Do you see a connection?????

This morning Ms H (my middle child) was trying to get a set of triplet dolls her grandmother gave her years ago working ... we put in new batteries and tried to get them working ...

Still the two little girl and one little boy doll remained silent ...

Maybe the batteries are already dead - that happens in our house alot ... so in went new batteries ... still only silence ...

"Hmm," says Dad, "they don't seem to be working ..."

"Really?" asks Ms H disappointed.

"Really," answers dad, "I think it's more then dead batteries ... I think they're broken ..."

"Too bad," says Ms H smiling and laughing slightly, "I've always liked playing with them. When I was little I liked stomping on them to make the cry ..."

"You stomped on them?" asked Dad, slightly shocked.

"Yeah," says Ms H, with a broad smile, "It was fun ..."

"Do you think the stomping has anything to do with them being broken?" asked Dad.

"I dunno ..."

Oh, the life of our middle child ...

Why do we have a Belly Button ??

For some reason I've been thinking alot about belly buttons lately ... perhaps it's because I've been doing some introspection, and we off handedly call such things - navel gazing ... but for whatever reason, I've been wondering about why we even have a belly button ...

The scientific explanation is that it is where the umbillical cord that connected us to our mothers once was, and now is a scar of sorts to remind us of our humble human origins. But I wonder if there is more to the belly button then that ...

One of my favourite books to use in ministry with Children is "Does God Have a Big Toe?" It is a series of stories written in the Midrash tradition to offer further details and explanations about the stories we read in the Bible. They are stories about the stories ...

The title story - "Does God have a Big Toe?" is the story of a little girl who asks her mother one day - "Does God have a Big Toe?" and the ensuing controvesy sees a huge tower built in a place called Babel, so the King can climb to the top and look ... God wants none of this silliness, so he makes it near impossible for the tower to be completed ... As the family leaves Babel for new opportunities the little girl asks her mother, "Does God have a Belly Button??"

It's a good question ... recently in a conversation with a friend, the topic turned to the existence of God ... and belly buttons came up.

She said that she was raised by agnostic parents who never explored the idea of God ... but then she mentioned that her wise and wonderful daughter had an explanation for our belly buttons and how they connect us to God. (I hope I do justice to the words of this wise and wonderful young woman ... afterall, I'm getting them third hand ...)

Annie said that God is our connection through our belly buttons ... through our belly buttons we are all connected to one another in a grand cosmic way ...

I heard that and said - "Hmmm, sounds reasonable to me ... smart young woman!"

Belly buttons are funny little things ... they connect us to our past ... and maybe Annie is right - perhaps they connect us to each other too ...

It figures ...

Over the last couple of years, I've built what I think is a funky and fun play house/tree house for my kids in the front yard ... it has two levels, a twirly slide, two ladders and windows that open and close ... It's kinda cool ...

They have played in it alot over the last couple of years. Hannah has even had sleep overs in it ... but since we got back from our trip west the poor old play house sits empty and neglected ... The new place wherein the girls are playing??

The utility shed that we ordered earlier in the summer, and that was delivered in the last few weeks ... My plan was to put the lawn mower, bikes and so forth in there ... but now it would see it has to wait ...

Figures ... it's kind of like the little kid who gets the newest coolest toy for Christmas only to play with the box it came in instead ...

(BTW, I apologize for the crummy quality of the picture ... I had a lovely photo taken this summer but when I popped the disk in my computer up popped pictures of some family I do not know, seeming to celebrate the birth of a new baby ... boy I bet they wondered why they had photos of a log cabin and bunch of rangy 12 year olds having a party on THEIR disc ... hopefully Superstore solved the problem for them, as I hope they will for me ...)

Quotation for the day ...

Yesterday I offered a Coltrane selection as the theme music for the moment wherein I found myself ... today, I turn to The Bard ... all arguments aside of whether he existed or not, or what he looked like, one has to admit the guy had a way with words ...

Having grown up in the shadow of the Festival in Stratford, and having been forced to attend and watch his plays, it is only now as I sit on the Prairies, that I realize how wonderful that was ... Being able to see world class actors perform world class plays on a world class stage for a pittance of what the tickets cost ... oh, I was so fortunate ... and I didn't see it ...

Today is a day of introspection and continuing to recovery from the mad dash back east from BC, so the words of Jacques ring true:

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms;
Then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school.
And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth.
And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin'd,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part.
The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well sav'd, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

I remember seeing As You Like It with the awesome stage presence that was Nicholas Pennell playing the role of Jacques - he was brilliant, this scene was luminous ... It breathed life into the words of the Bard ...

As one who is somewhere between 4 and 6 ... I would hope closer to 4 then 6 ... but whatever ... I find myself wondering what it is that we are strutting about upon this stage doing ...

Over lunch yesterday a good friend said - that all we can do is the best we can and look after the people around us ... I think he's right, but too often we forget to look after ourselves, and too often we become forgetfully selfish and forget to care for those closest to us ... I think as we strut about the stage of life, our task is to build healthy and caring relationships with those around us ... it's not easy ... but at the end of the day, when we are left sans teeth, sans eyes, ... sans everything, the only thing that will be left is the impressions we've left in the lives of others ...

Time and Glaciers ...

Today cruising the headlines, and even picking up a recent issue of National Geographic, I found several articles about the retreating glaciers around the world, and the possibile connection that has to global warning ... Now, while it would be tempting to launch a rant about global warning, and the dangers it represents that's not where my heart lies today ... Besides, my words would ring hollow later when I hop in my van and tear off on some errand ... thereby adding to the crisis ...

But where my heart lies today is in reflecting on standing on the ice of the Assiniboine Glacier in the Columbia Icefields last weekend ... We made a detour on the way back to Minnedosa and drove down the Icefield Parkway between Jasper and Banff ... we feasted on the vistas and we stood in awe of the majesty. Then we stopped and like tens of thousands before us took the short hike up to the toe of the glacier and stood on the ancient ice that for tens of thousands of years has carved its way through the vast valley around it ...

It was awesome to see the scale of the ice ... but it was sad to mark our journey by the concrete signs that mark where the toe was over the last 120 or so years ... each marker farther along the path marking an inevitable and seemingly unstoppable retreat of a majestic and powerful presence ...

Glaciers are amazing things ... before them lie acres and acres of crushed gravel and rock, carried for miles within their icy core and left strewn across the horizon as the ice melts ... the power with which they move and carve and change the landscape is nothing short of breathtaking ... Standing on a rocky outcrop, polished clean and deeply scarred by tiny rocks carried in the belly of the glacier as it too years to pass over it, is simply inspiring ...

It may have taken a thousand years for the ice to cross the rocky outcropping and to leave its fingerprints scratched on the polished surface ... slowly millimetre by millimetre, the stones and rocks were pushed forward by the advancing ice. The time frame imperceptible to us, but each day, each moment there was a tiny movement ... a change ... a push forward.

Up and down the valleys ... over hills ... through steam beds ... the glaciers pushed and bulldozed and transformed the landscape, not in one life time, but over dozens ... perhaps hundreds of lifetimes ... the movement and the changes happening slowly ... but happening ...

As I stood on the glacier, I thought that sometimes that's our life ... we grow, we change, we mature, we alter our landscapes ... it may not happen quickly ... but it will and it does happen ...
It continues until one day looking back over our life we can see the altered landscape, pushed and scraped and polished by the glacier that is our life ... the valleys and hills are not the same as they once were, and we can see looking back that life is not so much the destination, but life is the journey itself ... The ups and downs are marking the moments that fill our lives ... the twists and turns are where we find our meaning ... change is part of life, and though it may not happen in our expected time frames - it WILL happen ...

Given enough time and the landscape of our lives will be altered and transformed ... that much the glaciers can teach us ... we just need to be prepared to have things happen in their time frame, NOT ours ...

A closing thought though: It is sad that something that for thousands of years has provided the water of life for valleys and rivers that flow thousands of kilometres from their souce, may one day in the life time of my children simply be gone ... but it is sadder still that we live in a world that is so busy that we collectively can't take the time to pause and to consider that loss and do something constructive to stop it ...

The Theme Song of the Moment ...

As I write this, I have the great Jazz album by John Coltrane "My Favourite Things" playing on my computer ... I enveloped in the extra-ordinary music he created some 44 years ago in a studio session ... music that is timeless and awesome ...

I remember the first time I heard it ... it was back in the fall of 1990, I was living in a Graduate Student Residence at Queens University ... it was a grey dreary day ... we were all nursing hang overs from our Friday night out, and we were just lounging about on a lazy Saturday afternoon ... Then down the hall drifted my first experience of Coltrane ...

"What's that?" I asked one of my floor mates as we heard the music ... he tossed me the CD case ... I was entranced ... the music took hold of me and carried me ... I instantly became a Coltrane fan (how can you not?) and began to explore the world of Jazz music ... a journey I enjoy ...

Today is one of those days ... the sun is shining, but my spirit is restless ... the weather is glorious, but I feel unsettled ... Nothing bad ... just the come down from the trip west, and the uncertainty of what lies ahead ...

The canvas before me is blank - that is never a comfortable thing ... I have found place of peace and wholeness thanks to the guidance of a dear friend, and of late I have found a place of passion and enthusiasm thanks to the friends I have met along the way ... it's a place to begin to paint and create ... a place where bold colours and subtle tones will combine to create something beautiful ... something filled with "a few of my favourite things ..."

And it starts by breathing deep ... feeling the splendour of creation all about me ... taking stock of what I have and knowing that life is an precious gift ...

So, rather then listing what my favourite things are (it would be a very long list), I will say that my list begins anew each morning as I open my eyes to the day that has been laid out before me ... as the last threads of sleep slip away there is possibility and potential ... and as the Hebrew people said - "Dayenu ... Dayenu ..." (That would have been enough) ... but God's blessings don't simply end there ...

(on a tangent - I found a rather cool reference to Coltrane's My Favourite Things at the Blog of a friend from New York City ... I invite you to check it out (it's the entry for Tuesday June 20th entitled: On High) Katie gets Coltrane ... (it's about a third of the way down the page)
http://ktzpage.blogspot.com/2006_06_01_ktzpage_archive.html#115077164689610540 )

To be at peace, and truly be ...

We've begun our journey home ... I would like to share some snippets from the last week or so:

They are not in any particular order, but are bits and pieces of the profound sense of wonder, awe and peace that I feel as I begin the sojourn that will lead us back to Minnedosa ...

- sitting on the beach as the sun sets ... the kids have started a bon fire ... we talk about nothing, we talk about everything, we share stories from our family ...

- sitting on the bow of the boat returning to Telegraph Cove - the sun is setting in front of us ... the fog is rolling in around us ... the gill netters are working in the distance ... sitting with me are my children and my nephew ... for a brief fleeting moment, the world is perfect ...

- time spent with friends ... the gruff and wonderful native fisherman and his family - his observations and wisdom born of hard work and a no b---s---t attitude helps put things in balance ... the delightful and quirky almost lutheran pastor - his joie de vie, his perpetual optimism despite life's hard knocks and his utter devotion to the wonder and awe of life helps put things back into proper perspective ... the irrepressible and utterly unique mill wright - together we laugh, we argue, we debate ... over beer and food we've always had a good time ... a time too short, too precious, but valuable beyond all price ...

- the awe of the sacrament ... first anglican, then united ... shared amongst loving and devoted friends and community ... take this bread and never hunger - drink this cup and never thirst ... recieving for a change rather then giving ... Holiness held in my hand and heart ...

- the splendour of creation ... whales in the bay ... reef walking with the children ... bears and deer along the road ... eagles and ravens over head ... crabs and eels under foot ... how can one stand in the majesty that is the Pacific Coast and NOT feel overwhelmed by awe?

- time with family ... we argue ... we fight ... we play ... we laugh ... from the wee one of 2 1/2 to the patriarch cowboy of 8 plus decades ... we've spent time together and sometimes that alone is enough ...

Life isn't perfect ... but sometimes moments in time bring us as close to perfection as we may ever find ... it can be in the simplest of things ... but frequently, it is only when we look back on that moment when we realize how incredibly important it was ... It may be time spent with a child ... time walking in creation ... time just simply being ... in the moment it is simply time ... in time it becomes a precious memory, preserved in our hearts and in our souls ...

Such is the gift of Shalom ... may be all find those places, those times, those moments when we are truly able to be at peace and simply and truly be ...

dayenu,

Winding down ...

This morning, it felt like the first stirrings of the fall season are making their presence known on the North Island ...

Yesterday my niece was proudly waving a yellow leaf she found on the beach ... it's beginning to look like summer is slowly giving way to the fall ... and in time fall will roll over into winter ...

Can it be??

Could the seasons have turned so quickly, and so imperceptibly, that we barely notice until they are full on us, and we look back and wonder - "where did the time go?"???

Looking back though, it's been a good summer ... The kids have each gone to camp in Manitoba, they've played on the beach with half of their cousins ... they've seen a veritable plethora of wildlife from eagles and ravens to whales and seals ... I think it has been a good summer for them ...

Last night as I watched the last vestiges of sunlight touch the mainland coast visible out the mouth of Hardy Bay from "OUR" beach, I wondered how many more summers will our family have in such a delightful and magical space ... The gardens and yards and beach are filled with multi-generational memories of Mag's family ...

She and her sisters, and their mother and her siblings before them grew up and came of age on this plot of land clinging to the west side of Hardy Bay ... in the water and woods, they mucked and monkeyed ... they played and fought ... they build forts and dams and generally got into good natured mischief ... and now each summer for a few short weeks the grandchildren have gathered to follow in the foot steps of their mothers and grandmother ... they have again filled the yard with shreiks of joy and shouts of laughter ... they have, for a wonderful moment reclaimed from time, their beach, their woods, thier yard and like the generations that have come before them - played and fought, tumbled and ran ... made it their kingdom.

In the next few days we will begin packing up the van and getting ready to head "home," though, clearly home is where the heart is - and in our extended family, home is found in a tiny house perched on a hill overlooking a beach where the tide and waves and come and gone for tens of thousands of years ... home is where we gather over tea and laugh as we recall today's adventures and connect them to the canon of stories that have been amassed by the Clayton girls and the Melan children ...

Makes me wonder if Florence could have envisioned the wonderful legacy of love, laughter and life that she would leave behind when her feet first left England's civilized shore and ended up in the rugged North West where she met a Norwegian logger/fisherman with whom she fell in love ... I doubt it ... but from the stories that are told of her, and the memories that are cherished by her grandchildren ... well, there can be little doubt that she is looking down on her legacy, and like the rest of us, laughing and delighting in the sheer joy that abounds on the beach each summer when the COUSINS get together at Grandma and Grandpa Beach's ...

Today it doesn't matter how many more summers we'll have together ... what really matters is that we've had so many together up until now and we carry forward wonderful new memories that will echoe and resound across Hardy Bay long after we're gone ...

In a few days we'll pack up the van - but the most precious things will NOT get packed in the van, but rather will be carried in the hearts and minds of the "cousins" as they look forward to next year's adventures (and misadventures).

May it be a short year ...

Something truly extra-ordinary ...

Yesterday after attending the worship service at St Columba Anglican/United Church in Port Hardy, the kids and I (along with thier only boy cousin), went to the Whale Museum alongside the Stubb's Island Whale Watching Tours in Telegraph Cove - south east of Port McNeill.

It was a very neat place to visit. Inside a rebuilt, and expanded old net loft building, they've gathered a wide variety of skulls, bones, exhibits and skeletons of marine wildlife found all over the coast. From the ceiling hangs an enormous Fin Whale Skeleton - it was the victim of a cruise ship in 1999, when it got stuck on the bow of a Cruise ship and was found when it pulled into the Port of Vancouver - I remember the newpaper stories, and always wondered what happened to it ... Yesterday I found out.

They have skulls from Sperm Whales, and Orcas, skeletons of Sea Lions, seals and every porpoise imaginable ... it was a good place to gain an appreciation of the large mammals with whom we share this corner of the world ... We spent a couple of hours wandering around checking out the displays in the museum. Then we walked up and down the Board Walk (Telegraph Cove is an old fishing and logging community built on a board walk - today it is a high end resort community for fishing, sight seeing and vacationing), then we headed home.

On the way we stopped and had a visit with our friends Uni and Melody from Bella Coola. They are in Port McNeill waiting for the next fishing opening, so they can take their boats out and try for the big pay off ... We had visited with them a couple of weeks ago when they were in Hardy - yesterday we sat on their boat in McNeill and had a good chat about life, the cosmos and fishing ...

Then it was a "fast" trip home ... road construction ensured it took almost an hour to get from Port McNeill to Port Hardy ...

But after supper came the second highlight of the day ... while we were doing dishes I noticed the lingering cloud of a whale spray over the reef. I then saw what I thought was a dorsal fin of an Orca - WRONG !!!

Turned out it was a Humpback whale in the bay !!!!!

Dishes were interupted while we dashed down to the beach and watched for about 30 minutes while the whale played, swam and generally frolicked in the bay out in front of the reef in front of the house. No full body breaches, but a few glimpses of the jaw poking out of the water like a huge whitish black triangle, lots of good views of the back surgacing and sinking, and a wonderful glimpse of a glistening black tail stuck out of the water. It was thrilling ...

Last week's quick glimpse of Orcas off the reef was great - last night's show by the humpback whale was truly breath-taking.

It may not seem like THAT big a deal to many people - afterall, we are on the west coast and there are whale watching tours all over the place - but in my mother in law's almost 8 decades of existence, the last two years are the first time she ever remembers seeing the BIG whales right in Hardy Bay ... Orcas have come in, but since the whaling days of the west coast, the big whales have not been seen on the inner coasts, nor in bays like Port Hardy's.

It is a momentous event ... it is truly something extra-ordinary !!!!

A Post Card Exchange ...

Before we started this sojourn, I sent a post card to a woman in Australia who has a couple of wonderful web sites ... One is called - "Meow's Post Card Exchange) - you can access it at: http://wolfgirlkitty5.blogspot.com/

If you go back to the August 3rd and August 2nd entries, you will find some post cards that I sent to her while we were wending out way across Canada.

I mailed them as we went, and ALL of them arrived in her post box in LESS then a week !!!

You can say many things about Canada Post, but you can't say they were slow - atleast not in this case ...

I think I'll have to send her some more post cards before this holiday comes to an end ... It's a fun way to make the world a smaller place ...

Thanks Meow ... and keep watching your post ...

Musings on the last few weeks ...

Today the kids and I did a reef walk ... that is, during low tide we walked along the edge of the reef out in front of Grandma and Grandpa Beach's and searched in the nooks and crannies for whatever sea life we could find ...

We found hundreds of crabs of almost every variety to be found in the inter-tidal zone of the North-west coast. We found sea cucumbers, anenomes, and starfish of every size, colour and variety imaginable ...

Other highlights of the walk included finding the remains of someone's "lunch". It was the shell or a red sea urchin, complete with the spines (or prickles as H & B called them). It was scooped and is now destined to be someone's sharing at school in the fall ...

We also found a HUGE light pink star fish draped over a rock on the outer reef ... we couldn't find it in the inter-tidal zone book, so we think it was a deep water kind ... When I get my photos developed, I'll post it's photo here ...

It was a lovely way to spend a morning ...

It has been a wonderful time spent on the beach at Grandma and Grandpa's ... we've watched the juvenile and mature Bald Eagles roam up and down the shore and tumble and fight over the bay ... we've been harassed and entertained by a murder (or coven) of Ravens who have taken up residency on the beach ... we were completely awed by a pod of Orcas (or killer whales) who came into the bay earlier this week and surfaced a couple hundred yards off shore (they were so close we could see their white face patches above their eyes).

Wild life has abounded ... the sun has made an appearence most days and it has been wonderful ...

Nature's bounty has helped bring balance back to our lives ... the kids have played with their cousins ... they've roamed the beach ... they've splashed with the kayaks ... they've learned how to shot a bb gun, a bow (not very well - and with one near miss on me), and a sling shot ... they've had fun ... as have we all.

It's been a good break ... it's been a good time ... and there is still some time to go ...