Waste not
|

Waste not

I went duck hunting with Mr. Dave Gregory of Langley, B.C., on the Nicomekl River, a lazy stream in south Surrey. It was about 1982. We normally hunted puddles in flooded fields but a cold snap had frozen everything except the ocean marshes and the tidal portions of a few rivers. Dave had chest waders…

The Trees Bear Witness
|

The Trees Bear Witness

The serviceberry tree that nourished my children and me this summer is now a stump. Its remnants are stubbornly woven into the fence between a small Slovak church and a parking lot. On the day we discovered those berries, we scurried along finding low enough branches to pick the dark purple fruit and my five-year-old…

A Mysterious Presence
|

A Mysterious Presence

For those who crave certainty and are comforted by unchanging traditions, these past two years have been unkind. The experience of living through a global pandemic has disrupted most of our routines and heaped anxiety and uncertainty upon our everyday living. Churches have not been immune to this disruption and many congregations now find themselves…

Mystical Realism and Hope for Creation
|

Mystical Realism and Hope for Creation

Why is it so hard to get meaningful action on climate change, even after droughts and storms hit us over the head with its real impacts? Many environmentalists now recognize that scientific knowledge is not enough to motivate the required changes. Humans can know what is needed without being motivated to do it. Changing the…

Mail-order tree
|

Mail-order tree

This morning, my doorbell rang, and a man handed me an apple tree. I’d ordered it from the local nursery and been surprised to learn that they could deliver it by mail. Now it is sitting in my kitchen, all wrapped in brown paper with red cotton stitching at the top like a bag of…

High hopes
|

High hopes

A kid in a candy shop – there I stood in front of the rack of flower seeds. Any of them would look spectacular in my garden. Decisions, decisions. But really there was no contest – sunflowers were the obvious choice. Tall. Tenacious. Irresistibly cheerful. They would stand rustically elegant in front of the cedar…

Pigweed Prayers
|

Pigweed Prayers

I really would like to have “just the right number” of dandelions in my lawn. And I’d like to exert this control with organic, non-chemical means. But if I succeed, I may find that I still have a problem: No hyssop growing in the cracks of the sidewalk. The Hebrews apparently were more tolerant of…

What good is a front lawn?
|

What good is a front lawn?

Last year, my front lawn was a strip of grass that I occasionally pestered my husband to mow. But after reading more about the importance of biodiversity, I understood that replacing monoculture with native plants is one way to show love to my creaturely neighbours. So last spring, I dug out my grass and put…

Hey church, ‘go take a hike’
| |

Hey church, ‘go take a hike’

“Where do you feel closest to God?” I was asked this question during staff devotions at a Quadra Island summer camp back in July. My eyes found the ocean’s horizon and on the crest of a sun-tinted wave came my answer: right here. For me, creation often elicits an emotional response – a rush of…

Canada is losing farmland, fast
|

Canada is losing farmland, fast

The rising rate of farmland loss in Canada is a cause for alarm for many who work in agriculture and food security. Canada has experienced a 3.2% decrease in total farm area since 2016, according to the recently released Census of Agriculture. With only 189,874 farms left in Canada today, the toll on rural communities and…

How I spent my summer vacation
|

How I spent my summer vacation

We were lucky to spend much of August on Vancouver Island with my parents-in-law, celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. The celebration should have been last summer, but we’d had to postpone travel due to the risks of covid and changing regulations. This year, plans were easier to make, and my in-laws’ anniversary coincided with our…

Campfire revelations
|

Campfire revelations

The fire curls like a Scarlet Paintbrush, streaking the night with oranges and reds. Our men are at the picnic table with oldest sons, playing a board game, and we’re huddled in old flannel and old sweaters swapping dreams like recipes in this campground by the river. The air smells like burnt marshmallows. We hear…