Ice Walk, Nice Walk … Good to be able to Walk on water.

Last evening we went for an ice walk, a date with each other and a camera, after a great meal and getting a mattress that is good for my back, and the kids can use the soft plush mattress, if their backs can hold up to it.

The view of course starts not on the ice in the marina, but across the street, in the eat ..ery called Clarkes

Open Hoping

Clarkes General Store and Eatery, where the light plays and the sign begs for activity, hunger, patronage … and stands in defiance to the economy, which is so slowed down with oil prices so low, one wonders what will happen. All will dry up here, companies once robust and bold will become withered remains and reminders of the wasteful years and the Saudis will continue to be beyond belief wealthy, capable, and ruthless. Always the ruthless win, with lies and deceptions, and without conscience or concern for others.

But then freedom from all that as we descend into the Marina from the boardwalk, on to the snow covered ice.

Drawn to the Light

At -14 C with even a slight breeze one needs the correct clothing and protection. And it would be so nice to have my cameras again. But the Nikon D7000 will do, and I did keep the tripod. It’s a tool of precision and stability, a companion with so many photo outings, so light and familiar. A connection with the past before it was so broken, and so powerful, allowing this kind of exposure at night: clear, colourful, dazzling and promising … if only I had skates on and the snow were cleared ….

Facing the other way

Sent into the Darkness
Sent into the Darkness

There is less draw into than a shove from the golden coloured Marina

away out into the darkness

past piles of snow.

Not Quite

And with ever so slightly a shift on the tripod the scene is less a push and less golden and all around less

Even though it is just seconds later.

The scene is not the photo, the camera and tripod do not make the photo …

The heart and eye and imagination of the photographer make the photo with what’s there and what equipment is brought to along and used.

Real Ice, Real Cold, Nice

There actually is a place to skate, cleared from last evenings snow with a tired vehicle but not skated on by seemingly anyone in the oh so cold – which indeed does require the proper clothing, but is simply harsh in comparison to the mild, mild winter we’ve had so far. Really, above zero (freezing for those that do not reference temperatures in Celcius) temperatures in February, I mean even 10 above! It’s been a wonderful break from the potential -20, -30 and -40 that we know is normal.

And what is coming; so often I hear someone marveling at the mild temperatures and then they ruin it all with an anxiety of what is to come: March will for sure be too cold!

And I respond simply: it’s been a marvelous February, no harsh temperatures. And one month of cold (because April maybe snowy or even below zero, but it would be really odd if it were -30 or even -20!) during March is not something that we do not know how to survive and more than survive, but enjoy and delight in. And then … well then the wonders of Spring.

Hope in the Sky

There is hope. And even optimism.

Hope: the ability to imagine and trust God that the future, despite having no basis in the practical concrete reality and events of one’s days and nights, … that the future will bring goodness, also to us, to oneself.

Optimism: the perspective on the practical concrete reality and events of one’s days and nights that so colours these events so as to block out the negative part of reality so that one is left with overpowering evidence that the future will continue just like this partial or skewed perspective of the past.

For the record, healthy or best is to be always overwhelmingly hopeful, somewhat optimistic and wisely pessimistic and strongly realistic and practical. Another Paradox to describe health, well-being, flourishing, and claiming one’s baptism, that one is a child of God … also a participant in the Kingdom of God on earth … by grace.

Technology and the cross in lights.

Can one be optimistic because of technology, hope because of the cross, and still stand back and wonder at what we’ve done to that symbol of torture of the Romans, the cross. We’ve put it everywhere, even in neon lights on the sky line of our lives.

Truth and Light and … hope

There are so many lies hurled …
So many lies banked on …
So many lies embraced …
So many lies acted upon …
And there are cracks in everything, and that is how the light gets in (nod to Leonard Cohen.)

 

When will the light get in?
Night
It was dark and this shows the dark but it misses something unseen while shooting.
This evening I took a walk, short but sweet, to catch the light in the snow.
And there is nothing quite like a wintery night
Frozen but still warm enough to not be dangerous or painful, so that one can delight
Light and Owl
Here we can see it, with full light bright throughout the photo, but the sense of night is gone, too.
In

Night and RightThis is the dark, shining brightly through the photo, but not everything is showing.
The little things
Transportation
And here the action, location and mode of transportation to and back.
That make it all okay.
It is something to be systematically attacked to the point that one has no support left, and then how does one hang on? Like Mandela in prison, Bonnhoeffer in prison, like Ghandi in prison and afterwards, all accused, all braved it out and all had something else in front of them, but Bonnhoeffer never made it back to normal life.
Who will be killed next time, will it be us, or worse them, or we all?
Life, choose life. Please choose life.

Beauty of Truth; Beauty of Light

There is something about light.

Great Mountains

It changes everything.

When the truth of one’s history is concealed by intent to obscure and accuse others, to blame others for ones own weaknesses,

There is not much that can be done,

Great Mountain Light

Until the light shines in even a little bit.

And the marvelous stuff is this:

we know the beauty that is hidden without light,

the truth that will be exposed,

the hope that is all that can be.

Beauty Shines

And then when the light shines completely

What once was hidden will shine forth.

It is gorgeous in the right light.

And there is not a thing that is lost to truth, except the lie.

Light, Learning, and Playing in the Mountains

Light, Learning, and Playing in the Mountains

But first an addition to the previous post of perspective:

Light in Dark

There is light even in the Dark

And it is BEAUTIFUL

Here the air in the mountains is just

Clear and contaminated with nature to give life

As we breathe

And move

And rest

And imagine

Against all the words that condemn and box one in as a caged animal in other’s demons and defenses against their own tragic actions

A simple Doch is the mountain air for so many

And also for me.

Mountain Morning

The clouds dance through the valleys and the mountain tops.

 

It is in playing though in the mountain air that one encounters the gift of Grace, of life and hope.

Last evening Christian played and practiced with my camera and produced this photo of Tim Wray, Pastor and down to earth man, who is returning to farm parttime and open his congregation to be a teaching site for intern pastors!

Smiles Alive

An acquaintance of many years.

 

And then the next morning the light shines on the mountains …

Full of clouds and light and

Hope.

Doch … the world is not to stay broken, Doch Grace will flow.

Morning Mountain LIght

The Light, the Hope, the Doch come clear in the morning.

Truth and Perspective … And Lies

Truth and Perspective

And Lies

Lately I’ve had to listen to my life described by another person which was certainly not complimentary, and certainly not close to truth, okay let’s be clear: It was mostly lies, malicious lies.

This person has said that everything is just a different perspective. I have my truth and he has his truth.

Yes, there are different perspectives that colour what we see; but the basic reality is at least approximately discernible, knowable. There are limits to which one can go in describing something out of the past where it is not just a matter of a different perspective; it is a lie. It is not what happened.

That is not who did what; and sadly it is often the truth with this person that terrible things that he attributed to me, are actually the terrible things that belong to him.

If you enter a dark room and there is an elephant in the room, and one person says there is a rough round item (the leg) he is right in a way. Another may say there is a long wet item (the truck), and another large flat area that flaps (the ear.) They are right, but without enough perspective or wisdom to know the whole that they have encountered. A fourth person may enter and feeling a bit of this and that may well say there is an elephant in the room. And he would be right.

But if another person comes in and says there is a nice sand beach to run ones toes through the sand and feel the sun on ones nose: Well that’s just not true.

And if the person threatens you because you see a large flat area, that’s not just not true; it’s a malicious lie.

I’ve never before run into a person who so consistently cannot accept responsibility for what he does, and must always assign responsibility for his own mistakes and sins to someone else.

It is scary that so much of what he said is so far beyond what one would be able to discern reality from that it is … scary (for him, how can he not know reality) and sad (is this what he lives with, a nearly total inability to know what is and is not happening around him?!

But

Broad1Perspective is important. One can take the broad view and not see far.

Close3Or a bit closer and notice the content of Bread and Wine poured forth.

Close4To as close a view as possible.

DSC_8924

And then to change the focus to see, instead of the foreground of Wine and Bread, to see beyond to the world God created.

And I did it again and it’s fun to see the differences:

 

2Broad1

Broad

Broad2Closer

2Broad3Yet Closer

2Broad4As Close as Possible

2Broad5Closest with a change of focus to see,

Well, all along we have seen

the wonders of creation and our place in it.

Dinner, Dance, Abundant Grace!

There is little in this world that is spectacular beyond breath, but there is much in this world that is spectacular beyond breath!

Working Together

One needs to listen and hear, look and see, feel and experience everything knowing the Grace of God is always at work, in abundance.

Yesterday I went looking and after a few other stops found the Emeralds, a band with saxophone, voice and keyboards … and more. And their schedule had them playing in north Edmonton. So I called for more details, precious few were available on line.

And we went to dinner and dance.

Great Food! Great Music!!! And SPECTACULAR dancing!!!!!

To be able to dance and move and change the step to fit the music or the density of the dance floor or the mood … it doesn’t get much better. And there were dancer of age, spectacular in what they could do to the music!

Oh, heaven broke through from the infinite to the finite and there was … Grace!

And we worked on this sermon, for this morning. And Linda challenged me with my nose in my phone, thinking I was playing games. And when I explained, she read some and asked that the sermon get posted, shared. So here it is.

Oh, the celebration so precious and costly and over the top?

Ukrainian New Year’s Eve.

We could not stay real late, with this morning looming and plumbing half finished … But it was a part of a wonderful life!

And now the requested sermon:

The banquet of the kingdom of God is not a special snack for a few friends and close associates. It is a huge gathering with the tables weighed down, bursting with good food for everyone. God’s generosity results in spontaneous words of gratitude and praise.

In her book The Spark, Kristine Barnett tells the story of her son Jake.

At a year and a half, Jake started to crawl into his shell, by 2 he was rarely speaking or making eye contact. When he was diagnosed with  autism, everyone predicted what was not possible, including that Jake would not speak or be able to communicate at all long before 16.

Instead, at age 16, we see little Jake, a boy small for his age standing and talking animatedly and easy with a math professor. Giving the others a head start Jake waits to join one of the groups of college students working on the problem the professor has given them and then he stands to the whiteboard to write a few equations. He turns and, giving the students leading questions, entices and invites the others to understand what he sees clearly in a multitude of ways.

Soon one, two and four students from the other groups come across to Jake’s board. Soon most of the students are there listening, eagerly absorbing what  Jake offers them, until first one, then another, and then most of them nod understanding and return to their own whiteboards to work through the problem before them.

God gives us abundance, over abundance, just over the top, overwhelming abundance. It’s amazingly perfect wine flowing freely for us.

In today’s Gospel from John we get a taste of this wonderful stuff: In the Bible being out of wine is not just a social faux pas. It is a sign that God’s blessings have run dry. Wine was a sign of the harvest, of God’s abundance, of joy and gladness and hospitality. So when they run short on wine they run short on blessing. And that is a tragedy. A sign that God did not bless the marriage.

And there is even more to be said. If you don’t know it yourselves yet, here is nugget of wisdom we receive from our Jewish brothers and sisters: for those who are married the blessings of being in love with your spouse is the most important thing. It is the blessing of blessings, the one blessing that makes your whole world right. It is the one gift that’s worth everything you have and are, – the most significant gift that you can pass on to your kids. Nothing else can replace it. And nothing else is out of reach if you have it. So when the wine runs flat out: it’s a sign of sure disaster!

Mary tells Jesus about it. He sidesteps the problem. She places it back on his lap. What follows is Jesus’ first miraculous sign that teaches us what grace looks like: God intends for us to be blessed beyond blessing, beyond imagining. Jesus doesn’t just turn some water into some wine. Jesus turns a huge volume of water into the best wine of all time, and there’s enough of it to last … and last …. and … last.

We human beings are hardwired to pay attention to scarcity. It’s a survival thing. If you have too many potatoes or meat it’s not really dangerous. But if you’ve got nothing to eat, that requires attention and energy focused on it so that you can survive!

So we pay attention to scarcity. Like low oil prices, dropping provincial revenues, dropping house values. We pay attention to failing health, dropping membership in churches, disastrous events in our communities.

We may even feel privileged that in this area the economy may not be so bad. Our attendance is better than most small rural congregations, and we have people who are willing to serve on committees and Council. Yet said that way, it brings to mind a fundamental fear, a fear that elsewhere it is worse than here and it’ll catch us sooner or later! Fear…, fear,… fear!!

But God wants us to live without fear! God wants us to know that there’s enough blessing to transform the world for every million years it’s going to exist! God inundated us with so many blessings that it’s overwhelming!

A man once calculated the amount of water [Jesus turned] into [that spectacular] wine. He presented his estimate to St. Jerome and asked if the guests at Cana had really drunk all that wine. [It was close to an additional 1000 bottles!] Jerome responded, “No, no, definitely not. We are still drinking of it today.”

Love, being in love, not just for a day or a few months, the kind that God gives us when we fall freshly in love; but the long-term kind -being in love for a lifetime – requires choosing to be there each day, choosing to do what it takes to be in love. It means continuing to do the loving thing through everything that could destroy love, and doing those things every day whether you feel like it or not…. That kind of doing love, of making your love … that is like Jesus’ wine, the blessing that God gives us … every minute of every day … of every week … of every month … of every year of our lives.

Knowing this what are we to do?

First pay attention: listen and hear; look and see; notice and feel; fully experience God’s abundance. God’s generosity is something other than what we normally see going on in this wonderful world.

Second – know there is not a thing you can do to change God’s generosity. You cannot earn it, deserve it, do anything right with it, or turn it into something more useful. Not only can we not; we don’t have to. God has already done all that for us.

Third, we can respond, we should respond, and we can respond well … but we don’t have to. God will still place the blessings in front of us, give them to us, shower us with them, and call us to move forward with them, and acknowledge that God is there with us.

This is the fabulous wine that overwhelms, the awesome love that carries us perpetually through every challenge.

And knowing this, we can remain humble and live life full of gratitude. As our second reading teaches, everything is a gift! First and foremost: God gives us faith, faith to see what God is up to, around us, in us, and between us!

In the 2nd reading today we are reminded that the people of the congregation in Corinth are richly blessed. God gives them many gifts for building up the community, but those very gifts become a source of contention. Several of the people accept the conclusion that the gifts varied in value and therefore the gifts reflect the worth of the person. Paul writes to the Corinthians, hoping to bring a healthy kind of harmony to the group. “Your gifts,” he tells them, “are just that, gifts, and they all are from the same Spirit. They have been given to you, not as reward, nor to increase your own personal worth or power within the community. They come as pure grace to be used in the service of the Lord. They are for the common good of the whole community. Their gifts each and every one support our confession that “Jesus is Lord.”

Jake, that autistic boy who everyone, except his own mother, everyone thought would never talk, well that boy got his first summer job when he was 12.

As a research assistant at the university where he studied, the youngest research assistant so far in our modern world, each day he’d get assignments to finish. And finish them he would … on the 20 minute drive home! ! Jake told his mom the LAST assignment was more bothersome, because he wasn’t sure if he could get it done.

His mom just gave him her best advice and encouragement and a bit of fire in the pants by telling him that he needed to apply himself, and to work at it until it was done. Every other night Jake would play outside with his friends. He had lots of free time.

That night Jake went to his room to complete the assignment. Within two hours Jake’s mom looked up and saw him outside playing with his brothers. She called to him. He confirmed that he wasn’t sure, but he thought he had something for the assignment. So she let him play.

The next day the professor called to thank her for supporting Jake through the summer of research. Then he told her what Jake had done the night before. He’d been assigned an open problem in math. No one had ever solved it. In less than two hours, the boy who everyone had given up on and said would not even talk, this boy Jake with autism had taken a problem that no one ever had come up with a solution for, and – in part because his mother didn’t’ know, and partly because she just always trusted that he was given some extraordinary gifts and he was to use them, – Jake solved an open problem!!, a problem deemed unsolvable!!!

Years before (at age 10) Jake had been able to propose a new unique theory of light and relativity that fixes some of the problems left over from Einstein’s theory of relativity. His theory is not complete but it’s possible that this boy may do something more significant than what Einstein did for us all.

God’s gifts are given to each of us, not just Jake, in an astounding over-abundance.

We don’t have to respond. We are not going to get rid of death and illness and decline and decay and poverty and pain and war and abuse and any of the other really horrific things we humans are too good at.

But we can respond well to God’s over abundance for us … if we want to.

And then we can, no, … then we will change the world!

Be not afraid!

Have a wonderful week.

Know that you are blessed to be a blessing. Your cup and your neighbor’s cup, is overflowing with God’s amazing, abundant wine given at that wedding in Cana.

Amen

So far the sermon.

This past year there have been many things, so abundantly filled with Grace:

Soccer Goals

This for Simon and Cyrus, Simon’s whose passion is soccer, who does math relating to the way he can see the field while he plays, And Cyrus who is always there practicing hour after hour with Simon, giving him a goalie, an opponent, a companion.

 

M's Grandma

And this M’s grandma. A reworking of her old postage stamp photo into gifts for Grandma’s three daughters.

And this: as it turns out, the last opportunity for Phoebe to venture to drive the tractor, and she does with gusto!

Darkness, Darkness

Lights

The darkness is immense, wallowing in all the corners deep across the time and space of an ordinary day.

The Light Lines Others Up

There is no Other that sits so well as oneself alone, with all the others simply servants, not real ones, all lined up to give an illusion of reality.

But there is no goal if there is no Other.

 

Is there a light to light this darkness like no other? Is there a hope of a cure that everyone says does not exist.

Light 3

And in the moment that artificial light will hit the trees of snow covered in agony and loneliness.

Three Light

 

Where, Oh Where, Is the Hope in the Dark, if not in the Light from the Day.

Through the Middle Darkness

There were very hard days behind me but this speaks so as if …
As if one understood and knew that despair behind my days of fear
As if the light of hope got stuck on a stick and were thrown ahead.
As if the small grass of comfort between my toes were wrenched from the universe by a black hole.
As if there were no holy water that reacts differently in the font, no broken bread, no blood given.
As if …
But as Carver before the Ways and Means, derided and demeaned,
As Bonhoeffer detained from his flock, asking Who Am I,
As Mandela held on an island, knowing slowly they would get long pants,
I still remember who I am, who I’ve been made, by whom I’ve been claimed, though condemned who named me simultaneously a saint.

Where are we?
On a map?
Of convoluted and complicated growth?
We are full of hope and yet desperate to be
welcomed by another saint
rescued by another saint
known past this by all in the light of life.

An old and broken thought invades the will of those with control,
What emptiness grips their fears, and twists them to the dark
Overwhelming darkness like in the caves where bodies lie, dried out, ages gone by.
Where even there the water of life flows unseen
But heard.
And drunk.
And felt as evidence that all is well, connected, blessed.
Even there the grains become body, which is broken and given.
Even there the grapes are fermented into blood, which is poured and shared.

What is my cup?
What is your cup?
What is our cup?
What will we see new today in the light?

Path to Home?

Will these ever once again house a family, livid, active, growing, of hope and peace with a smile?

 

Die schwersten Wege

Die schwersten Wege werden alleine gegangen,
die Enttäuschung, der Verlust, das Opfer,
sind einsam.
Selbst der Tote der jedem Ruf antwortet
und sich keiner Bitte versagt
steht uns nicht bei
und sieht zu ob wir es vermögen.
Die Hände der Lebenden die sich ausstrecken
ohne uns zu erreichen
sind wie die Äste der Bäume im Winter.
Alle Vögel schweigen.
Man hört nur den eigenen Schritt
und den Schritt den der Fuß
noch nicht gegangen ist,
aber gehen wird.
Stehenbleiben und sich Umdrehn hilft nicht.
Es muss gegangen sein.
Nimm eine Kerze in die Hand
wie in den Katakomben,
das kleine Licht atmet kaum.
Und doch, wenn du lange gegangen bist,
bleibt das Wunder nicht aus,
weil das Wunder immer geschieht,
und weil wir ohne die Gnade
nicht leben können:
die Kerze wird hell vom freien Atem des Tags,
du bläst sie lächelnd aus
wenn du in die Sonne trittst
und unter den blühenden Gärten
die Stadt vor dir liegt,
und in deinem Hause
dir der Tisch weiß gedeckt ist.
Und die verlierbaren Lebenden
und die unverlierbaren Toten
dir das Brot brechen und den Wein reichen –
und du ihre Stimmen wieder hörst
ganz nahe
bei deinem Herzen.
(Hilde Domin)

 

Path to Light?

The most difficult paths

The most difficult paths are only alone trod,
disappointment, loss, sacrifice,
are desolate.
Even the deaths that answer every call
and deny themselves no plea
do not stand with us
and only watch to see whether we are able.
The hands of the survivors which extend
never reaching us
are like the branches of trees in winter.
All birds are silent.
One hears only one’s own step
and the step of one’s foot
of the step not taken,
but the step that will be taken.
Stopping and turning about offers no help.
The path must be trod.
Take a candle in your hand
as in the catacombs,
the little light hardly breathes.
And yet, even as you are long gone,
the miracle does not forsake,
because the miracle always happens
and because we without grace
cannot live:
the candle will burn brightly from the free breath of the day,
you blow it out smiling
when you walk into the sun
and among the flowering gardens
as the city spreads below you,
and in your house
the table is set white for you.
And the expendable survivors
and the un-expendable dead
reach you the broken bread and rich wine –
and you hear their voices again
very close
to your heart.
(Hilde Domin Translated Tim Lofstrom)

Path to God?

A familiar path?

For you, too?

 

New Year, Last Year, One Back, Now, One Ahead

New Year’s Eve

Tree Snow

A year ago

Light Between

One date, not so innocent,

Far Side

Three kids, one hotel, one persistent intrusion,

Sky View

Followed a few days later with one accusation,

Jungle

That was impossible,

 

And now,

The Light

What is, is all the result of one be-devilled

Golden Light

 

Let’s see one year further into the future

Sky Hope

And hope the same is bettered with hope

 

And persistent work to let Grace prevail!

Barn

There are cracks in everything, that’s how the light gets in.

Light In the Cracks

There are some things that should not be: Darkness

There are some things that should not be done.

There are some things that should be done.

Catching light whenever possible should be done.

One shot.

Shot at Sunset, One Post 2

Two shot.

Shot at Sunset, One Post

Blaming others for the darkness that
one has chosen for oneself should not be done.
No shot.
Doesn’t depend on anything,

If you live in a darkness that you chose,
then blaming others just buries it under more darkness …
until the light is obliterated and
there is no more hope for light or love or life …
nor joy.

Until God chooses to change you!

And then there is life in abundance!

That’s Grace!