Preacher Idol

Ruth Wilkinson - Preacher Idol Contestant
Ruth turns preaching on it's ear
by telling a story.
Watch, vote, and spread the word
for a fellow Resonate (Peterborough) attendee.

http://drewmarshall.ca/preacheridol/index.php

In real life, Ruth is the founder of the "Greenwood Tower Initiative", an advocacy group, making friends and pot luck suppers with the 100 or so folks who live in a residential hotel in Port Hope, ON.

From Dan's Blog

"The quest for meaning is one that preoccupies all Canadians — and indeed all human beings who have met their basic needs for food, shelter and security, and begin to move up the Maslowian hierarchy to seek post-material satisfactions.

As aging baby boomers watch their parents and even their friends die, and as they look beyond materialism, hedonism and work that gave shape to their middle years, they will begin to search broadly for sources of meaning to fit later in life in contemporary Canada.

They are unlikely to be satisfied by the traditional religions so many abandoned in their youth.
But as they scan their environment for examples of the good life, they might find inspiration in the children of immigrants who are materially successful but often still deeply engaged with a spiritual life that is social, syncretic, globally conscious, and threatened neither by the old nor by the new."

I've Been Away....

Well, not so much away as unavailable. Within my own skull I mean. Just not the headspace to be able to put pen to paper. I have been at my wit's end for most of the summer and now long into the fall.
Way to much on my plate, way to many people with demands, way to little power and autonomy.
Not so different from the rest of the world in that I guess.
But I'm feeling better.
I am seeing the trees at the edge of the forest in definition now.
I am feeling freer to practice (and practise) the person I am becoming.
And, with the best news yet, Martyn Joseph will be in Grafton on February 6th. Change your life to be there too.

Some of us witnessed the passing of the torch this weekend: the much beloved Sylvia Tyson slipping away as a music icon and the birthing of the newest generation: Catherine MacLellan - daughter of the past pop era legend Gene MacLellan, singing on the same stage, sharing the same workshop, enjoying the comraderie of the song and lyric.

Some of us were busy making lunch for those folks.

I thank Dan Sheffield for the photo.

Haiku - The Perfect Creative Outlet for the Busy and Impatient:

The Question

The God who is there
Will he show up tomorrow
When I need him most

Garden Produce

Flowers open and close
Like the sign in the window
Nectar sold daily

Avian Idol

Birds on their nests
Snuggling with their body heat
Next year's musicians

I remember when.....

I remember in the late eighties when the punk thing was so new and scarey, and good christian folks were distancing themselves from the ungodly spiked haired safety pin wearing kids, I watched a group of them sitting together talking.

When one kid spoke, every head turned, every eye was on her/him. Then the next kid talked, and the same thing happened; everyone's attention was solely on them.

I was mesmerized - I realized that these kids had found themselves a family - a community in the true sense.

It's what the human heart craves - and we will look for it 'til we find it - regardless of the cost - and sometimes it costs a lot.

Osprey Media. - Northumberland Today - Ontario, CA

Osprey Media. - Northumberland Today - Ontario, CA

Melwood Cutlery

Amen and amen!

A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing, and the lawn mower is broken.
— James Dent

As Stolen Directly from Dan Sheffield's Blog....

He's so old now, he won't even notice....
Happy Birthday by the way.

Scriptural holiness is the attitude embedded in your heart when you allow Christian scripture to shape every word, fill every thought, and guide every action.
that's a thot from the recent issue The Asbury Herald. J. E. Kalas, the president of Asbury Seminary added a few more thots in his editorial.
...scriptural holiness isn't manageable... holiness, like Aslan, the Christ symbol, cannot be domesticated. Just after we have found some new spiritual victory, we discover a whole new territory that is waiting to be taken for Christ. This isn't because the boundaries of sin have changed, but it is because we've become more sensitive to our reading of those boundaries. Once we were satisfied that our deeds were acceptable, then holiness asked us about our wayward tongues and our even more wayward thoughts. One day we thought we had at last gained humility, so we announced it -- and in that moment we lost it. Having won a battle with lust, we thought we had gotten purity of heart -- only to discover that self-righteousness is an even greater hazard to a pure heart.
and then there's the challenge to translate personal holiness into social holiness. Scriptural holiness doesn't allow us to be content with clean habits, clean speech and pure thought... holiness insists that we participate in social renewal. We can't be content as long as poverty, injustice, war and selfishness rule our society. We are driven into the public arena. Our neighbourhood begins to encircle the globe, and although our interests can't taken in everything, they're never allowed to be comfortable with what we can already manage. Scripture holiness isn't for spiritual sissies. It calls for heroic souls...
will scriptural holiness work in a culture as complicated and superficially sophisticated as ours? Not only will it work, I don't know of anything else that will. The ills of this age are too deep to be cured by religious or intellectual hocus pocus.

I am thankful for the mess to clean after
a party because it means I have been
surrounded by friends.
— Nancie J. Carmody

Happiness makes up in height what it lacks in length.
— Robert Frost

Whoever one is, and wherever one is, one is always in the wrong if one is rude.
— Maurice Baring

glumbert.com - Master Juggler

glumbert.com - Master Juggler

Put all your eggs in one basket and – watch that basket.
— Mark Twain

Tori 4 Secretary

Kate and Tori's video.
Fun to watch.

They Don't Sell You This At Hallmark

Mother's Day was originally started after the Civil War, as a protest to the carnage of that war, by women who had lost their sons. Here is the original Mother's Day Proclamation from 1870.

Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise all women who have hearts, whether our baptism be that of water or of fears!

Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies.
Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not betaken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says "Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."

Blood does not wipe our dishonor nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summon sof war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after their own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that ageneral congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests ofpeace.

Julia Ward HoweBoston 1870

Short Term Mission Trips

Another perspective.
And they say we are self sufficient!
We go for us, not for them.
Turns out, we need all the help we can get!
DanSheffield

Sarah Harmer -I'm A Mountain (Shelter Valley Folk Festival)

Kate and Meghan are Hippies

Born 35 years too late they say.

Alas, they look longingly at this video from the 60's and pine and mourn.

meghan says

My prediction: In 35 years, their grandchildren will be saying the same thing when they look at this photo and video....