to give them to the Lord? Our biblical records don’t tell us. They’re forgotten.

To how many people did Jesus say, “Follow me?” Only a dozen? Somehow, knowing human nature, I don’t think so. Probably more than a dozen, possibly many, many more. But the Son of Man had no home. Following him meant leaving the familiar, the supportive. It was a lot easier for them to listen politely, nod their heads, and just say, “No thanks. Not today.”

No. No, no, no, no, NO!

Saying no is safe, it’s easy, and rarely costs anything. Or so we believe. If we say no, we won’t get scammed, taken in, misled. If we say no, we’ll have the time to do the things we really want to do, even if we don’t know what they are. If we say no, we’re condemned to live life as it has always been, and die never knowing what would have happened had we said, “Yes.”

But if we do say, “Yes…” What happens then?

In real life, Danny Wallace was on a bus. He may not have felt down at that fateful moment, but he certainly must have looked it, because a man on the bus spoke to him and said, “You need to say ‘Yes’ more.” Danny thought about that, and decided to say “yes” to everything for the next year.

In the movie, Carl is dragged to a seminar on saying yes by an enthusiastic friend. Guru Terrance Bundley bullies him into making a covenant to say “yes” to everything.

Though the specifics differ, what follows in both book and movie is a funny, moving journey—the journey of a man travelling the road from death to life.

Right about now, I’m almost certain that some of you are thinking, “That’s crazy! You can’t say yes to everything! What about scammers? What about over-commitment? What about money? It doesn’t grow on trees, you know!”

If you’re asking those questions, let me ask you a couple of questions in return.

What place does “faith” have in your journey?
And how important are your concerns, really?

Let me tell you about another journey that has involved saying “yes” a lot. It’s a true story, and I know this because it’s mine.

I said “yes” on the first Tuesday of a long-ago September, when a friend asked me if I wanted to go with him to see what Army Cadets was all about. Something a bit odd, something none of my female friends would have done.

But I said “yes,” and I followed through, and that night I met a young man named Bill Cooke. And now that I think of it, that’s in keeping with what happens to both Danny (in real life) and Carl (in the movie.) We all ended up meeting that special someone— someone we wouldn’t ever have met had we stuck to our routines and our closed circle of friends.

The Saturday following that fateful Tuesday, I learned how to shoot a rifle, and crawl through the bush unseen, and camp in a tent. I went from being a child of the suburbs to being at home in the wilderness almost overnight, and it’s changed how I see and interact with the world.

A few years later I said another “yes,” this time to Bill. A few “yeses” later, and we had three kids. The eldest of those, at age five, wanted violin lessons. We were broke, and I wasn’t sure that five years of age was old enough to learn to play an instrument, and…

I said “yes,” of course. I never imagined that eighteen years later, one of my children would be on her way to being a professional musician. I certainly never dreamed that I would myself be playing in an orchestra and accompanying the famous operatic tenor Ben Heppner, which will happen on February 13th of this year. (Me? Excited? Nah… )

I said “yes,” when at the lowest point in my life, God called me to ministry. Again, no money, no job, no hope. But I had nothing to lose, so I did it. And ended up coming back to life.

I’ll freely admit that many, if not most, presbytery meetings can be boring. When I was in ministry, I’ll shamefully admit to finding reasons to say no. But one day, I didn’t put it off, and I said, “Yes.”

I went home with a flyer about a youth mission trip some members of a Waterloo church were planning. We couldn’t afford to send one child—once again, we were broke, under-employed, and now dealing with an autistic child.

We ended up sending two of our kids, and Allison and David will probably be delighted to tell you all about it some time. They came back changed for life, but it wasn’t just them who benefited. I found out, through saying yes, just how much support is out there for people who say yes. Five different church families supported us. Random strangers donated to our cause. We found resources and talents within ourselves that we didn’t know we had. We made friends, and we had a ball.

Because I said yes to a boring meeting, and yes to what followed.

It’s not just theory, and it’s not just me and Carl Allen and Danny Wallace. Saying yes to most things, even when it’s hard to do so and requires sacrifices we don’t think we can make has rewards that are beyond our imagining.

Let’s go back to those early followers of Jesus. They said, “Yes,” and they learned a new way of living.

Feed the hungry, heal the sick, clothe the naked. Don’t be afraid of death, for God is with us in life, in death, and in life beyond death.

We take those lessons for granted some days, but I’m convinced that those simple acts of saying, “Yes” to the world around them were the difference between life and death for the early church.

The people around those early Christians often abandoned those in need. With no antibiotics, no surgery, no knowledge even of what caused disease and how to prevent it, saying, “No” to helping someone who was dying was an act of common sense, not of callousness. The same might be said of giving to the poor and hungry in a world where famine and drought and want were regular visitors, even to the rich. We sometimes forget that in our little world where we too often waste as much food as we eat that it wasn’t always that way, and that giving away one’s excess food might very well cost one one’s life in lean times.

But early Christians became convinced that there was something more to living than mere life, and lost some of that fear of dying that is instinctive to us all. Not being afraid of dying meant a Christian was more likely to help a sick neighbour. The help the sick neighbour received meant the neighbour was more likely to survive. A neighbour who survived a plague due to Christian nursing was very likely to become a Christian himself. And so it went. The early Christian Church had a phenomenal growth rate, and it wasn’t due to preaching the word. It was because Christians live the word, and the word was, and is, “YES!”

Mary said yes, and Jesus was born.

James and John and Simon Peter said yes, and a church was born.

Philip and Nathaniel said yes. Paul said yes. Dorcas said yes. Timothy said yes.

And on, and on, and on, and on, right on down to you. Now the question comes. God is knocking at your door, calling you to do big, scary, fun things—things that you’ve never done before. God is that unknown person on the bus, that slick television guru, that pesky friend who drags you to a new place, that stuttering person standing up at the presbytery meeting.

You’ll listen to their calls to action, and you’ll think about it for a bit. And you’ll find excuses to say no. You don’t have the money. You don’t have the time. You don’t have the energy. You don’t have the skills or the resources. Saying, “Yes” would be a big hassle, and upset your routine.

But God is persistent. God will still knock at your door, calling your name, asking you to come out and play, to come out and live. God will keep knocking, keep asking, for the rest of your life.

How will you answer?

(Preached at Alma United Church, January 18, 2009)

Give to Us Laughter

2009-01-14T10:26:00.000-08:00

The astute amongst you will note that I haven’t updated this blog in over a week. The truth is I was, due to my monthly hormonal imbalance, feeling particularly crummy last week. I was grumpy and whiny, and had really low energy. I didn’t want to update my blog. I didn’t want to do anything, really, except hide under the covers for a few days.

But I’d promised my daughter that we’d go see a movie together when she got off classes on Thursday evening, and I’m not one to renege on my promises. So at quarter past nine, we were standing in the theatre lobby, staring at the marquee and trying to decide what movie we were going to see.

Twilight? We’d seen it opening night, and she’d since gone again with friends. She was okay with seeing it again, but I preferred to see a movie I hadn’t already seen.

Marley and Me? Not interested. I hear it’s a great movie, but you need a couple of boxes of Kleenex to get through it, and I was already feeling pretty crummy.

Bedtime Stories? She’d already seen it, and didn’t want to see it again.

Yes Man? That was the movie we really wanted to see, but it didn’t start until ten fifteen, and got out past midnight.

After debating the merits of Twilight versus Yes Man, we opted to wait out the hour and see Yes Man. I’m glad we did.

Now I’m well aware that different folks like different types of humour, but I have to say that Yes Man is definitely our type of humour. We were busting our guts laughing throughout most of the movie, and the slight twist at the end had me rolling in the aisle.

And when I got up to leave the theatre, I found that my cramps had magically disappeared, and my energy level was higher than when I’d gone in, and life was good again.

A gut-busting laugh is known to cause the brain to release endorphins, hormones that help you feel good and cope with pain. I knew this before I saw the movie. But it took that experience for me to realize that it’s not just theory, and that maybe when I’m feeling crummy, I don’t need another Advil, but instead another laugh.

So from now on, I'm going to try to put into practice this learning. If I'm feeling down or a little under the weather, I'm going to watch a funny movie, or type "funny jokes" into Google and click on some links, or read a joke book start to finish.

Anyhow, in order to finish this, I thought I’d leave you with a joke. Hopefully it will put a smile on your face and help you face whatever comes your way with fortitude and the realization that no matter how bad things may be, there is beauty and laughter in the world to help you cope:

3 friends die in a car accident and they go to an orientation in heaven. They are all asked, "When you are in your casket and friends and family are talking about you, what would you like them to say?”

The first guy says, "I would like to hear them say that I was a great doctor and a great family man."

The second guy says, "I would like to hear that I was a wonderful husband and school teacher who made a huge difference for our children."

The last guy replies, "I would like to hear them say ... Look, He's Moving!”

Count Your Many Blessings

2009-01-05T22:06:00.000-08:00

This blog is my attempt to put into some kind of order some of the things I’ve learned about trying to improve my lot in life, knowledge I’ve accumulated over the course of many years.

Currently, I’d say that I’m in a good place, with lots of room for improvement, of course. But it wasn’t always that way for me. I was a victim of bullies as a child, one whose Grade Five teacher told her mother that she’d always be a social misfit. I’ve been raped. I’ve had cancer, and now have no thyroid. My sister, who was younger than I by a scant fifteen months, killed herself. I’ve thought about committing suicide myself, and battled with depression for much of my life. My youngest son is autistic. I’ve been on welfare, and I’ve had to declare bankruptcy. I’ve been fired from a job, and quit from a couple of others about a minute and a half before I was fired again.

When I tell you what I’d do in someone else’s place to make things better, I’m probably not talking about what I’d do if I were in their place, but what I did when I was in their place. There’s a big difference here—the difference between the theoretical and the practical. I’ve had the practical lessons, and I know from experience that what I’ve done really works, at least for me.

All of this is incredibly heavy to put in a single paragraph, and I hope you’ll forgive me. I just wanted to say in the strongest way possible that I’ve been there, done that, got the tee shirt and got the Hell out. And that no matter how bad it is, life can and will get better if you work at it.

One of the things that I’ve done throughout my life that’s helped me through the tough spots is counting my blessings. I’m doing so again tonight because I just finished reading a few blog posts that Rob McCreery, a friend of mine, made over a period of about a year in his blog. Rob is an ex-pat American who’s made Australia his home over the last fifteen years, and he listed fifty things (out of a list of a hundred—come on, Rob, and finish that list, will you? :D) that he loves about his adopted homeland.

Many of the things on that list make me want to visit Australia. But I realized that no matter how crazy I am to visit that beautiful country, I’d never want to move there. Because I am Canadian, and unless forced to against my will, I will never live anywhere else.

I’m tempted to do what Rob did, and start a list of 100 things I love about my home and native land, but I think I’ll give it just this post, and see where we get.

So, what I love about Canada:

1) Socialized Medicine: Some things should not ever be “for profit,” and necessary medical care is one of them. Even the poorest Canadian does not have to go into debt to get proper pre-natal care, or have their appendix removed, or get treatment for cancer. It’s not perfect, but it’s good enough.

2) Four Seasons: Yes, I complain about snow and ice as much as the next Canadian, but when it really gets right down to it, I love snow days where everyone is home curled up in front of the television together, and the white blanket covers all the grime and the muck with a beautiful sparkling cover. And sorry Rob, but Christmas on the beach is just wrong, unless you're part of a Polar Bear swim club. I may not like the song, but I’m all for a white Christmas.

Crisp clear cold autumn days, where we go driving in the country, just looking at the leaves. Lothlorien has nothing on an Ontario hardwood bush in late September or early October.

Forest floors covered with millions upon millions of trilliums in the spring. Summers spent lying on white sand beaches, soaking up the sun. And I don’t have to travel more than a couple of hours from home to do any of this.

3) We’ve got it all: Mountains and plains, arctic tundra and rain forests, Pacific islands and Atlantic islands, rocky shores and white sand beaches, and half the world’s fresh water. Lakes, rivers, streams, waterfalls…

My father’s family was mostly originally from Austria, and after they emigrated, someone sent my father a letter from Austria (which apparently has exactly five lakes) asking, “How many lakes are there in Canada?” My grandfather sent back a map and said, “You count them!”

I think my kids and I are part fish, really. We love being around water, and my kids have swum in all five Great Lakes, even in Lake Michigan, which isn’t in Canada, but should be.

4) Hockey. I don’t play it, but I used to play road hockey, just like every other Canadian born. I've laced up a pair of skates to shoot a puck on the backyard rink. Hung out at the arena and cheered on the local team.

Actually, that’s something I’m doing rather more of these days, as one of the theatres I work in is in a shopping plaza, and right smack dab in the middle of that shopping plaza is an ice arena. How Canadian can you get?

5) Multi-culturalism. I grew up in the Greater Toronto Area, which I was once told is the city that comes closest to having a population make-up similar to that of Planet Earth. When I was growing up, it was said to have the second-largest Italian population of any city in the world, behind Rome, Italy.

Immigrants from all over the world have come to live there—so many that as someone who was not only born in the city, but has both a father and a son who were born in the city (making three generations of Torontonians) I’m not only unusual, I’m so rare as to be a member of a nearly extinct minority.

That’s not a bad thing, in my humble opinion. I can get real Chinese food, real Italian food, real food from any culture in the world, in fact, all without leaving the city. You can also experience dance, music, film and visual art from all of those cultures—truly an experience to be savoured.

6) We share the longest undefended border in the world, and we share it with one of the most powerful nations in the world.

We may make fun of our neighbours to the south (and to the north, since Alaska is also part of the US), but when push comes to shove, Americans and Canadians can still cross over the border with relative ease. That shared border peace is something both nations should celebrate, and work to preserve.

7) We have some things Boston, New York and Switzerland don’t have: We have Boston Pizza (a chain started in Edmonton that hasn’t reached Boston yet, as far as I know), New York Fries (which started off in New York, but were bought out by a couple of Canadians who knew they were on to something good), and Swiss Chalet (and I’ve been told that Switzerland doesn’t even have chickens!). It’s so totally Canadian to deny that anything good can come from Canada by giving it an American or European name, while celebrating the fact that it’s 100% Canadian!

8) We have poutine. I don’t know how Americans can possibly think themselves the monarchs of heart-attack cuisine when you can’t get poutine in the States! French fries, lovingly slathered with cheese curds and gravy—just about the most heavenly thing on earth to eat on a cold winter’s day.

9) We have two official languages. Others may disagree with me on this, but I think I’m a better person because I can read a little bit in another language, and I can only do that because I was forced to take French in school. I find it sad that while most French Canadians can, if necessary, function in both languages, most English-speaking Canadians can make no such boast.

10) We have some of the biggest and most beautiful parks in the entire world. I spend a part of every summer, if I can, in Algonquin Provincial Park. I’ve been there in all four seasons, including week-long camping trips in the depth of winter when the temperature reaches forty below zero. I’ve been to Banff National Park, and Lake Superior Provincial Park. We even have one park that’s under water—Five Fathoms National Park in the Bruce Peninsula. It’s where I learned to scuba dive.

Seeing all the provincial and national parks in Canada is a goal worthy of a lifetime—my lifetime!

I’ll stop at ten for now, so I don’t bore you to tears, but you get the idea.

When I think of Canada, it isn’t pride that fills me so much as a deep and abiding contentment with my lot in life and my place in the world. I wish for every one of you to find that contentment, whether like me you were born in the place you belong, or like Rob you have to go out and find it.

When you do find your “place,” I invite you to take pictures and write your own list. So that when you’re feeling down about your lot in life or yourself, you have something to look at that will help you realize that things aren’t always bad, and that you have a home to retreat to.

Just Past Splat

2008-12-31T12:30:00.000-08:00

It’s coming up on that time again, and I was wondering—How many of you are planning to make New Year’s resolutions this year?

How many of you are NOT planning to make New Year’s resolutions, because you’ve never made New Year’s resolutions?

And how many of you are planning to not make New Year’s resolutions, because in the past you’ve found yourself making the same resolutions over and over and over and over again, and failing every year to follow through?

If you’re in that last group, you’re not alone, I’m afraid. And the story I’m about to tell is just for you, though I’m sure the rest of you will enjoy it too.

Picture, if you will, a road. It runs through forests and fields and cities, up hill and down. Sometimes, the road is smooth and wide and paved, and other times, it’s narrow and full of potholes. We’ll call this road “life,” because that’s it’s name.

Picture a traveller, walking along this road. Her back is bent under a heavy pack. She walks slowly, for she is weary and has been on the road a long time. She uses a walking stick to help her on her way.

Our traveller reaches a crossroads. She knows that one of the paths ahead leads to a place called “A Better Life,” and the other path leads to a place called “The Same Old Same Old.”

Beside the crossroads, there is a hut, and in front of the hut an old woodcutter sits, rocking away in his rocking chair on the front porch. She asks him, “Which path leads to A Better Life?”

Without hesitation, he points down the narrower and rockier of the two paths. The traveller thanks him and heads off down the road. A short while later, the woodcutter in his chair hears a “splat,” and soon after that, our traveller comes back to him, soaked to her knees in mud.

“I thought you said this path was the right one,” she said. “Now please tell me, which path leads to a better life?”

The woodcutter is adamant. He points her down the same path again, and reassured by his firm belief, she sets off again. A short while later, the woodcutter hears an even bigger “splat!” Soon after that, the traveller returns, and this time, she’s angry—covered to her waist in ooey, gooey mud.

“Tell me the truth, Old Man!” she shouts at him. “Which way is the road to A Better Life?”

“That way,” the woodcutter says, and something in his eyes, something in his calm insistence, something makes her believe him, and off she goes.

Of course, not very long after, the woodcutter in his rocking chair hears a very loud splat. This time, when the woman returns, she’s covered in mud from head to toe, and she’s about to use that walking stick of hers for less than peaceful purposes.

“Tell me, you varmint, you! Tell me which is the road to A Better Life!” (Actually, those weren't her exact words, but I'm not allowed to say those kind of things in church.)

The woodcutter looks her in the eyes, points down the path, and says, “It’s that way, just past ‘splat.’”

Another little story, this one more literal and more personal. I’m one of those folks who makes the same New Year’s resolutions every year, and goes “splat,” usually by the end of January. If you want to know what my usual resolutions are, I always resolve to finish my novel, to lose weight, and to get my finances in order. And without fail, I go splat.

Except this year, whilst swimming around in the mud, I got a vision of what it’s going to be like when I reach that destination called “A Better Life.” Because this year, I set a huge goal, one I’ve set for myself before. But this year I reached it!

Every year for the past five, I’ve participated in a particularly mad escapade called NaNoWriMo. The goal of NaNoers, as we call ourselves, is to complete fifty thousand new words of a novel.

Before this year, I tried four times, and failed four times. It was particularly discouraging those years my kids did it with me, because they invariably beat my word count, such as it was.

But this year, I did a few things differently. I put aside the novel I’ve been working on for twenty years, and started a new one. I hooked up with friends on the internet and in real life coffee shops who egged me on. And I wrote just over fifty thousand words last month. And I finally figured out that if I can manage to get past “splat” the path continues, and it’s a fun place to travel.

It happens to us all. We set goals that we want very much to achieve, but life gets in the way. We don’t know how to do what it is we want to do. We run out of money, time, or energy. We get sick. Others who want us to stay as we are keep pulling us back into our own ways.

And we give up. Stop what we consider to be vain striving, and head down the broad, easy path to The Same Old Same Old. If God had wanted us to go down that hard path, we say to ourselves, why then, the mud and the rocks wouldn’t be there!

But would it?

We read today a prophet’s words of hope to a nation in exile. They’ve gone “splat” in the most humiliating way imaginable, with the common people treated as slaves in their own homeland, and the leaders exiled to a foreign place. They feel forsaken and alone. By the rivers of Babylon, they sit down and weep.

Simeon and Anna… I’m sure that at times during their long wait to see the saviour, they sat down and wept, too. “I’m an old, old man,” Simeon must have said. “I’m weary of living, God. I want to come home to you. When will that happen?” Anna, too. “I’ve been a widow for years and years and years, God. I’m lonely. Why am I still here, and not with you?”

Splat. Sometimes, even continuing to exist can be difficult.

But God came to them and comforted them. God called Israel home, to become a great nation, and to testify to the world about the beauty of the Lord. They were no more called, “Forsaken.” They no longer lived in exile, but at home in that place called A Better Life.

And God came to Simeon and Anna as a tiny baby, and their hopes and dreams were fulfilled. “My eyes have seen your salvation,” Simeon says. “A light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for the Glory of your people Israel.”

He and Anna made it through “splat,” and came to a better place.

It’s appropriate that our New Year falls during the Christmas season. For this is the time when many of us hear God calling most clearly, calling us to A Better Life. And so we make our New Year’s resolutions in that spirit.

It’s because the nation Israel kept going past “splat” that they came to be a light to the nations. It’s because Simeon and Anna kept going past “splat” that the Christ child was welcomed fittingly into the world. It’s because the disciples kept going past the biggest splat of all that we are here this morning, worshipping Jesus as the Christ.

So God calls us this New Year’s and always to keep going. To set our sights on A Better Life, and make our goals, and to keep moving towards them, even if we sometimes end up in the mud.

Back to NaNo for just a moment: On the NaNoWriMo forums on the internet, after November is over and we’ve all succeeded or failed at our goal to write fifty thousand words, we were challenged to set goals for the coming year. And we were challenged to have goals in three categories: Big, Scary, and Fun.

Do something big: Something that is difficult and maybe a bit tedious to achieve. Hear God’s call to save yourself and the world, if you will.

Do something scary: Something you really want to do, but which makes you quake in your boots every time you think of actually doing it. Hear God’s assurance that God will be with you.

Do something fun: Something you want to do just because you’ll enjoy doing it. Hear God’s promise that life will be abundant and full of blessing.

It seems to me that these are wise criteria for goal setting. If you manage to set one goal in each category, I can all but guarantee you that you won’t end up heading down the road to The Same Old Same Old, but rather down the road to A Better Life.

And I’ll give you one last piece of wisdom I picked up, through experience, this past November: Tell someone about your goals, and if possible, gather companions about you who are going the same way.

So right now, I’m going to put the “tell someone” part into practice, and tell you that for the coming year, my “big” goal will be to lose one pound per week on average, or fifty-two pounds.

My “scary” goal for the coming year is to not only finish another novel, but to prepare it for submission to agents and publishers, and, once prepared, to submit it. (The submitting, and possible rejection, is the scary part, in case you were wondering…)

And my “fun” goal for the coming year is to go to New York next November to see Cate Blanchett in A Streetcar Named Desire.

I hope that this coming week, you’ll think about big, scary and fun goals. I hope you’ll listen for God calling you to take your place at the banquet, both as server and feaster. I hope that you’ll find the energy to listen to that calling.

And this time next year, I hope we’ll be able to compare notes and say, “What do you know? I did it!”

Amen.

Preached at Alma United Church, December 28, 2008
Scriptures: Luke 2:22-40; Isaiah 61:10-62:3