I spent nearly all day at my desk writing a funeral service; hour upon hour steeped in memories that aren’t mine. I spent my day holding the grief of a family in my hands and in my heart as I struggled to find the words to do justice to 94 years of living. I spent […]
Kindness & Gratitude
Beauty…much more than skin deep
Beauty is pain I think I was probably about 15 years old the first time I had my hair coloured. That was in the mid ‘80’s when ‘frosted’ hair was all the rage in the beauty industry. I sat in a kitchen chair with a plastic cap tied tightly on my head while my mother […]
Who’s your neighbour?
When I was little there was a song on the kids show Sesame Street that went something like this: Who are the people in your neighbourhood? In your neighbourhood. In your neigh…bour…hood… Say, who are the people in your neighbourhood? It ended with this little bit of wisdom: They’re the people that you meet when […]
Seeing with the eyes of the heart
The tiny owl sat in the uppermost branches of the cottonwood tree behind my house. Despite the harassment from blue jays, grosbeaks, chickadees, and red polls, he tucked his head beneath his wing. At that moment, he wasn’t looking for a meal which the small birds could have easily provided had the little owl been […]
A glimpse of goodness
Word of the day – “glisk” – a glitter of sunlight; a glow of heat from a fire; a glint or twinkle in a person’s eye. Figuratively, a glimpse of the good, a brief burst of warmth or hope. (Scots; esp. Shetland, archaic) from the twitter feed of Robert Macfarlane, author I will be the first […]
Chemical reactions and life lessons
From “Listen and Learn Science/Chemical Reactions” from Wikibooks “In a chemical reaction a bond might be formed, existing bonds might be broken, and some other new bonds may be formed. This concept is true, for all chemicals reactions, however big or complex the chemical reaction is. This also gives us the idea that chemical reactions […]
We are all the same kind of different…
Beautiful…and a little dangerous It can mean different things, but if you go back to its origin, her name means ‘lily’ or ‘rose’. Most often her name is taken to mean ‘beautiful’. And she was, probably still is, but it’s been quite a few years since I’ve seen her. She was a student at the […]
The truth about my Facebook Year in Review video
The past few days my Facebook news feed has been flooded with personalized 2017 Year in Review videos. Did you have one? Did you watch it? What did you think? Did you edit it before you shared it? I watched about half a dozen before I watched my own. You know what I thought? I […]
Ordinary is never really ordinary…
On the outside, people generally look quite ordinary. For the most part, we dress the same, we comb our hair, and we go about the world in a similar way. Occasionally you will see a colourful character that stands out from the crowd like the man yesterday. He was seated at a sidewalk café opposite […]
Miracles happen
It is Easter Sunday. I’m tucked into my chair in the corner of the dining room where I can watch the birds at the feeder and the deer stroll through the yard on their quest for easy food. The sky is a little grey. On a normal year, this would be the first big family […]
