Holy Ordinary Things
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Holy Ordinary Things

Wendy is the person in our church who takes care of the details. She is the one who sorts through the candles after the Christmas Eve service, taking out the ones that burned too low, cleaning the ones that are discolored from the smoke. Wendy irons the drapes we hang on the front wall. She…

Uplifting Words: To students and teachers
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Uplifting Words: To students and teachers

To students May you know that the effort you make in classes and your community are like stones thrown into a pond that ripple and have effects you won’t see at first. May you know that you have lived through things that can help you. May you remember what you know about love, yourself and…

The Day After

The Day After

Advent led us there. Christmas opened a door. And now we are here, sliding into a New Year. Again. The bustle of 2019’s ending is over. The buzz of buying, gifting, making, cooking, gathering and celebrating is mostly passed. The decorations are being packed away. Where I live in the shadow of the Rockies, there’s a settling into January. The sky seems greyer. The slushy roads a bit grittier. And the early nightfall isn’t lit by magic and twinkly lights. In January, it’s just dark.

Digging It All Up

Digging It All Up

I walk regularly in a provincial park nestled in the middle of Calgary. About a year ago I came to a wide space in a familiar valley and saw tall metal fences, keeping us out of what once was a field of tall prairie grasses. Soon, big diggers and trucks came down the hill and started to work. Every week the hole in the ground got wider and deeper. The displaced earth was made into a new mountain. Enormous cement pipe fittings were trucked in and piled into pyramids. Huge machines buzzed and rumbled constantly.

Jesus of the Compost Pile

Jesus of the Compost Pile

We are not expert gardeners at our house. We planted some tulip bulbs last fall and were jubilant when, with very little help from us, they came up. You would have thought we terraformed the moon with all the exultant joy we had at these tulips!