Whatever He Says

The credit for the title of this blog post goes to my son, Pete. (He also offered, "Things Worth Bringing Up," but we're saving that for a flu pandemic 😊.)  Here we are, in a boat with everyone else in the world, which we never planned to board. It's good that we're on it because it's a lifeboat, but we still have much to learn about life on board during a global pandemic! It's been a week of processing the unexpected, and adjusting to a new reality. We have genuine concerns and feel suddenly and utterly vulnerable. Little of this is in our control. But I woke up today thinking about what I can control. My friend, Janey, recently shared a quote in a story she wrote, and it gripped me so much that I scribbled it down on a scrap of paper: How you do anything is how you do everything. Richard Rohr It's a startling sentence to contemplate when I think of how I have been doing anything and everything this week. We have come to a sudde...

I published this originally on May 20, 2019. I never imagined that less than a year later the world would be coming to a stop, which is why I'm republishing it: The dream stayed with me all day. It came in the moments before I woke up, right after a dream about forgetting pages with words to songs for our worship team (one of those dreams you get over and over when you have low-level anxiety about something.) The one I am writing about here was different, though, and the feeling of it lingered, In it, the world was utterly silent. Last weekend we woke up on Sunday morning to a planned hydro shut down for routine maintenance that I'd forgotten about. We had no hot water, no light, NO COFFEE! What I noticed immediately was the silence. We live with many sounds that we don't hear until they're not there. The silence in my dream though, was a complete worldwide silence--I knew that it signified the end of everything as it was the day before on earth. Everything had st...

My friend, Joanne, rang the doorbell at precisely twelve noon. We are walking buddies but hadn't seen one another since January due to busy lives and inclement weather. After such a stretch we were excited to see one another again. We never lack great conversation, but now we had a backlog to catch up on! She even had a new haircut--instead of the longer style in this photo, her pure white hair sported an elegant tapered pixie bob. Joanne started talking right away as if she couldn't wait--"I just had a vivid dream about you," she said. In Joanne's dream, my house was full of friends who loved being there so much that they didn't want to go home. It was so crowded and busy that I built a third-floor turret where I could escape when I wanted to have some quiet reflective time! Meanwhile, downstairs, when I went to the kitchen to bake some pies, it was full of people bustling about, and fixing themselves snacks! Joanne couldn't know that one of my ...

John 15:15 (The Message) Eugene H. Peterson 11-15"I've told you these things for a purpose: that my joy might be your joy, and your joy wholly mature. This is my command: Love one another the way I loved you. This is the very best way to love. Put your life on the line for your friends. You are my friends when you do the things I command you. I'm no longer calling you servants because servants don't understand what their master is thinking and planning. No, I've named you friends because I've let you in on everything I've heard from the Father. From a place of trust, the words come out, unfiltered, tumbling with abandon, expressing the shape of a heart, the set of a mind. With anyone else, the words would be more guarded-- weighed, measured--but with a friend, words can dance free. Words, sound symbols for things and thoughts. They need to be out in the light to live--to stretch their wings--to be tested. Held close to the chest or closed within, they...

It may have been as summer ended with flames of gold, red, and luminous salmon pink, intoxicating in brilliance. Pungent woodsmoke tantalizing senses, and a sudden chill that foreshadowed winter as night fell, dusky and beautiful. Or maybe snow piled high at roadsides, dark descending early. The wind a moan through streets silent but for the squeak and crunch of footsteps, the long northern winter underway. Perhaps rivulets ran through cracks and gullies, washing away the detritus of winter, bubbling, gurgling, singing a spring song. When tree limbs grew supple, and life sprang from the soil with green sprouts and insects stirring, and the nights shortening. I don't know when, but this is what I do know. A young woman rode a bus one night in Thunder Bay. She was at college. Already she had beaten many odds, graduated public school, and high school too, which had meant leaving her home community, hundreds of kilometres away. She carried within her strength of spirit, a wi...

The sun warmed my skin as I rounded a curve in the road on my Sunday morning walk, my eyes drawn up to gaze into the clear deep blue dome above me. When I looked down again, there, to my surprise was a tiny bird's nest. I picked it up, amazed. I'd never seen such a small nest before, and when I looked inside, there was a miniature coppery pine cone, not moving from the place where it seemed to be secured. I hid the nest safely in some undergrowth and continued my walk. When I returned, I picked it up and took it home. Later, hidden in a small brown paper carrier bag, it went with me to morning service at church. I'd been asked to pray for the children that morning before they went down to Sunday School. I came across a small bunch of them in the church foyer, looking for all the world like a modern version of the 1950s TV show, The Little Rascals. I interrupted whatever mischief was brewing and told them I was looking for a "show-er" and a "reader o...

In the sunporch, I savour my first cup of morning coffee, wondering what magic there is in these first sips and why it never tastes quite as good later in the day. In the quiet, I am sensing the sacred, when my granddaughter Tori, and her dog, Kevin, come out of the house, she shuffling feet into outdoor shoes with her back turned to me when I gently say, “Hello." She turns, “Oh, I didn’t even know you were here,” she says. I ask where they are going, thinking of joining them if going for a walk, but Tori’s boyfriend, Dylan, and his twin sister, Jordan are coming over with Gonzo, one of their family’s dogs—in fact, they are arriving as we speak, Jordan in shorts, and a long plaid shirt with sleeves rolled up, her dark hair cut short and artsy. Dylan, also dark-haired, is tall and angular. Both of them have the most beautiful, kind eyes. I walk down the curving driveway  to say hello to them, and Tori cautions me about little Gonzo, “Be careful, he can be unfriendly to pe...