Reflections
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I cringe when I think of being a “Closer.” This is not an easy assignment. Especially with ‘everything’ on the line. You wish “The Closer” nothing but well. As it turned out, fate was especially cruel on this, the night after Hallowe’en, spooks and goblins in the air, game seven of the World Series. There
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“Is that Bringing in the Sheaves or The Good Old Summertime?” Someone raised the question as we drove across York Region, picking up the familiar tune and trying to sing along. We were listening to the Metropolitan Silver Band, founded in 1931, a unique brass and percussion ensemble in fabulous stereo, booming out the familiar
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I get a little nervous when people start treating political leaders as godsends. Even if the incumbents happen to have fallen into a kind of atrophy, and the alternatives are entirely off the rails, heaven knows how foolish this is. Do they not realise that the emerging Adolf Hitler was blessed by a large swath
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I thought I was moving along fairly briskly. Sunday afternoon, Niagara escarpment off to the south, the sounds of Renato Falaschi filling the airwaves, light traffic flowing East — this was a perfect Spring drive through scenic western Ontario into Greater Toronto on the 401 Highway, centre lane, cruise control. Suddenly an apocalyptic object appeared
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We’re happy to report ‘Mission Accomplished’ on this short visit to Zambia. Not that we are lacking in more to do! But we have had some beautiful breakthroughs during our forty day visit, all for the best of causes, and are really leaving with a sense of fait accompli. (1) We targeted a couple of church
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We had a two-fold invasion over the summer: the geese and the homeless. They both laid claim to most any vacant space in our summer town — the parks, the picnic areas, the boardwalks, the bike paths. And they definitely left their mark. Leave a flock of Canada Geese in your picnic area for a day
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Plenty of good news regarding John’s recent bike ride to survive on behalf of audio Bengali Bibles in the Middle East. More good news is that Zambia’s Trans-Africa Christian University has been keeping the doors open — this despite the worst drought in recorded history! According to the BBC: “Despite having the mighty Zambezi River and the massive
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Talk about going out with a bang, I had a bike crash ten days ago on Chandamali — and ‘think’ I may have gone over the bars! Finally feeling pretty much recovered. Spent a week feeling like I was body-slammed by SmackDownSuperStar Bobby Lashley! I had some speed — not DMC speed, of course —
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We had a stray cat on the property which was starting to make herself at home. Emelda would throw a few scraps out the kitchen door in the mornings, which probably helped. Next came a smattering of kibbles. No wonder this beautifully marked creature — grey and white stripes with a dash of slate, eyes
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I was a bit miffed and saddened when I heard the news. What, our old Alma Mater mothballed? Eastern Pentecostal Bible College, good old EPBC? For “improved accessibility and affordability” — for a fresh start in Mississauga? How could they? Memories came flooding back of those few beautiful years among friends. How was this
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Speaking in tongues is one of those things… definitely kind of extraordinary when you take a detached look at it. I mean, this is strange and exotic. In the sense of surprising and extraterrestrial. What, a language which is generally unintelligible except to the Holy Spirit? And this language is like an internal supplement that nourishes
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Sometimes, as at the close of 2023, the news is so bad, you just want to drop below deck for awhile and make the world go away. Alain de Botton in his classic, The News, reminds us that it hasn’t always been this way. That our ancestors survived nicely in a news-free world— hard as
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I had a knee that was giving me a little trouble and decided to do some knee bends. I like to put a Swiss Ball behind my back and roll it up and down the wall. Nice gentle bend at the knee, add a 5lb weight if you are keen. Then I saw this guy
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Sabrina Maddeaux, a newspaper columnist, warns that young Canadians are “furious” over the state of housing in Canada: “One in three Liberal cabinet minsters supplement their salaries with rental or investment incomes. About 40 percent of all MPs do the same… Housing minister Ahmed Hussen now owns three rental properties. It’s no surprise so say
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It seems so obvious to the rest of us. Why doesn’t he just step aside? Can he not see that just disappearing from public life would be his finest moment? The question is asked around the world, from Santiago to Myanmar. Can he not see? All that is needed is his absence to heal an
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Very good news on the car front! Just when we thought we were drowning in a sea of body-shop grey, a welcome announcement from FIAT: “No more grey vehicles!” “It’s out of keeping with our beautiful land,” says Fiat… “Italy the land of colour: Fiat the vehicle of colour! …. Our land revels in brilliance
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I get a little tired of being reminded that we are called to be “salt and light” in this tasteless and dark world. Of course this has never been more necessary. “You are the salt of the earth.” But what about sweetening that which is sour? Who is going to be the sugar of the
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About the time the Coronavirus was starting to sweep the Globe in 2020, “The World’s Favourite Worship Songs” fell into my iTunes collection: “The Lion and the Lamb,” “Miracles,” “You in My Life,” “Let It Be Known.” At first listen, I didn’t pick up much. This was a far cry from “Rejoice, the Lord is
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My friend Stockton likes to dismiss chiropractors with a harrumph. “It’s snake oil,” he says. “They jerk you around and then tell you to come back next week…. rather than give you exercises that will cure the problem. It’s a money thing!” I, on the other hand, am a believer. So I quote the wall
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I came across my old college friend Bob Smith the other day, out for a morning walk with Brenda. Nothing unusual, on a beautiful September morning — except that Bob should not be with us. He had settled into his comfortable recliner on a Sunday afternoon, December 2020, when he took a heart attack and
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Ndola, Zambia to Winnipeg, Manitoba… more or less non-stop. It wasn’t the dead of winter (fortunately) but Portage and Main was boasting a pretty stiff wind in mid-May! Still, the PAOC General Conference was a “live event!” After living with the CoronaVirus for what seemed like forever, we had been looking forward to coming together
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Many people are so discouraged with the selection process, they have taken to buying watermelon by the slice. And so they live in a kind of abject defeat, nibbling away on their meagre slices as though ‘taste’ were all that matters — when a universe of exquisite planetary delights lies unexplored in big boxes at
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These days in Ottawa, people are talking cessation. Enough already with all the racket, thousands of truckers descending on Parliament Hill with their big rigs, in peaceful protest against vaccine mandates. ‘Peaceful protest’ does not always mean ‘quiet protest’ — especially on these, the coldest days of 2022 — with the “Freedom Convey.” Mark Carney
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When a student walks out of High School and is swarmed by a gang of ten, you intervene. Not because you know there is no loaded gun in the crowd. But out of moral outrage. And because your intervention is close to the heart of God, He infuses what you do with dunamis energy. It’s
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As the viral year 2021 came to a close, I found myself aching and wracked-up for no obvious reason. Knees, hips, hamstrings, achilles, lower back — everything hurt. I tried exercises and physio, back to the floor with knees up, rolling a Swiss Ball up the wall — nothing helped. It got so bad that
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We thought staying around town for Christmas this year sounded like a good idea. What with the Omicron mutation on the loose — why not enjoy our own Nkana yard, with it’s ten foot walls and hedges, and maybe step out for Christmas dinner? It sounded good, but when we ended up at the
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Putting on a mask this Hallowe’en may be the last thing anyone wants to do. Time was, you could happily assume a new identity for one night of trick or treating just by masking up! For one magic evening, you assumed a whole new persona! My favourite mask was Captain Kidd’s, that glowering pirate
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Alas, our best friend turns out to be the enemy. Just when we were getting to enjoy videoconferencing with Zoom and the like, with all their miraculous instant connectivity, people are finding them too much of a good thing. Speaking from Covid isolation, Jeremy Ballenson writes: “There is little doubt the software is helping us
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Whenever I hear someone discounting the reality of inflation, I think of my recent visit to Joe’s Variety Shop. Sweltering hot day, I was on my bike and looking for a popsicle. I hadn’t bought a popsicle for awhile and assumed they cost about a nickel: lime, orange, cherry, grape, lemon, pineapple — all that
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A couple of young guys were pushing their Corolla into a gas station, right up to the pump. I guess they had been on their way to refuel for Easter week-end and came up just short. Running on empty carries its risks! But that’s not unusual in our town. Our taxis often live on the
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I asked the barber where she got the scissors. “Dollar Store,” she said. “How am I supposed to get a good haircut,” I asked, “with Dollar Store scissors?” “You can try the shop down the road,” she said, me with my half-cut dome. “But they get their scissors at the same place.” I swallowed
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It’s a miracle, really, Kennedy’s getaway from the Watchtower Society. He was just 17 and a third generation JW! Today he’s one of our very promising 4th Year Students at Trans-Africa Christian University. “Watchtower was all I knew,” he says. That is, until he started having dreams! His nighttime visitors included various
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I pulled this amazing bug out of the birdbath. Sixteen red polkadots across his back like a Spiderman cape! Plus purple wings! But what kind of bug was this? I consulted various experts from the world of insectacidea. Their guesses ranged between a high-end Cockroach — lying on its back it looks like a roach
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Why can’t some people just concede defeat and move on — rather than march straight to the Dressing Room without shaking hands? It could be as simple as NPD: “Narcissistic Personality Disorder.” For the vintage NPDer, conceding defeat is like “existential death.” So says clinical psychologist Ramani Durvasula, who wrote the book on narcissism: “Don’t
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2021! If only the New Year were like the New Birth — “old things passed away, all things become new!” Alas, no matter what you were doing New Year’s Eve, “out of a thousand invitations you received” — you “came to” on New Years Day only to find the “worst year ever,” was still with
JCK-at-large SITE 