Life

Weird scenes inside the goldmine

afaiz

Not a day goes by, it seems to me, without some newspaper of magazine article that somehow touches upon the moral, ethical, spiritual or religious zeitgeist. So, over the Easter weekend I clipped random stories. Here's but a taste of those clippings — they are a snapshot of our times, they contradict each other, they support each other, they paint a portrait of the world in which we live. I present them without comment. However, I invite you to comment on them. What do you make of it all? Send your comments, or clippings, to my attention and perhaps they too will form a time capsule.

Preparing For The Loss Of A Loved One

Evelyn Ball

This pamphlet has been prepared with the intent of helping you through this difficult time. Following my husband's death, I made two mistakes which took months to rectify. But a year later, while handling his mother's affairs, I was fully prepared. And I trust, with this information at hand you will be too.

When You Have Lost A Loved One

Evelyn Ball

To help you through this difficult time, this pamphlet has been prepared. Following my husband's death, I made two mistakes, which took months to rectify. But a year later, while handling his mother's affairs, I was fully prepared. And I trust, with this information at hand you will be, too.

One more stroll in the grass

Phil Callaway

The night before you crossed the River Jordan, we crowded your bed and sang the hymns you loved to hear. Twice you took my daughter's hand and tried to raise it to your lips. When at last you succeeded in kissing it, she began to weep from sadness and joy and the delight of another memory she'd carry for life.

On being a widow

Gwyneth Whilsmith

It takes no talent to become a widow. There's no course of study. Your spouse dies and, then, there you are, a full-fledged widow but with absolutely no experience. And even though you knew weeks beforehand that this was going to happen (as I did) you still aren't as prepared as you thought you were going to be. When my husband Art drew his last breath and I knew he had passed on, I felt utterly bewildered, not knowing just what was expected of me. Should I weep and wail, or should I be quiet and stoic? Actually, I did both — weeping and wailing in private for myself, and quiet and stoic for my children who were suffering their own deep grief.

The passion of the penguins

afaiz

In the madcap world of gender and religious politics in the United States, Roy and Silo, two male penguins at New York City's Central Park Zoo, were a cause célèbre for years. They spawned a children's book And Tango Makes Three, of which The School Library Journal said, “They cuddle and share a nest like the other penguin couples and when all the others start hatching eggs, they want to be parents, too.”

One got out

Phil Callaway

Of all the bad habits I've ever acquired, golf is not the worst. But it's close. I wrote a little golf book lately and I've been surprised at the response. Millions of people golf. And they write me letters about this bad habit. For me, golf is a marvelous and maddening game that combines three favourite pastimes from my childhood: doing poorly at mathematics, taking long walks to get away from people and hitting things with a stick. Not everyone loves golf. John Wayne gave it up out of frustration, I'm told. It's amazing that a man who drew a six-shooter with lightning speed, won the battle of Iwo Jima almost single-handedly and recaptured Bataan could be defeated by a four-inch hole in the ground. But he was. One columnist wrote that golf is “the most useless game ever devised to waste the time and try the spirit of man.” Once, after shanking five balls into a murky creek, I tended to agree with him. But mostly I've found the opposite to be true — golf is a useful game that teaches us more about life and faith than we think, if only we will listen.

Scrambling away from the empty grave

communications

It was a dark, wet and lonely night. The taillights winked at us from the creek bottom deep in the canyon as we wound our way along the road above. There was no road down there. It didn't look good. I was terrified, but as we eventually drove our pickup truck along the Salmo-Creston highway to a point directly above those little twinkling lights, I knew I was going to have to go down there and look. I stopped, got out of the pickup and weakly asked Linda to pray. I could see the skid marks on the pavement. I gingerly clawed my way down the deep canyon. The trail of destruction left by whatever had gone over the edge was awful. I could see the red taillights and eventually I was able to scale the cliff down to what was left of a pickup truck. The body of a teenage girl lay in the shallow water of the creek, some of her clothes and both of her shoes torn off from impact. A teenage boy was holding another male teenager beside the truck. The boy was dead in the arms of his weeping brother, who had a broken hip. The two dead bodies in the beam of my flashlight unnerved me, but oddly they did not freak me out. In fact, they seemed to capture my attention. Eventually the weeping and groaning of the lone survivor shocked me into action. I found some articles of clothing, covered the bodies as best I could, especially their faces, and went to work trying to help the survivor. Thank God an ambulance arrived sometime after that to take charge.

iLife, iThis, meThat

afaiz

My cell phone sucks. It doesn't take photographs, it doesn't make movies, it doesn't store or play music, it doesn't receive or send email and it doesn't store my address book. It doesn't even have games; no solitaire, no shoot-em-ups, no smash-em-ups, no Tetris, no chess. It does have Internet capacity but I don't know how to access it. And it does not play television shows. It does receive and send phone calls and the range is pretty good. But, really, it's just a phone and who needs that from a phone?

The best is yet to come

Phil Callaway

Let me ask you a question. It's been on my mind since a friend asked it during our bi-weekly gathering of the Circle of Six. If you haven't heard of us yet, allow me to explain that we are six handsome middle-aged men who get together every other Wednesday to sample chocolate cheesecakes and consider deep questions such as, "I wonder if we should go on a diet?"

Messing up the picture

communications

Last summer while camping at Horn Lake in the Chilcotin, I dragged myself out of bed at dawn to go and photograph Whitesaddle and Blackhorn mountains. This pair of spectacular peaks tower to 3,000 metres above sea level. The early morning sun spotlighted the peaks perfectly and the lake was absolutely calm leaving a stunning mirror image on its surface.

Sharing our environment

afaiz

Over the past five years, four young men of my acquaintance have been murdered. They were all black, not yet 25 years of age. And they were all shot to death over what the press commonly calls gang violence.

Words pierce like a sword

Phil Callaway

I was a skinny child. So skinny that I had only one vertical stripe on my pajamas. So skinny that I was swimming in a lake one summer and a dog came out to fetch me – three times. My mother used to scrub laundry on my rib cage. People looking for a toothpick at the dinner table would grab me. You get the picture.