I’ve been unusually quiet this year when it comes to reminding people about my birthday (Its today, if you were wondering). I’m usually all over it beginning about a month before… Not sure what happened on my part.
This is also the first year in awhile that I’ve been able to spend my birthday with at least one member of my family! Yay! Family!
Now that you’ve all been reminded, let the birthday roll!
Even if I’m horrible at posting during the week, at least I make an effort on Fridays…
Its fun to go through old photos now and again… this one goes back a whopping 27 years to a time when my cousin and I wore matching dresses and danced (? fought?) on the lawn of my grandparents house.
The reason for this memory lane is two fold: I have not taken any photos this week and I am hanging out with this cousin this week!
I’m in Ontario… I’m attending a conference in London next week and took the opportunity to come a few days early and spend time with my Aunt and Uncle in Sarnia and Godparents in London. After a ridiculous red-eye flight, I arrived yesterday morning. My computer and my watch are telling me different times and my body is rebelling against all of them.
My cousin in Quebec (the one above) is back for the week (and other cousin in Kitchener arrives sometime today), so I have been able to spend some time with everyone!
The stellar SIO Saturday team headed out to Witty’s Lagoon this afternoon with puppies and children in tow. Its overcast, but we had a great time running around in the water and playing on the tidal flats…
I’m in Vancouver for a series of meetings this weekend. I am the new BC/Yukon representative for the Primates World Relief and Development Fund (PWRDF) – the international development and social justice arm of the Anglican Church of Canada. I’m looking forward to finding out more about what that will entail and getting involved in some of these important issues!
Further to that, I have received an electronic reply to my letter to the Prime Minister. It just said my letter had been received. I have sent it off by post as well. The enthusiastic and encouraging response I received here and on Facebook was unexpected and really quite lovely! Thank you for your kind words.
Good Friday 2008 I found myself walking in the way of the geishas, Buddhist priests and ascetics rather than the Way of the Cross.
Good Friday 2008 was my day off between legs 5 and 6 of the Pacific Odyssey Offshore: three months remained until I laid eyes on home for the first time in over a year. It had been a long and trying, yet rewarding and fulfilling voyage to date and, unbeknownst to me, the most trying was yet to come.
Good Friday 2008 also fell on the first day of spring. Everyone, it seemed, in Kyoto was out and enjoying the sunshine and cherry blossoms. Many people were wearing their kimonos to visit temples, as tradition dictates. I decided to join them.
Down the street and up a few flights of stairs from my hostel in Higashiyama was Kiyomizu Temple. Perched high in the hills for which the area is named, there is a stunning view of the city from its balconies. More importantly are the areas of the shrine where devotees have the opportunity to have wishes for health, wealth, and long life fulfilled or where the promise of finding true love is revealed.
What a contrast with walking in the Way of the Cross. No promises for health, wealth, and long life are given… instead, we are told to deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow Christ. Follow Christ? On comfortable Vancouver Island, perhaps not to the point of being killed, but we can still follow the way…
I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me…
As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends…
I went down to the beach yesterday, the beach second-closest to my house. There are a lot of steep stairs to get down to water level. When I got there, the waves were crashing against it (it faces south/south-east) and the tide was nearly all the way up. However, the weathered logs and smooth, rounded pebbles were partially exposed and it was fun to walk around for awhile.
(iPhone photo)
Further to my coffee discussion from the other day and my love-affair with the beverage, I continue to be fallen off of the Lenten wagon, so-to-speak, but I had an epiphany about coffee and my mental health. When I cut coffee out of my life at the beginning of Lent, I, for the most part, cut out going to coffee shops because it was easier to avoid coffee if I wasn’t at the place where it was served. (Golly, I sound like the addicts I work with here.) However, in doing so, I inadvertently cut out something which has been an important contributor to my overall mental health/self-care. Apparently sitting in cafe’s with a book or my journal and an americano is something that means a lot to me and helps me stay sane. I now know and it won’t get cut again!
It feels like spring today: the sun is out, it is actually warm-ish, the flowers are still blooming, and I can hear the birds chirp away as I cycle and walk around town. It is such a nice change from the last few weeks – I can actually feel and hear my body give a huge sigh of relief as it gets nicer outside and it doesn’t have to deal with cycling everywhere in the rain.
I had a comical exchange on twitter the other evening. Just before I headed off to bed, the rain that had been intermittent all day picked up and began to pound my exposed third floor window. Not long after I complained about it on twitter, so did one of my friends, saying, “Here comes the rain again…” I responded with a modification of the next line of that classic Eurythmics tune (yes, I just used “classic” and “Eurythmics” in the same sentence) and our exchange continued on that line for a few minutes.
There are a few song lyrics like that, songs which always come to mind in specific situations. Curiously, they are mainly weather related. On my cycle into town this morning, the warm sunshine on my back made me go all John Denver, “Sunshine, on my shoulders makes me happy…” The sight of spring coming into bloom brings me back to car rides on the East Coast with Buddy Wasisname, “Its spring on the island…”, though he is referring to a different island on a different coast.
Whichever Island and whichever coast, I’ll continue to sing throughout my day. Enjoy spring, enjoy music, enjoy life!
Yesterday and today have, so far, been gorgeous. This quick switch kind of pushes to the background the fact that the rest of the last – oh lets say two or three weeks – has been miserable: grey, rainy, dark, damp miserable. These were taken on the phone earlier this week, just to give you an idea of things.
We are [over] halfway through Lent. It is hard to believe. I did not succeed in completely giving up coffee for Lent, coffee being what I had decided to “give up”. I have, however, succeeded in being more conscious about why and how frequently I drink it. In the end, it seems that is the bigger concept I desired to achieve out of no coffee for Lent: not necessarily a giving up but a greater consciousness and awareness in daily life. A consciousness as I go about life and an awareness of the people and things around me in life. Perhaps this is a tall order, and it is certainly more than I could hope to accomplish by just giving up (reducing intake of) coffee for Lent. However, if Lent is to be more about incorporating better practices into my life, then perhaps I have done so. Coffee dates with friends are now more deliberate and those times when I can sit in a cafe and read with a coffee at hand are more special.
gillian's island 