The Return of Ordinary Time
July has surrendered, perhaps gratefully, to August. The days are noticeably shorter. In this wet and frequently gray-roofed summer, the plant life has waxed powerfully: we feel to be living in...
View ArticleRaspberries
Every day now, I am outside at least once a day picking raspberries. They grow in canes against a wire fence that separates us from one of our neighbours. When we moved here seven years ago, there were...
View ArticleOne of those dreams
In the sunlightlooking backward,I see our livestogether as a huge house, long and wide, in which we walktogether and apart,through roomsdark and light,cold and warm,windowless,windows open,walking as...
View ArticleThe Peat Fire (Considering Seamus Heaney)
I don't know what I expected--a smell of old and strange earthso unexpected, so strongthat my very eyes would tear upuncontrollably, my heart tumescent withthunderstruck recognitionthat here, now, I...
View ArticleSent forth
Sunday our commissioning service took place at a small church where we live here in Thunder Bay. Invited by the World Council of Churches through the auspices of our home denomination, the United...
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Poinsetta wet
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }Poinsetta wet, originally...
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Some of the places we have been, Part 1
Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Old City, Jerusalem St George's Lutheran Church, Old City, Jerusalem Ceiling of Lutheran Christmas Church, BethlehemPipe organ array, Lutheran Christmas Church
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Journey to Galilee
I suspect that like most Christians, I am geographically challenged when it comes to the Gospel narratives. Like, I always thought that Jesus was more of a southerner, given his birth in Bethlehem,...
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Jerusalem's Perfect Storm
Let me say at the outset that, concerning the snowstorm that crippled Jerusalem, we missed it. But it did not miss us. We were, in fact, in Haifa, where the worst we encountered was fairly stiff rains...
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On the Jaffa Beach (The Further Adventures of Tourists Us)
Today, you could say that we went on a diplomatic mission. Being internationals in a foreign country (Israel), it behooves us or anyone staying here for any length of time to make themselves known to...
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Places We Have Been, Further
Monastere de l'Emmanuel, Bethlehem, Detail of sanctuary.Monastere de l'Emmanuel, Bethlehem, SanctuaryAngel, Monastere de l'Emmanuel, BethlehemMini grotto(?), Monastere de l'Emmanuel, Bethlehem View of...
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A Walk Through the Old City, Jerusalem
I had occasion yesterday to walk on a different route around the Old City of Jerusalem. I am more familiar with the New Gate area, Herod's Gate and Damascus Gate, but yesterday, I was taken around to...
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The Garden Tomb, a find...
I have mentioned being in places where Jesus walked and ministered, places like Capernaum, Kursi, and the Jordan at the south end of the Sea of Galilee. But there was one place where he had been, right...
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Where we've been: Jacob's Well
In the city of Nablus, to which we journeyed yesterday, there are two sites of potential importance, related to each other. One is the archaeological site, Tell Balata, associated with or actually, the...
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It Doesn't Always Go Right, or, Why You Should Heed Guidebooks at Times...
The day started well: we resolved, three of us this time, to go up the Mount of Olives and walk across and down before returning through the Old City to where we were staying. Ambitious, but we used...
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Flying home
This bold fellow, which I believe to be a hooded crow, was keeping its predatory watch on a public park in West Jerusalem. I have always wanted to get some bird pictures, but the birds themselves are...
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Question
On a noisy, drafty airport shuttle bus,in my arms I carried a question.When I opened the hotel door, the question had wriggledin my arms, trying to escape.At the cabin door, under the stewardess's...
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What was really going on...
Israeli soldiers at the village of Al Khadr, south of Bethlehem. Obstensibly there to prevent stones being thrown at settlers, the soldiers are known to deliberately provoke violence by attacks on the...
View ArticleMimi
Aziz does not look for Mimiwhen he opens the steel shop doorin the Old City a few minutes' walkfrom Damascus Gate, through narrow stone-paved pathsbetween shops and shops and shopslike Aziz's except...
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