What the hell are we doing in Afghanistan

Five Canadian soldiers killed in one week in Afghanistan. Thirty-eight this year. If her majesties loyal opposition had any guts they would bring down the government on the question of whether our troops should be pulled out of that country immediately. I know that a majority of the House of Commons voted to extend our commitment to NATO until 2010, but, we do get to change our minds as circumstances change. And they have changed.

The government of Afghanistan abuses, some say torturers, prisoners. The government of Afghanistan is in place as a result of a rigged election. Relatives of the President of Afghanistan hold key positions in the government of that sorry country. Ministers known to be corrupt have been reappointed subsequent to the election by the President of Afghanistan. As the war escalates more civilians are killed and the citizenry of Afghanistan increasingly sees NATO and their own government as complicit in those deaths. Al Queda may inspire and finance the Taliban, but it is universally accepted that their headquarters are not in Afghanistan but in Pakistan, supposedly a friend of the west, but one which has taken precious little action to strike at the Al Queda leadership. The current sources of the Al Queda threats against the west are in Africa, not Afghanistan. The Taliban and a significant portion of the Afghan people rely on opium poppies to eke out an existence and NATO has targeted this crop and economy without building an infrastructure that will replace it.

Canadian soldiers are dying for absolutely nothing in this country. It is time to bring them home. It is time to walk away.

We are not fighting Al Queda in Afghanistan. We are not fighting to uphold democracy in Afghanistan. We are not fighting so that egalitarian values might be extended to women or Christians or gays or any other group in Afghanistan. We are sure as hell not fighting for a right cause in Afghanistan.

It is time to call in the planes and bring our troops home.

I know what I know

It is the day after Christmas and I am enjoying it by myself. A bit of picking up around the house this morning, a couple of chapters of New Seeds of Contemplation this afternoon, maybe a movie this evening if the DVD player will work (it has a ghost defect that has it working or not with no apparent cause one way or the other).

My previous post, The Christmas Gift, has opened up a wonderful mish-mash of thoughts over the past few days that have quite unexpectedly led me to some enlightening, and interesting and, occasionally, troubling insights into myself.

I have come to a, hence unknown, understanding that I am full of experiences that have lost little of their impact or immediacy as my life has moved along it's path. For all of my smartness, or intelligence, for all of the gifts of understanding that being well-read has brought, I do not think of myself as being much of a thinker.

Hmmm, I'm saying this poorly. What informs my interactions with the world is not what I know in the sense of what I have read or heard, but what I know in the sense of what I have experienced.

There is that lovely line in the Gospel of Luke: "And Mary kept all of these things, reflecting on them in her heart." (NAB)

I seems to me that my development as a spiritual person has been forged in the crucible of experience rather than through the accumulation of knowledge. Whether those experiences are rock my world events like the births of my kids and the deaths of my parents and of my girl's mom, or moments in contemplative prayer, or the day to day happenings that take me out of time as I am touched by others, the result is the same. The experiences become a part of me and I keep them, and increasingly reflect on them in, my heart.

The Education for Ministry program at St. George, has brought this knowledge of self into full flower. After four years of taking the program and half a year of mentoring and all that I have learned in that time, I believe less of our creeds than I would have thought possible while remaining a Christian, yet my faith is greater than it has ever been.

Most of the touchstones of my earlier faith have become quite insignificant.

Was Jesus God? did he do miracles? did he rise from the dead? do you need to be a Christian to be saved? is there life after death? are heaven or hell places?

To all of these and more I am inclined to say no, or at best, it doesn't matter.

Yet for that, I know that my Christian tradition has led me to experiences where I can say..I believe in one God, creator and steward of heaven and earth, most clearly revealed to me through Jesus and existent on earth through this glorious Spirit that invades our hearts and enables our actions.

It seems that in today's world right belief is required to be based on proofs. Whether those proofs are scientific or apologetic or charismatic is not important as long as you can shore up your beliefs with something that can be dressed up as a proof.

I guess that I am out of step. I know what I know to be true. It is a funny world...

The Christmas Gift

The beginning of Christmas week. Where has this year gone? It seems to me that thought comes with more frequency as the years pass.

We have lit the forth Advent Candle at church, the sandwich ministry has served the pre-Christmas December meals, the Live Nativity and the Christmas Pageant were great successes and the presents are wrapped and the cards mailed.

Now, all of these wonderful and necessaries being done, the anticipation of the celebration of the Light come into the world begins to take hold.

This is a wonderful part of my year, when, all of the stuff that precedes Christmas being dealt with, there comes a moment during a day when my heart lets me know that it is opening itself in anticipation of, in yearning for, the gift.

This moment is not only with me at Christmas, what a poor thing that would be. But, while those moments of God revealed within come with pleasing irregularity throughout the year, that moment at Christmas is Christmas.

I do not have the combination of education or skill to explain the nature of this gift, this experience. I suppose, even if I had such talents that I believe God to be inexplicable and the experience of God to be something that cannot be communicated well in words.

Here is the closest that I can come, by describing everyday incidents that mirror and approach the anticipation and then the gift that my faith gives me, always at Christmas, occasionally at other times:

When Laura was pregnant with Eli and her time came around she had a very difficult labour. Hour upon hour in the hospital, me alternately raging at the doctors to do something and fearing that what was happening was not OK and occasionally being possessed by rather unkind thoughts towards the imagined object of the delay (Laura). Always, entwined about this maelstrom of feeling, a space, an until then unknown emptiness, and the anticipation of that space being filled.

And then, after what I recall totalled twenty-three hours of hard labour the fear born of the suddenness of the nurses wheeling Laura down the hall with great speed and the hurried words of another nurse explaining-we'll do a c-section, don't worry, she'll be OK.

In a bit they came and got me and said that Laura was fine and I looked into the plastic box that Eli lay in, pink and wrinkly and still sticky with yellow and red stuff, and the hole inside was filled. God, was it filled. Overflowing, uncontainable, laughing, crying. Joy? Tenderness? Completion? I don't think that there are words to describe that which filled me such that me was no more for those moments.

And it was no less a decade and a half later when Patty brought Jessica, and two years after that, Alley, into the world.

Life is not always about new babies and such, so I'll tell you about the other experience in my life that mirrors the gift of Christmas.

My mom, Fran, had a tough time with cancer at the end of her life. God but it ate her away. At the end mom was in hospice and the family was gathered and the time came around and she took one last breath and was gone.

The nurse came to do her necessaries and, in what seemed like no time at all, the family left.

I sat beside this old woman whose body had borne me, whose arms and warm bosom had comforted me, whose hopes and prayers had lifted me up, and within me a desolate foreboding, a dreadful anticipation of her passing, an overwhelming fear, all of which I had secretly harboured all the days of mom's illness, was subsumed within a flood of joy, of thankfulness, of the rightness of this moment. What filled me was such that for those moments I was no longer me and all that I was was the gift of this woman's life and a companion with her in her passing.

I rested with my mom for a bit until our moment was broken by one of the hospice nurses who came in and, sitting beside me, asked if I was OK. Yes!

Then she took my hand in hers and I was blessed with yet another experience, different, yet the same as that which followed mom's death and which accompanied the births of my children.

And which graces me every Christmas, and sometimes in between.

God bless you all. Merry Christmas

You'll have to click on this photo to make out the detail blending into the road. This Heron is not likely to make it through it's first winter if it keeps up the behaviour it evidenced when I took the photo. First sight of it, it was wandering through a plastic culvert. Wandering is not really editorial. Not an apparent care in the world. Stumbling, squawking, and noisily flapping. Trying, in my opinion to attract every coyote within half a mile. Sheesh!!! After I snapped the photo I walked up to within about four feet, at which point the bird flapped and croaked and then took to the air. Natural selection looking for a place to happen.

It is pretty cold outside these days, at least by west coast standards. Pretty tough times for the homeless who live in our midst.

There is a petition going the rounds at church these days calling on the government to decriminalize prostitution and to criminalize the actions of the Johns who pay for the services of prostitutes. It does seem to me like knee-jerk thinking. The social conditions that foster and sustain the sex trade will not be significantly challenged by changing the laws. As a society we seem incapable of engaging with the underlying conditions that lead men and women into prostitution. Even more incapable of changing the mindset that sanctions the actions of those who use prostitutes. The petition being what it is it is pretty hard to say no to the request to sign. The implication in a no is that one either supports prostitution or sanctions the status quo.

idle thoughts

November is about over and Christmas is near. Whew!!! where has this year gone?

Most of the post-harvest cleanup at the farm is done. Another year...

Alley is off visiting Jessie in Nova Scotia. I'm glad that she could work in the trip before starting a new job. That work-a-day thing pretty much gets in the way of cross country family visits.

I spent the better part of today cleaning the carpets in the house. Well, in truth I cleaned half of them. Moving bookcases and such out of the front room required moving the books and albums and I couldn't resist stopping to look through the old photos and spending more than a few moments delving into books that haven't come to hand for a time. I can hardly call this exercise procrastinating. Or is it that I won't call it such? When pushing 60, one should seek out moments to indulge in visiting memory lane.

Alley is going to move into her new suite in Poco on the fifteenth of December and I will have to get used to being an empty-nester. Should be a challenge. I don't think most of us really engage with the concept of being alone until we are.

Sheila's cancer has moved into yet another nasty stage and this winter will be long for the whole family. I think that she and Dick have been married for almost fifty years. It is a blessing to them both that they are together.

Well, this is bordering on maudlin, so I'll put it to bed and head there myself.

another harvest

This can will hold about 60,000 pounds of cranberries when full. Sounds like a lot. This year harvest came in at about twenty percent less than last year. The joys of farming! We pulled off about two hundred and forty thousand pounds of berries, which is fifty thousand below 2008. Trash and rots were high and the price is low.

Oh well, as farmers are wont to say, next year will be a new year.

I am attending a series of seminars in North Vancouver on Contemplative Prayer. The program rises out of the work of Fr. Thomas Keating, a Trappist monk from Snowmass, Colorado. The material is a loving exposition and extension of an ancient tradition in Christian practice. One of my many guides in recent years has been Thomas Merton, also a Trappist, and the work of Brother Keating encompasses much of the personal journey of Merton.

Given the precarious state of the farm's affairs I have taken a layoff for the balance of the winter. I expect that, in between seeking work, I will spend a good part of the winter doing small stuff at the farm to pass the time and in anticipation of my recall in late winter. Thank God for Canada's Employment Insurance program. I am not certain that the powers that be at EI would understand the concept of me working for no money during a layoff, but just ignoring the day to day necessities on the farm while I await recall seems wrong to me. Of course I will seek a like position in the cranberry community during the winter, but it's not likely that anyone will be hiring before my expected date of recall.

My friend Sheila's cancer has entered a new and difficult stage. She is such a strong person, physically and in faith, and is doing much more than just coping with this new reality. I do wonder at the strength that adversity reveals in folks who are tested beyond what seem bearable limits.

Alley has finished her care aide course and will now begin looking for work in the real world. Jess continues her piano teaching in Sackville, Nova Scotia. She called a couple of days ago to report fresh snow on the ground. I remember the wonders of first snow and am excited that she is experiencing them.

Well, enough of this for now...

The Pastoral Office of Bishop

The Anglican Diocese of New Westminster, as an extension of it's Vision 2018 process, has sponsored a workshop series titled, Church Depot.

Vision 2018, over the past two years, has worked to craft a program that will enable the Diocese to assist parishes to revitalize as they minister to the needs of current members and project the good news of Jesus into our communities. As that work takes place the office of the Diocese will change significantly the ways in which it has administered and supported ministry. After many meetings within the Diocese, a comprehensive exposition of the plan in draft form and a major rewrite after the draft was circulated, the plan was presented to Synod 2009 and approved by an overwhelming majority of delegates.

It is not surprising, given the success of this initiate, that the National Church has now embarked on a similar program titled Vision 2019.

The latest effort of Church Depot was expressed yesterday in the presentation of a seminar, attended by about 150 people, entitled, Cascadia: Spiritual but not Religious.

The hook that the seminar hung on was data that suggested that in the Cascadia area, stretching from Alaska south through to Northern California, an overwhelming majority of people identify themselves as being spiritual but not religious.

The day consisted of keynote statements by two individuals, Patricia O'Connell Killen, who is a member of a Christian tradition and, Kolin Lymworth, self-identified as not belonging to a specific religion but practicing some Buddhist forms and being conversant with many other expressions of what is often called non-traditional spirituality.

The audience broke into small groups for discussion and after lunch the speakers, joined by Bishop Michael, and moderated by Douglas Todd responded to a number of questions and statements from the audience.

Given the self-identification of most participants as Christian, the parameters of the discussion centred on how we (Christians) respond to those who see themselves as being spiritual but not religious. For me, the most remarkable element of the afternoon was the degree of acceptance by most of the speakers of the validity of a wide range of spiritual inclinations and practices outside the Christian tradition.

The day was informative, to say the least.

The remarkable thing about this gathering is that it was initiated through the office of the Bishop. Remarkable because the hierarchy of main-stream Christian churches seldom takes on issues as difficult as the one that titled this seminar. Seldom lets the word ecumenical be stretched to encompass what organized religion often refers to as the fringes of spirituality.

I would argue that this day of learning and of reflection was a critical element of the pastoral office of the Bishop.

A deliberate step in the implementation of Vision 2018.

Following on yesterdays events Bishop Michael visited the Parish of St. George in Maple Ridge for our 10AM service and celebrated with us the baptism of six Christians. As we all reaffirm our baptism at this core service of the church, we coud be said to have actually celebrated the baptism of over one hundred and sixty. A wonderful and uplifting affirmation of who we are as Christians and of the ancient traditions the source of which we remember by carrying them into the present. Another expression of the pastoral office of the Bishop.

During the service Bishop Michael preached on the first reading of today which was taken from the Book of Job. It was as clear and defining an exposition of this wondrous book as I have ever heard. A copy of the sermon can be found at: http://www.stgeorgemr.org/ The teaching office is a significant element of the pastoral office of the Bishop.

Bishop Michael has had so much on his plate over the past several years as the consequences of the Synod decisions to allow same sex blessing have unfolded that those consequences have in many ways overshadowed, though not diminished, his role as pastor to our community. It is my greatest hope that our Bishop, as these, "big," issues are resolved, uses the remaining years of his ministry to practice use of those gifts with which the Spirit has so amply blessed him. The gift he has to reach out and draw in to the center of our community those on the fringes, the gift of speaking with a prophetic voice, the gift of being able to teach, the gift of being able to build healthy communities.

raptors

This is getting to be a bit of a critter blog... This time of the year the weeds begin to die back and all manner of raptors cruise the open areas of our fields looking to snack on moles, voles and mice. Small rodents find a lot of protection under the cranberry vines, but not a great deal of food. The open areas where the weeds flourish have a banquet of seeds grasses and other goodies that attract small mammals building up their winter fat reserves. And so the birds come...

critters

Great Blue Heron. We get a lot of these around the farm. Pretty spectacular birds. For reasons that are beyond me I find the remains of up to half a dozen of them in the fields every year. The only thing that I can figure is that they ground roost during the nights and coyotes get lucky every now and then. When I lived in Victoria there was a Heron colony that roosted in the tops of the trees near Goodacre Lake in Beacon Hill Park. There is a Heron colony not far from the dikes here in Pitt Meadows.

The cranberries are coming along at their own speed this year. Usually by this time we have the colour peaking and are just waiting for the neighbour to finish off his harvest before we start ours. This year the colour is coming slow and I would not be suprised if we don't start our harvest until the beginning of November. It is not a big problem as long as we don't find ourselves in a deep freeze. Three years ago we were booming and loading out in a heavy snow storm and the day after we finished there was half an inch of ice on the bogs. Bloody cold. Of course when it is that chilly, the chances of bending too low and getting a gallon of water slopping into your chest waders seems to increase.

damned dog

These two stood, half in and half out of the water, for three hours today while the neighbours Shepherd menaced them from the top of the dike. They were afraid to move out of the water and the dog was smart enough to listen to their growls and hisses and not take them on. In the end I locked the mutt in the barn for an hour so these raccoons could be on their way. Another small drama on a cranberry farm.

We should start harvesting somewhere around the twentieth of October. Everything is ready and now it is just a matter of waiting. Of course I fret about how things will go. Just my nature, I suppose.

I am now three weeks into mentoring our EfM group at St. George's. Melody provides a good strong lead and the group is forgiving of my early short-comings. The great thing is that I am enjoying the lessons as much now as I did when I took them. Pretty neat. I think so much hinges on experiencing what another sees in the program and then examining that in contrast to what I see.

dunging out

For ten years, give or take, I've been drawn along a faith journey.

For ten years I've struggled to make meaning of my life as I lived it during those years between the day in my seventeenth year when I turned my face away from my faith and the day in 1999 when I stepped onto the pathway of faith again.

Today I spent two hours dunging out Grandma Knight's battered old hope chest.

For the past thirty plus years this wooden box has served as repository for stuff that I couldn't throw out. Today it is empty and two garbage bags await a run to the tip.

What a collection!

Expired drivers licences and hunting licenses and car insurances papers and bills of sale for a dozen or more vehicles, owned, used and gone.

Three marriage certificates.

Copies of three sets of divorce papers and the bills for securing those divorces.

Hundreds of, not quite good enough for the album, photos spanning three marriages and a dozen work sites.

Negatives of photos kept and photos long lost. Never to be re-developed.

Clippings from newspapers. Whole newspapers. Yellowed and brittle in some cases.

The account of my only arrest (Public Mischief: I was 19 and the price was 3 months in the can or a five hundred dollar fine. Back then the courts believed in big sticks!)

The account of my son's first arrest. (It was a shock to open the paper that day and see the he was a known heroin addict and drug dealer. (3 months, 1 year of probation.)

The whole Victoria Times Colonist from the first moon landing.

The same paper from Pierre Trudeau's funereal date.

The Vancouver Sun with a front page photo of a group of us from Local 40 rallying outside the offices of some desperately evil employer.

Memberships in shooting clubs, hunting clubs, camp grounds, canoe clubs, book clubs, music clubs... these must be who I thought I was.

Scads of paper from UVic documenting my short foray into university life before a good job in the bush called me away.

Journals from a dozen different points in my life. Pages where I read back and shudder at my immaturity and where the pattern of failed relationships can be seen, book to book, to repeat over and over.

Letters ranging over twenty-five years from, and in some cases copies of letters to, girlfriends, wives and lovers. Ah, to be able to steal a scene from a movie and go out and say, I'm sorry.

Stuff from when I cooked for a living, from when I worked building log homes, from when I gardened, from when I worked for a union, from when I fancied myself a budding poet.

Credentials and invitations. To the Older Boys Parliament in Victoria, to Synod in Toronto as a guest ( not quite old enough to be a youth delegate, if they had such back then), to the Lieutenant Governor's New Years Tea, to Diocese of New Westminster Synod, to the Union's International Convention, to Mt. View's 20 year reunion, to attend court to deal with this or that motor vehicle infraction...

What would all of this mean to my girls if I dropped dead and they had to rummage through it? I doubt that much of it would change how they see me. I suppose they would laugh a bit and perhaps cry a bit and then do what I have done...two garbage bags.

All the while that I spent emptying the box I kept thinking of Zoe Fetherstonhaugh, a parishioner at St. George who died in January of this year. It was her wish that the following poem be read out at her funereal:

Dust If You Must

Dust if you must, but wouldn't it be better

To take a picture or write a letter,

Go to whist or plant a seed.

Ponder the difference between want and need.

Dust if you must, but there's not much time,

With rivers to swim and mountains to climb.

Music to hear and books to read,

Friends to cherish and life to lead.

Dust if you must, but the worlds out there

With the sun in your eyes, and the wind in your hair,

A flutter of snow, a shower of rain.

This day will not come round again.

Dust if you must, but bear in mind,

Old age will come and it's not kind.

And when you go and go you must,

You, yourself will return to dust.

Today I dusted. Thanking God that it was time to stop dragging this stuff along. Thanking Zoe for the poem and wondering at the beauty of the love that informs relationships n our Christian family. Now there are all of those other things to do. Life...

Now here is a beauty! We get a good number of bears coming down from the hills to partake of the bounty of the neighbour's blueberry fields. The farm next over has strung electric fencing for the past two years to deter the critters, but the neighbour, lacking common sense has set the line at the innermost edge of the municipal ditch. The bears work up a fair speed going down into the ditch from the roadside and go through the fence at the field side at top speed, hardly feeling the charge in the wire as their passage breaks it.

I suppose the blueberry grower will figure it out sooner or later...or maybe not. Though I have read reports of bears in the eastern US eating cranberries we've never seen them do this at our farm.

Rumours had the largest farm in our area shooting half a dozen bears last year. It is indicative of how screwed up our environmental protection laws are that such is allowed to happen. There are relatively inexpensive ways to discourage bears from getting in amongst the crops, none of which require killing the critter. I have always figured that by the simple expedient of requiring farmers to report publicly when they shoot bears or coyotes in the fields the carnage would cease. The citizenry should be appalled that for the simple presence of a bear in a blueberry field the response has to be, bang, bang.

idle thoughts

It is definately the dog days of summer at the farm. Not much to do in terms of field work except watch the weeds grow and wait for the berries to size up and colour. This is the season for cleaning ditches with our EX60 and spraying dike weeds and, of course, dreaming about the harvest. I always remember, After Apple Picking, at this time of year.

Summer at church has been slow, as is usual. Lots of folks go away on vacation and some, with Sunday school on hiatus for the summer, just don't come. Another couple of weeks and we'll be back to our regular attendance.

I came across two wonderful quotes this week. The first was W.B. Yeates who said that he takes full credit for all interpretations of his poetry. The second was Wilfred Owen who wrote, during the first world war, that on the battlefield there was often no distinction between blasphemy and prayer.

the evil one

Yesterday, in the absence of our minister, who is on vacation, we had a Service of the Word at St. George. During the course of the Homily, given by our postulant to the Diaconate, reference was made to, 'the evil one.'

By other names, Satan, Beelzebub, Lucifer, Old Scratch, the devil and so on.

One of the stranger cultural artifacts that the writers of the books that make up the New Testament have left us is that they refer to this entity more often than they refer to the Holy Spirit.

In portraying this creature those authors depart from the image in the Hebrew Scriptures of Satan and craft a new and troubling image of a creature with godlike powers, holding dominion over the earth and it's inhabitants.

Much of modern North American Christianity has seized on this image and regularly uses it as a tool to encourage correct behaviour/belief, or to condemn those who do not share 'right belief', as agents of the devil. The great western church, the Roman Catholics, have also given cult-like status to the devil.

The devil, a curious malignancy that has flourished, been nourished by the church, and that is, in many ways, crippling the body of Christ here on earth.

St. Augustine took the view that God created the world and saw that all things were good. For him, God certainly did not create evil, nor did he create a lesser order of gods who include the devil and demons.

It is troubling that the absence of good in a moment, in a thing, should be characterized as the work of an outside agency. Especially troubling in that by crafting or acknowledging such an entity we are so easily prepared to surrender the monotheistic underpinnings of our faith.

At the heart of our humanity is the ability to choose to do right, and on the flip side, our ability to choose to do wrong. God has built into us the gift of discernment and given us the right of choosing. There is little need to look to an outside agent as the cause of our choices, we must look to ourselves.

When John characterized Jesus as, 'the Way,' he was personifying in Him the choice that lies in each of us.

Flip Wilson's cry, 'the devil made me do it,' was a joke, not a theological statement.

Perhaps Solzhenitsyn said it best when he wrote, 'If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the dividing line between good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.'

Or, as Walt Kelly, a truly great American said, 'I have seen the enemy and he is me.'

Turkey Vultures, EFM and fresh blueberries

Not a really good image, but if you click on it you can see that it is a Turkey Vulture. First ones that I have seen in Pitt Meadows. It and it's mate were feeding on some critter that had expired in this field for two days and making sport of chasing a couple of Eagles away while doing so. Always some thing new on a farm.

Speaking of something new, we have had record breaking heat for all six days this week. It does get a tad oppressive at times. Then there is the futility of trying to sleep when third floor bedrooms have been building a heat load all day. Oh well, these will be pleasant memories in January and February when the rain is cold and the wind is helping it find every crevice in the wet weather gear.

EfM and my debut as a mentor in September has been much on my mind over this past week. I signed up with a web-site that connects mentors and was quite blown away by the incredibly generous welcome that came my way from folks who have been mentoring in the program for many years. Over my lifetime it seems that Christians, in all of our varied guises, have worked quite hard to give ourselves a less than positive name. Perhaps I'm being too hard on us as a collective group. That being said, I am regularly refreshed by the expression of welcome, of acceptance as you are and of sister and brotherhood that flows out from so many of those who have taken the EfM journey.

I've done a few bits and pieces for one of our neighbours who farms blueberries as well as cranberries and they gave me a twenty pound crate of the little blue beauties yesterday. About nineteen pounds more than Alley and I could go through so I passed them on to my favorite baker. She was quite pleased and my reward will be that in the depths of winter a blueberry loaf will appear to remind me of the summer. Not a bad exchange at all.

Everything good goes around.

to Janet Land, whenever this may find you

Forty years since Eagle landed on the moon. Forty years. There is a part of me that wants to rage at how fast those years have gone. At how carelessly many of them were spent.

Oh well, raging does little good.

When that first pair of humans touched down on the moon in 1969, I was in the back seat of a car with Janet Land, travelling down a dirt road near the Sooke potholes outside of Victoria. I think we were in Dan Mercer's car, but am not sure about that. The radio signal was poor, but we pulled over and heard the landing account and then listened when the station segued into, Good Morning Starshine.

What a wonderful thing, to have been born in the fifties and to have come to adulthood in the sixties and seventies.

Janet Land. Hmm, five foot nothing, blond hair, fair skin, the most beautiful eyes imaginable and a lovely voice. My first love. Well, I'm not certain that the infatuation I felt was really love; but sure as hell it was the closest thing to love that I'd experienced in my eighteen years.

I was about as naive as could be as high school came to an end and, for me, being with sweet Janet was nothing short of being struck by lightening. I clearly remember the blend of grownup desire leavened with the fears instilled by parents who equated anything sexual with sin and hell and all over-laid by my sense of being a six foot two, hundred and thirty pound dork.

It is a strange thing, how certain memories fix in our minds.

When I heard the news report of the anniversary of the first Apollo landing that moment in '69 rushed into my mind and the anchor was my memory of Janet.

We didn't date for long and late that year I moved to Alberta for work and that was that until one day in the early '90's when I was at Victoria General Hospital to visit my dad who was going in for emergency surgery and, who walked off the elevator that I was waiting for but Janet.

We talked for a couple of minutes, me preoccupied with the urgency of dad's condition, and said our goodbyes, and headed off in opposite directions. Maybe five minutes.

Five minutes when all of that stuff from '69 came flooding back.

So, I had this memory when I heard this news item a couple of days ago and I felt an overwhelming urge to call Janet and say, hi. To say, do you remember. To say, I do. To say, I hope that life has been good to you. To say, thank you.

I actually looked the number up in the Victoria book. Only one Janet Land, if that is still her name. Could be her. Could be... But I didn't call. I am blessed with that memory of that moment and that in itself is enough of a gift.

Whenever you might come across this, Janet, from forty years on, I thank you for the presence you left in my life.

Summer is truly here at Sandhill Cranberry Farm. The weeds have run amok over the past four weeks. Our biggest pest is Yellow Weed, sometimes called Yellow Loosestrife. Close behind are Sheep Sorrel, Bog St. John's Wort, Creeping Buttercup and that ubiquitous survivor of the age of the dinosaurs, Horsetail. The bloom is almost done and fruit set has begun, so spraying is out of the equation.

Now I wipe. And wipe. And wipe. A hollow hockey stick with about two litres of roundup/water mix in the handle and a six inch by four inch bit of carpet on the end that one lovingly brushes over the tops of the offending species, all the while taking care not to touch the vines below. It is a fine job for those with no imagination and a good tolerance of thirty-five degree weather.

Today the thermometer in the pump house topped out at thirty-three. Usually the bog thermo is two to three degrees higher. Oh well, this is the season when peeling off five pounds of water weight is the norm.

I am a third of the way through, The History of Christian Theology, which is my current acquisition from, The Teaching Company, and which is proving to be as well structured as the Professor's course entitled, Augustine, Philosopher and Saint.

I have to say that these course offerings are a great way to learn without going to school. I am certain that the level of teaching is above that given by many colleges, though the absence of extensive reading lists and testing does inhibit the process.

Phillip Cary is the instructor on the two above mentioned courses and his presentation is terrific.

Being able to access such material for about fifty bucks a course is a wonderful democratization of the learning system.

Well, enough of this...

some thoughts on N. T. Wright, or, yet another reason why Christianity is in trouble

I feel a rant coming on....

Anyone who has read past posts will know that, though I am a Christian, I freely admit ignorance of many things Christian. More than that, of those things of which I have some knowledge, I class many as superstitious jiggery-pokery by olden times people who have now been elevated to the esteemed level of saints and whose pronouncements have become blessed doctrine.

I've just finished reading, Surprised By Hope, by N. T. Wright. Not to go overboard in telegraphing my response to the book, but, God save us!!!

The delightful portions of the book, and there are many, are those where Bishop Wright formulates cogent statements about our faith and bases those statements on specific teachings within the Bible, and on his direct experiences as a person of faith.

Unfortunately the greater part of the book is made up of diaphanous declarations about Bishop Wrights beliefs, said beliefs supported by little or no reference to the Bible or to other writers who have commented on the bible.

Large parts of this book devolve into what I can only describe as a faith based projections of what the good Bishop hopes for. Nothing wrong with that, but Wright clothes many of his hopes on very selective and non-inclusive biblical quotes while ignoring many other, differing, points of view in the gospels.

Almost as frustrating is Bishop Wright's regular use of pseudo scientific language to cloth the teachings of those who he thinks are wrong. The saddest example is a tedious argument that extends over six pages of the book and which addresses what Wright refers to as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's, evolutionary optimism. This evolutionary optimism, as written of by Bishop Wright, is at times coupled in his writing with pantheism and panentheism, I suppose in order to impress upon the reader that de Chardin's starting point is inherently un-Christian.

As with many modern and supposedly conservative Christians, Bishop Wright has a deep love for the arcana of Revelations and for the Christology of Paul.

Conservative and fundamental in the case of Bishop Wright have little or nothing to do with the life of Jesus as reported in the four gospels. I find this most curious. The life of Jesus was a call to repent and to act in a certain way. Over the greater part of the gospels Jesus is not mucking about in the details of what is to come or how it will come. Repent!!!, he calls, and live your life in this manner.

Another annoying occurrence in this book is Bishop Wright's occasional use of apologetics as rational for a given argument. Apologetic argument is what it is, but has little place in a book that seeks to follow certain strains of exposition in the New Testament and to build, 'proof,' of the positions being tendered.

All of that being said, the latter part of the book was a great pleasure to read and led me in directions of thought that were, and likely will continue to be, illuminating.

I believe

In my previous post I tried to frame the question, what ministry am I called to through my faith.

Having spun my wheels for a couple of days thinking about this, I have come to the thought that my starting point should be, what do I believe, and by extension, what, if anything, does that belief call me to do. Belief and faith being, in some respects, different.

I'm not sure why I haven't had this thought before. We Anglicans live in a very big tent vis a vis beliefs and for many of us there is a certain reticence towards examining the specifics of our beliefs. On an individual basis those beliefs will surely inform the direction in which one is called to service within the community. It seems to me that absent an enunciation of personal belief the individual will have no hook on which to anchor call(s) to ministry. Absent knowing ones belief, any call can lack the point on which to precipitate and instead of growing floats about untethered and might be easily ignored or avoided.

I recall hearing an interview with the Dali Lama at some point in the past where he was asked what he believes. His answer was that it was not important what he believed. I liked that answer. He knows what he believes, one hopes, and clearly his life is informed by his belief, but the living of his life is more important than the details of his belief system.

So...

I have had, and hopefully will continue to have, direct personal experience of God.

I want to say that I know God, but that seems to call for a description of who and what God is and I could not begin to give that description.

Some of those moments when I have experienced God have been sublime and welcome. Most have been, in the moments of their occurrence and beyond, unasked for and unwanted.

All have rocked me, shaken me, overwhelmed me and, in the moments of their occurrence, taken me away from me. Not, most times, a comfortable experience.

All of my experiences of God have been mediated by or cast in the understanding that I have of the Christian tradition. Jesus has been present.

Jesus? I think that Jesus was a man, who our tradition's memories recall God being present in.

The manifestations of that centering are recorded as Jesus radical response to the world within which he lived.

In the manner in which he answered the call of God Jesus lived out God's will, in his time, on this earth.

I believe that in reflecting on the life of Jesus I can find assurance that no harm will come to me if I accept God's call to act within my world.

I believe that studying and discussing the traditions that surround the life of Jesus, and that studying the thoughts of those, over the past two thousand years, who have also studied his life is central to coming to know God.

I do not think that such study is the only way to know God.

While the phrase, what would Jesus do?, has become somewhat hackneyed over the past few years, I think that it forms an important test of the calls to action that are a part of being a Christian striving to be faithful to ones belief.

I believe that Paul captured the essence of God in this world when he wrote, "And now I will show you the most excellent way. ... And now these three remain: faith, hope and charity. But the greatest of these is charity."

I seems to me that this is the heart of things: Micah was right in a general way when he posed and answered the question, "What does the Lord require of me?, Luke's story of the lawyers question followed by the story of the good Samaritan was a prophetic call to action by Jesus and leads me to this writing of Paul as the union of God's call with a pointer towards action.

I am possessed of faith, I live in hope that that faith with grow in the hearts of others and I am called to display God's presence through living the charity (love, grace) that is God in me.

Well, I'm not sure that this has helped me a lot. Until I started to write this I don't think I had ever asked myself, what do I believe. I'll take it as a given that this is a start not an ending. I remain convinced that absent a real sense of where I am I will not find my way forward. I think the way forward is responding to the call that comes from beyond me.

thoughts on church and God's calling

Here I am, half way through a week off. In some ways these four days just past could be called wasted time. I have whiled away a few hours at the local casino, done a bit of shopping, stopped by the farm to look things over, read some and, generally, enjoyed what might best be called unstructured days.

Through it all I have reflected regularly on the question that has occupied me during the last six months of the Diocese of New Westminster's Plan 2018 process and especially throughout the last four months prior to my graduation from the Education for Ministry program at the Parish of St. George. In what manner does God call me to ministry?

The question is deceptively simple, yet at the same time nothing short of exasperating in it's difficulty.

Within our faith community I do many things. I join with our congregation in worship, I serve on Parish council, I mow the lawn at the church and change the sign out front, I occasionally visit folks in the hospital, I give money and offer prayers for those in need and I try to help out as asked in our community. All of this is ministry, but none of it, I suspect, provides the answer to the question; what does the Lord require of me?

Micah enunciated that question so simply in what became chapter six, verse eight, of the book of the bible bearing his name: And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

Luke, in his gospel, has a nameless lawyer restate the message, from a source much older than Micah, in Chapter 10:25-27: "Teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?...Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and Love your neighbour as yourself..." Thereafter followed the story of the Good Samaritan and Jesus injunction to the legal beagle, "Do this and you will live." Hmm, is, "will live," the same as, "inherit eternal life?" I think Jesus's answer might have been similar to those that we give to children wherein we answer their question but leave unstated all of the nuances that will come to them as they grow. Nuances that so often, after time has passed, lead them to realize that their question completely missed the point.

Personally I think that we Christians get far to hung up on this eternal life thing. It is the old, que sera, sera, that people have always had trouble getting their heads around. We are called to live our lives today, fully and in the spirit of Jesus, and surely there is no merit in doing so motivated by the hope, or even, as our prayer book says, in the certainty, of achieving eternal life. Poor old Job figured that one out a long time before Jesus was transformed into Christianity by the powers that be.

One of my persistent anarchic thoughts over the past ten years has been that perhaps the best thing that we could do for our faith would be to tear down all of the churches.

Trumping that thought is the knowledge that for me and for many others the buildings where we worship, and from whence we go out into the world to live the way, are places in which radical transformation of the individual and the collective who gather there to refresh and revitalize themselves so that they can do God's work, occurs.

Over and against that is the thought that so many churches no longer even pretend to fight the reality that they have become clubs for the fortunate ones who, no matter how mean their estate, can claim within their group exclusive ownership of a gift that they do not recognize God bestows upon all, members and non-members.

How did we come to a place where saving souls has become God's directive to us? If I didn't so completely believe that God, manifest in Jesus, extended unconditional grace to all, I would fear that, like the prince in Romeo and Juliet, he would end this tale with the words, all are punished, and consign us to the bleakness and desolation of unending bereavement.

In a very real way I am a habitual Christian. I know Jesus; have encountered him many times in my life. To be honest, my encounters with Christ have seldom been what I would call, hallelujah moments. Like many others, while I seek a calling, I don't really want to be the one called.

I was born into a denomination that has, for me, the comfort of a favorite pair of shoes. They may be a little broken down and not really supportive and less than they could be, but their familiarity trumps their shortcomings.

In a strange way my membership in my Christian denomination protects me from the demands inherent in my encounters with Christ.

So, this is quite circuitous. In what way does God call me to ministry?

I am not sure that I am any closer to an answer than I was when I started to write this piece, but I am feeling a strong urge to head out to the dikes at Pitt Lake, to take a walk, and to pray, so perhaps I am.

old friends

A week off! This is the life. or, perhaps not, as the case may be.

I have been working my way through a new book by Diana Butler Bass titled, A Peoples History of Christianity. Mostly vignettes from the history of the faith juxtaposed with remembrances from her faith journey. Her theme is the great commandment of Jesus and how it has informed Christianity in spite of the structures of the church throughout the ages of the faith. A good, thought provoking and uplifting read.

Over the past few weeks I have found myself reflecting on my persistent failures in relationships with women. I leave out of the category of women my daughters, my mom and various wonderful older folks of the female gender who have graced my life.

It is troubling to me that I seem to approach relationships with women with all of the right intentions and then go quite wrong. Troubling because, like many people I am possessed by a desire for the intimacies, small and large, that clothe two lives shared. Troubling because sharing the journey that I am on with another who is, the one, seems necessary in a way that very much transcends my desire to not be alone. Troubling because underlying my relationship failures there is an elemental failure, a contrary and subversive refusal to trust.

There is that faith hope and charity thing again. Charity cannot be, absent an essential trust. Trust in God, trust in ones self, trust in the other...

Well...in some important way the following memory is at the heart of these reflections.

When I was five, six and seven, we lived in Marville, France. Dad was in the RCAF and we had an apartment in a complex about twelve miles from the base called, Cite Canadienne. Twelve miles was considered a safe distance for the military dependants if the Russians started the third world war. The world was quite naive in those days.

A memory of those days, one that haunted me well into my twenties, was of a terrifying nightmare that I would have, quite regularly, through my preteen years and, less often, during my teens. In the dream, I was in an oppressively dark place. I clearly remember having the sensation of no body. Floating in a smothering darkness. Into this darkness would come the whimpering of a child. Quiet, sometimes accompanied by small sobs and occasionally the words, harshly but quietly spoken, be quiet. In the dream my need to do something, to protect, to comfort, was overwhelming and my inability to do anything, my isolation from who was crying was terrifying. The dream, as they tend to do, would end with me awake and shaking and frightened. And wet. Little boys, this one certainly, tend to pee the bed when frightened.

At some point in my late thirties I spoke to my sister about this dream and about a person I remembered as Stu. Stu was the, probably late teen aged, son of a neighbour, who used to mind my sister and I when our folks had social engagements at the Sargent's Mess on the base or were off to a movie or other night out. Stu, it transpired would make visits to my sisters room when I was safely abed and act out whatever degree of deviance possessed him. Sue would cry. I, separated from her by the space of a sliding wall that divided one room into two, would in my own way, suffer with her.

Not as rare or uncommon a story as it should be. A story that, for me, bred a childhood of nightmares.

I can't help but wonder, looking back over all of these years, if the seeds of my inability to partner completely with women weren't sown on those frightening nights when I listened helplessly to my sister, then nurtured my fears and inadequacies in my dreams, my nightmares.

Wherever Stu is now, if he is still alive, he must be in his late seventies, I forgive him for the harm he caused me and I pray that he has found it in himself to seek forgiveness from those he harmed.

I wonder if I have ever really forgiven myself for my part in this story. I was a small child and I could not have understood what was going on, but I know that I did feel small and useless and though needing desperately to comfort those cries, unable to.

We are all broken people. Faith brings saving grace.

seasons of change

What a great couple of weeks I've just had.

I attended the Synod of the Diocese of New Westminster as a delegate from St. George in Maple Ridge. Because money is short, this years effort spanned only two days. Friday evening, which was primarily a worship service at Christ Church Cathedral (cathedral-from cathedra, the bishops chair), and all day Saturday, at St. Mary, Kerrisdale. The guts of Synod were how we are going to deal with matters financial in the coming years and the resolution on Strategic Plan 2018. The Strategic Plan will allow us, if we persevere, to bring our church and how we do ministry, both within and without, into the world of the 21st century. It passed by an overwhelming majority. The wonderful thing about this plan is that it was crafted almost entirely from input by the laity, those who sit in the pews on Sunday.

The other major debate focused on a resolution to re-affirm our diocese's decision to bless same sex unions, to not expand, at this time, the number of parishes in which such blessings are performed and to ask the national synod to move expeditiously in their deliberations about this matter. Much emotion was present in the debate as many of us see the partial step that the church took in 2003 as having created a back of the bus scenario for gay, lesbian and trans-gendered persons. Gay blessings are in, but only in these certain places. In the end the resolution was passed and I think that the general acceptance was that the national church's governing body will deal with this matter in their 2010 meetings.

This week also saw the wrap-up of my four year participation in Education for Ministry. The graduation ceremony will be on the 3rd of June at St. George and will include about 25 grads from throughout the Diocese of New Westminster. Bishop Michael Ingham will preside and I am looking forward to the service.

The single most meaningful aspect of EfM for me has been that I feel a part of the Anglican Communion, notwithstanding the fact that I do not believe much of what we appear to formally believe in the professions of our creeds. EfM has reinforced within me the belief that most religions, including Christianity, strive to make God small. The manner in which that which I call God manifests to me is in and through the man who was called Jesus and through the trials of the church we call catholic. For all that is implied therein I cannot believe that God does not manifest to others in other ways and through other people and symbols.

I sold my Wenohnah Advantage a couple of days ago and am quite pleased at having done so. Compared to my Clipper Tripper it was much more manageable in terms of weight, but wouldn't turn worth a damn and had lousy secondary stability. With luck the money will bring me a Clipper Ranger, or perhaps it is time to try out a kayak.

Jessie and her beau are settled now in Sackville Nova Scotia. They are both working and will hopefully make all of the adjustments that come with a first live-in relationship. It still seems a very long way away.

Our cranberry vines are now at the hook stage and the flowers should come out over the next three weeks. We've ordered eighty hives of bees to pollinate and I am hopeful that my conservative estimate of production for this year will be wrong. A long hot summer will maximize berry growth. And peel a few pounds of water weight off of me.

A Farmer's Friend

Now here's a little beauty, though the photo probably doesn't do justice to the fiery orange flashes running along his sides!

I damned near jumped out of my skin when I literally tripped over this big boy while on my field walk yesterday. A good two plus feet long, which is pretty fair for a garter snake this early in the season. Beautiful markings along his sides and a very triangular body.

We love snakes on the farm as they dine on the voles and mice that delight in eating the vines and digging burrows here and there. I do believe that the herons and hawks take more snakes than rodents, the latter being afforded excellent cover by the vines. This fellow clearly has survived more than one season and hopefully will render us good service for the privilege of being allowed to patrol our bogs.

It has taken some effort by me to learn to respect the serpents that live on the farm.

When I was five, six and seven we lived in northern France and I had terrifying tales of the dangers of all snakes drummed into me by my parents. Admittedly there were several species of poisonous snakes in the area and my sister and I tended to forage off the beaten path when we were out and about in the countryside.

After returning to Canada we lived in New Brunswick where my boyhood fishing forays were always preceded with lectures about the dangers of the Eastern Rattlesnake.

Two years later we were in Ontario and it was cautions about the dreaded Mississauga Rattlesnake. Not surprisingly I have had a visceral and largely irrational response to snakes ever since.

But, on the farm they are a valuable co-habitant of the land.

A Walk at the Lake

I drove out to Pitt Lake late yesterday afternoon for a walk on the dike. What a strange sight, fifteen or so boats and boat trailers in the parking lot and only four passenger cars. This, mind you, on the Monday of a long weekend.

So, it was about five-thirty and raining lightly with clouds seemingly very low, but the snow capped mountains showing. Quite a claustrophobic effect.

I walked the dike for about an hour and just couldn't believe that there wouldn't be anyone else inspired to take a stroll in a mild rain.

I must admit that I used to head out to the lake with a friend for walks and it was a better trip taken with company. That being said, the luxury of an evening walk in the rain and the attendant opportunity for reflection was a pleasant bookend to the day.

canoeing the alouette

This is the way to spend a mild Sunday afternoon. Messing about in the canoe on the river. Warm, a light breeze and not another soul on the water. What a great day!

Augustine: Philosopher and Saint

So, a month or so ago I listened to a Great Courses lecture series entitled, Augustine: Philosopher and Saint. A good listen, but I was struck negatively by many of his thoughts on what I think of as the hard parts of dogma.

This past week has been mostly field work at the farm and I've taken the time to listen again to the course. It is a strange thing how I can hear one thing one time and something entirely different another.

No mistaking, the parts on Predestination, Original Sin and The Trinity seem to me to be intellectual messing about that is quite foreign to the take that I have on scripture, on the Christian faith.

That being said, what I have heard on second listen was a man struggling to capture the essence of what his faith was grounded in.

The piecing together by Augustine of an elegant exposition on our relationship to God, and more importantly, God's relationship with us was nothing short of transformative for me.

Over the course of two afternoons plodding away in the rain I gained a bridge between my faith as that which exists in me, or that which exists through controlled expression within my community, and my faith as my relationship with God, expressed in how I relate with others across the board, day to day.

This may not seem such a big thing to many, but for me it is. I have never had trouble maintaining relationships, particularly when they are contained in well trod ruts. Augustine talks of relationships that transcend our comfortable patterns. In this manner I have always failed, apart perhaps from my relationships with my kids.

I cannot but wonder if the lack of the insight that I have found in this course, and through re-reading Confessions and City of God, after listening to it again isn't what has kept me somewhat isolated over the years. Certainly I think that playing safe in personal relationships is almost a guarantee of those relationships being short-lived. Having weathered three marriages I speak from some experience in this matter.

I find myself looking back over the past few years and viewing failed relationships in the light of the understanding that I seem now to have gained.

Well, we don't get many chances to undo the past. I'll look forward to the future to see if the change that has rolled through me is as deep as it seems.

My kids tell me that I think too much. They may be right, but when a person or a book or some other media reveals deep insights to me, especially when those insights then transform me going forward, I say, think on...

farm stuff

Sage and me scattering and stippling new vines into damaged areas of the fields. Rain, rain and more rain. Sage follows the theory that as soon as it stops she takes off her rain coat; me, I just keep the damned thing on. damned thing?, well, here's how it goes: waterproof garments don't breath and the work generates a heck of a lot of body heat which causes condensation on the shoulders of the inside of the jacket which will get a fellow really wet in about an hour. No win... You might think that good Gortex would deal with the problem but you would be wrong. Mountain Equipment Co-op told me that in heavy work the fabric can't keep up. I didn't believe them and shelled out for a coat which was only marginally better than your run of the mill Helly Hanson product. Oh well... Sage will only be at the farm for another two or three weeks. I'll miss her when she is gone, as she is a very hard worker. Finding young folks these days who can go steady in a physical setting for seven or eight hours is not easy.

at the end of the day

I used to think that only dairy farmers woke up at five every day!!! Bloody hell...

Well, today is a two church service day for me. Our rector is off on a well deserved cruise in southern climes and the EfM group is putting on a Service of the Word in his absence. The SotW is a regular worship service, absent the priest forgiving our sins and blessing the sacraments. These functions being the exclusive province of an ordained priest is an arcane carryover from a very long time ago.

In any event, I have been asked to talk at the services today, for less than five minutes mind you, about theological reflection as we practice it in EfM. Should be interesting.

I do puzzle, as I work the fields during the week, about this faith journey that I find myself on. Mostly I came back to it, after a long hiatus, when the girl's mom was dying. That is likely a very human response to the big ugly. After almost ten years at St. George, including the benefits of some deep relationships with very faithful believers, and four years of EfM, I am fairly certain of what I don't believe. Hell? Nope, can't see such a place in the context of a loving God. Heaven? Perhaps, as an abstract term, but probably not. God? Yes, though my certainty is based on experiential observation and we pretty much know how flawed that can be.

So, why do I trip along this path? There is that recurring experience of the divine that I have been blessed with. Mind you, given my families history this could be a symptom of a disorder of the mind. There is the connectedness with other believers that is intertwined with my Christian tradition. There is the liberating comfort of reflective prayer. There is the tradition of my people.

Perhaps not the best of reasons to practice a faith. On the other hand, we are here for only a short time and listening to the inner voice is as fine a way to frame our existence as listening to the telly.

I suppose, at the end of the day this is the call that every person in every religion has at the root of their being. Perhaps

Farm stuff

Well, spring has definitely sprung at the farm. The last two weeks have seen us finalize the re-planting of three and a half acres and get started on spraying Callisto on the fields.

Callisto is a herbicide and we are trying a new application method in the hopes of cutting back on the work load that comes with wiping weeds in the summer.

Last year we spot treated the weedy patches in May and then had a tremendous growth of Yellow Loosestrife, Sheep Sorrel and buttercup throughout June. Mid-July is when the pre-harvest interval for Callisto kicks in so the only way to deal with the infestation was to wipe.

The tool for wiping is a hollow tube shaped like a hockey stick. On the blade it has a bit of absorbent material that that the mixture of Roundup and water in the handle weeps out through and which is wiped on the tops of the weeds. Very laborious, particularly in thirty degree weather.

This year we are spraying all of the vines and early weeds and will repeat the treatment after about two weeks. We shall see if this works to control the problem.

Daughter Jessie is following true love to Halifax on Monday. I must say that my feelings are very mixed about the move. Joe is a good guy and it is apparent that they are deeply in love with each other. He has a great opportunity back east and his family is in New Brunswick, so there will be some support for them there. On the other hand, I will miss the girl something fierce.

Alley starts college on Monday. Now this is good news. She is just coming up on the first anniversary of her graduation from high school and has not shown a lot of interest in getting a job or going to school. The course is training to be a care aid in hospitals and she seems really enthused by the prospects it will offer her.

Well, that should be enough for now.