Thominism

It's a beautiful day out and I just got in from playing my guitar/harmonica and singing some songs on the deck. I really enjoy doing that. I started playing my guitar in grade 10. It went really slowly. I would start and quit every few years . Often I would become very discouraged and give it up for three or four years at a time.  I'd hit a plateau that was beneath my expectations and I would just quit. I've never risen above that level , that level of  talent isn't there.  But I became inspired by , of all things, hockey analogies. Harry Neale once said something along the lines of " Bill Berg has had a nice career because he doen't try to play like Gretzky ,  he plays like Bill Berg." Or as Don Cherry so nicely put it  the other day . " Crushers who try to be rushers , soon become ushers".  If you're really talented in sports , music , arts or academics it will become obvious in a short time. Go for it ! (If  there is absolutley nothing ...

Now that I've been on the internet a number of years I am totally convinced that our education system needs to stress "source finding" and discernment , regarding real facts and internet viral un - truths , from kindergarten to the end of post secondary. I find it discouraging, even depressing that so many people don't care if what they just said to 500 "friends" is really factual or not. The comments on You Tube is a place I need to avoid if I want to have any hope in our future as civilised people. Am I the only one ?

" Just as time-lapse photography makes visible, in an ever more compressed and penetrating form, movements that  otherwise not be thus grasped by our vision, so the war makes manifest in particularly drastic and unshrouded form that which for years has become ever more dreadfully clear to us as the essence of the "world" . It is not war that first brings death, not war that first invents the pains and torments of human bodies and souls, not war that first unleashes lies, injustice, and violence. It is not war that first makes our existence so utterly precarious and renders human beings powerless, forcing them to watch their desires and plans being thwarted and destroyed by more "exhalted powers." But war makes all of this, which existed already apart from it and before it, vast and unavoidable to us who would gladly prefer to overlook it all"  Dietrich Bonhoeffer This was a note written from a pastor to his students at Christmas time at the outbreak of W...

I don't ever remember my mother or the other women in the neighbour hood always talking about "MY body" , "My rights", "My dream house". My , MIne , I , ME . Everything they did ,they did for others first. The fathers too , they were always working hard for there wives and thier families. Not playing games or sitting on the internet. Couples got pregnant at inoppurtune times they still had the baby. It was a person they could share the future with , not a piece of property they could throw out or keep . I never heard my mother refer to me as "my baby " or "my Tommy" It was just "Tommy" , I was a person. It wasn't up to her to let me live or die and I wasn't a possesion to brag about or be ashamed of. It wasn't "all about me" in my mom's world . It was all about others. I think they had it right.

As I was heading out to cut the grass I looked at our house and was struck suddenly with overwhelming thought and emotion . It wasn't really the house , but the memories of the life and unconditional love I've been blessed with. I wondered what my father would have thought if he could see what the next sixty years would be like when he and some friends built this place. I thought of being a child and how strong and wholesome our upbringing was , I thought of the tougher times in the teens when there was some battling and brutal remarks made by defiant teens and loving , devastated parents , the real meaning of unconditional love is taught more often in battle fields than in comfort and agreement. I could almost hear inspiring and loving wisps of music as the thoughts of Holly , Ken and the grandchildren from far out west came visiting and brought out the best in everybody and the joy of grand parenting and great grand parenting abounded. Then Roxanne and Vic married a...

Lora an I went camping at Platte River camp ground this summer and it was a wonderful time. It's a beautiful place and we had a real relaxing time there. A funny thing happened though. As we usually do when we bring our canoe, we looked at the park map , found the river , determined which way the current flowed and planned to go up stream first and down stream on the way back. That way you do the hardest paddling when you're rested and gun-ho and then you can coast home. Well, we started and noticed immediately everybody else was going the opposite direction , there were thousands of em', all going down stream , canoes , kayaks , inner tubes, blow-up toys , anything that would float . But we persevered ,we stuck to our up-stream , against the flow plan. Soon people started saying things like "your going the wrong way", "wow, your really good"(sarcasm), even "the guy who own's this place must hate you ". It was weird , we got glared at by ...