The Old Testament reading this past week in the lectionary was from Isaiah 40. This article is a very thoughtful take on it, one which resonates with what I’ve been thinking about/trying to do over the last little while. It it the reason why, even (and especially) when things are crazy, I need to go for a long walk every now and again. It is the reason I’ve been listening to my iPod less and less while going on these walks. There is something powerful in waiting on God.
Author Archives: Gillian
Spring Snow
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This poor tree is about how I feel right now. It is February in Victoria where things are supposed to be warming up and in another couple of weeks we will count all of our flowers and brag to the rest of the country about how nice it is here. But the last few days have seen noreasterlies/easterlies bringing cold weather. It feels like below zero temperatures and there has even been occasional snow over the last two days (nothing that sticks, it just makes us feel colder). Like this tree, we are all gearing up for spring only to have it be yanked away from us by the grim reality of winter. Brrr. I can’t wait until spring!
God’s Concert
Still alive and I have plans in place to make it through the week and get in all the studying time I need. As long as I don’t get called into work (extra shifts) between now and then.
Until a time when I have more than thirty seconds, here are some thought-provoking words by Christopher Page, rector at St. Philips, on the concerts I went to this weekend. The hall he mentions is Alix Goolden Hall, which used to be a Methodist Church (back in the day). The Saturday night concert especially (which is the one to which he refers) was spectacular. Pacific Baroque always plays wonderfully and the Victoria Children’s Choir was fantastic. It was just the brain studying break I needed this weekend.
Tonight was Evensong at the Cathedral with Pacific Baroque and our St. Christopher’s Singers. The place was packed – probably in the neighbourhood of 800+ people were there.
Ethics
My biomedical ethics prof was interviewed on The Current this morning about the ethics involved in the case of the 60-year-old woman in Calgary who just gave birth to twins. In case you missed it, you can find the podcast on iTunes or in the Current archives. Apparently they called him at 4:30am local time to do the interview.
7 Things [3]
7 Things from the week, or not. Maybe just 7 things in a randomly connected order that makes sense only to me and my methods of lateral thinking.
I finally got around to looking up the huge star I’ve seen early evening for the last couple of weeks. I have a nifty difty star gazing computer program (it seriously is pretty sweet: it shows the sky realtime and you can click on the constellations to get the story behind them etc) to aid in these endeavors. Turns out the star is a planet: Venus. On the computer program, it shows up way larger than the moon, which strikes me as odd as everything else is fairly to scale. Clearly, as you can see in this picture, the moon (top) is much larger than Venus (bottom).- I started to get much more serious about figuring out the stars while on Offshore. There was one leg where we had a 2 week passage with clear skies nearly the entire way. It was in the tropics so it was warm enough that we could sit up on deck late into the night and look at the stars with a headlamp and star book in one hand and a sweet green laser pointer in the other. The Southern Hemisphere constellations seem much easier to find than the Northern ones: Scorpius, Sagittarius, Corona Australis, the Southern Cross. The Milky Way is much more visible as well, and we had a huge Jupiter and Saturn for most of the crossing. It was weird not to see Orion (or see him upside-down when we did see him) or the Big Dipper for so long though. We even did some celestial navigation (like with a sextant and all) down in French Polynesia using the stars instead of the sun.
- This has been a long week and next week is going to feel even longer. Somehow, without me even really realizing it, my weekend managed to fill up completely. Like solid full. I may even be double/triple booked in a couple places. I have no idea how and when all of that happened.
- The strange thing about having no classes on Monday and not always working on Monday is that my Tuesday feels like Monday. Then I get to Friday and wonder where my week went and how the weekend got here so fast. This is not contradictory with #3.
- I’ve started playing the guitar at church again. It is a different experience to do it not as lead instrument but as an accompaniment. Plus, the choir pretty much drowns me out, so I’ll have to figure out something to amplify myself (aside from the obvious of plugging the guitar in, I’d like to avoid that for the time being). It is good to have some motivation to pull it out on a fairly regular basis and my callouses are finally forming up again.
- I can’t wait until Reading Break. I am going to sleep all day for one day during the break. It will be heavenly.
- Re #6, I fell asleep at 8:30 last night then woke up at 11:30 ready to go for the day. Then I had to try and convince my body to fall back asleep. I don’t think I should ever have a career where trying to convince people of things using my own logic is a priority.
(In response to Conversion Diary)
Happy Birthday Dad!
That is right, today is the day. Happy birthday, Dad! I don’t know if I’m allowed to announce your age to the whole wide world, so I won’t.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so I’ll let Dad show us how he feels about reaching a the beginning of another year. (And from being only 6 years away from a GoldCard…)
I asked Jen what she remembered about birthdays past, and she reminded me of when she wrapped Dad’s 40th birthday present 40 times, using up all of the wrapping paper in the house… We have no recollection of what the gift actually was but the wrapping paper was fun.
While not a birthday memory, I have lots of winter memories with Dad (so they could be this time of year): Of being pulled on the sled while Mum and Dad cross-country skied in Belleville. When we got a little older, the four of us would ski across the Bay of Quinte and have tea with friends on the other side before being driven back. Then there were the ill-fated ice skating expeditions, also on the Bay. The first involved me dodging a snowball and ending up in Emerg. The second involved Dad going through the ice and ending up in his mukluks and lots of blankets at home. I remember downhill skiing with Dad in Quebec and him attempting to teach me techniques like standing up or turning. Dad may remember how that ended up… We got professional lessons on future ski trips.
Not all memories involve mishaps, however. There were polar bear dips at camp (a tradition I am proud to say I have kept up) and for New Years. There were lots of summer camping trips all over the place where we got to do lots of fun/unusual/crazy/educational things. There were high school classes with Dad and finally receiving my high school diploma from him. And more recently, we had a great sushi education lunch in Vancouver (spicy tuna is good!) where the three of us, Jen, Dad, and I, were able to spend time together, just the three of us, for the first time in ages.
So now another year starts, who knows when we’ll all be together again, but you are always in our thoughts and prayers, Dad. Have a great birthday!
Crazy Life
Welcome to February!
The next two weeks leading up to reading break have the potential to be slightly crazy. Today is my last “day off” (not including Sundays, but they don’t count since I’m up to be at church by 8:30 am) until the Tuesday of the break. I am working every day I don’t have classes between now and then plus have a couple of “extracurriculars” planned; it should keep my busy and out of trouble and all of that. Not to mention borderline insane. Why do profs like to have their exams either on the last day before the break or the first day after?
This is, I suppose, my roundabout way of apologizing for not writing anything profound in this space. Perhaps once the need for procrastination and distraction becomes more intense, I will have something more exciting to say.
Until then, I am off on a walk to the Christian bookstore to look for a book I can’t find anywhere else and to study some anatomy on the way. Victorians: the strange person walking down the road randomly moving appendages and feeling where muscles attach is me.
Frost and Flowers
We were spoiled for a number of days over the last week or two with some spectacularly sunny days. And then the snow warnings began. We’ve even got contingency plans for our workshop tomorrow. I guess we have learned from the delays of our Christmas Pageant.
This morning I woke up to a fine layer of frost that looked like snow on the roof outside my window. I had momentary visions of no classes but laughed that off fairly quickly.
I still find it amusing that this city is already complaining about our winter when most of the country is still under snow and will be for a number of weeks to come. Out here, once the snowdrops are up and blooming, (and they are up) we consider spring right around the corner. After all, the annual flower count is coming up in 4 short weeks and we have a reputation to uphold.
7 Things [2]
7 Things from the week, or not. Maybe just 7 things in a randomly connected order that makes sense only to me and my methods of lateral thinking.
- I am excited about this weekend because we’re having a church workshop and I’m facilitating a table discussion. It is on how the church can/should be growing and changing to meet the needs of our world today, something I’m fairly passionate about. As a relative newcomer to the church, I’m glad I’m facilitating not taking a more formal part in the discussion because I don’t have much to say on the whole history side of thing. I can still interject ideas, so I will get my two cents in where I need to.
- I’m feeling a lot better about life and my own future this week. I’ve got some plans that I’m praying about and we shall see where they take me. I want to wait another week or so before I act on anything because I don’t want to make any rash decisions, but I’m feeling much happier about the path ahead now than I was a few weeks ago.
- I find myself randomly commenting on strange things I see while I’m walking to and from school. I am usually walking alone so I must look strange talking outloud to myself but something makes me think I’ll remember things better that way. I don’t know why because I never remember any of the strange happenings and they never get written about.
- Although one of the things I have seen involves signs that we have all over campus at the moment. You may or may not know that UVic is infested with bunnies. I have never seen so many rabbits in one place, it is like Watership Down or something. These signs on campus have deer on them and they are asking you not to chase after the bunnies because you wouldn’t chase after a deer. I’m not sure of the logic that went into that advertising campaign. If a drunk res student is going to chase a bunny, they would probably chase a deer as well. Goodness knows we have those on campus too.
- Speaking of Watership Down, I never did really get that book. It was supposed to be amazing and it was on required reading lists for most of Jr High and maybe even High School. I’m not sure if I ever finished it. I just didn’t like it at the time and now I can’t bring myself to ever try it again.
- Another book I feel the same way about is Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Never got into that one either. Which is strange, because I usually read just about anything as long as it is well written. I can probably count on one hand the number of books I have started and not finished.
- Since my train of thought has brought be to books, we may as well conclude there. My bookshelf is full. I need a new one, or else I need to downsize the number of books I have out. My list of books to read is increasing as is the amount of time it is taking me to get through a book. I’m reading a great one about Myanmar (Burma) now but through the lens of George Orwell. It is from the same era as other books I’ve been reading except it is South East Asia as opposed to South-Central Asia. It has been interesting to connect the dots and recognize names common to both. It is also to see where perhaps some of Orwell’s ideas for Animal Farm and 1984 came from.
(In response to Conversion Diary)
Power and Authority
Today was good. I accomplished things: 4 chapters of anatomy, 2.5 hours studying chemistry, and 1 chapter of philosophy. I made Pad Thai for dinner and proceeded to eat far too much of it at dinner and just ate most of the leftovers when I got home half an hour ago. I have no self-control. I also listened to a cd I just got over and over and over again. It is by a former offshore trainee who sailed with us on leg 1. She would sing both the hold and foc’s’le to sleep every night with her songs and listening to it brought back great memories of her singing.
I also got to meet up with some friends I haven’t seen in ages tonight. The IVCF group on campus shifted their weekly meeting from Friday night to Thursday night (which meant I couldn’t go, not that I’ve been going to the Friday meetings either) and a good friend was speaking about her experiences in China. We first went to China together three years ago on the Global Partnership and she has been back twice, most recently for nearly a year. I couldn’t go to the meeting for reasons I’ll explain in a minute, but I met up with some of them at Tim Horton’s afterwards. Now that I’ve reconnected, hopefully I’ll be able to see some more of these girls again. We did Bible Study together during my two years at UVic and were on the IVCF leadership team together, and…
The reason I couldn’t go to the IVCF meeting tonight was that Tony Campolo was in town tonight and speaking at a church downtown. I believe he will be at Missionsfest in Vancouver this weekend. He was here on behalf of World Vision Canada so there was the usual push to sponsor a child, however what he had to say went much deeper than that. He started off talking about our inner spirituality (for lack of a better term or Campolo’s eloquence) and the importance of taking time to just be in God. That resonated because that is what I’ve been trying to accomplish over the last couple weeks. He talked about prayer and sitting in prayer, free of distractions and, again being.
He went on to bring things to a larger scale and challenged us that real change does not happen by us electing a “Christian” political party or having the right lobby groups or anything that we may be able to accomplish politically. Jesus didn’t chose to work that way, he was offered political power and rejected it. He was offered economic power and he rejected that too. (See Matthew 4.) What he did do was bring about a radical change through living sacrificially. And he had authority as a result. Power and authority: two very different things. One is commanded, the other is out of respect.
Where are we as the church? Do we try and command power by having people high up in the political proceedings or is our authority respected because of our track record for feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, giving shelter to those who need it, and visiting the sick. I don’t think that many churches could claim to have the kind of authority and respect that we should. We should be at the forefront of social justice but often we are too concerned with maintaining our building and declining memberships. What would it take for us to get back to a place of living sacrificially? I suppose, it is done as Mother Teresa said when asked how she was going to save the tens of thousands of kids on the streets of Calcutta: one person at a time.
gillian's island 
