Month: March 2015

First day of spring

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According to the calendar, today is the first day of spring, but looking out the window I see a grey, gloomy Eeyore sort of day.

Eeyore

Yes, though it seemed for a little while that spring had come, this morning we woke up to snow again! The geese are back, the pussy willows are in bloom, Jami-Lee and her little friends found dozens of ladybugs at the playground in Calgary last week, and I’ve heard that the gophers have been out and about. I suspect that they’re huddling deep in their holes this morning though.

The best thing about snow in March is that it isn’t likely to stay very long and it will provide much needed moisture for the fields. Unlike the eastern part of the continent, we didn’t get as much snow as usual this winter.

I’m not a fan of winter and I’d love it if the first day of spring really was spring-like, but like Eeyore, I’ll try to look on the bright side. I’ve been receiving regular updates from a missionary couple living in Vanuatu, the remote cluster of tiny south Pacific islands that was blasted by Tropical Cyclone Pam late last week. It has been called the worst storm to ever hit the Pacific region and the devastation is beyond imagination. More than half of Vanuatu’s buildings have been badly damaged, many having their roofs blown off, and up to a third of the country’s 266,000 people have been left homeless. What’s a little spring snow compared to that? I dare not complain!

One of our Vanuatu churches

One of our Vanuatu churches

photo credit

Five at a time!

/ edebock / 4 Comments

I love books and I’m an avid reader but with the exception of my Bible, I rarely read more than one book at a time. Though it probably happened back in my university days when textbooks and research papers were the bane of my life, I don’t ever remember reading five at a time before or since! Such an occasion seemed worthy of a blog post especially since I’ve been thinking about following the lead of fellow blogger, Kari Ann, who posted “Five Things Friday” on her Outside Air blog last week.

So what am I reading and why so many books at once?

Bible

In addition to using a daily devotional booklet that takes me all over the Bible, I’m almost always somewhere in the middle of reading the scriptures from Genesis through to Revelation. For this purpose, I like to use a chronological Bible, one that puts the stories of scripture into the actual order that they happened. I find it so much easier to understand the big picture that way. I’ve read through my New International Version chronological text several times, but this time I chose the New King James Version Chronological Study Bible. I’m not a fan of daily reading plans that take you through the Bible in one year. To me, reading the Bible is not a ritual or a race. I like to immerse myself in the scriptures, seeking to understand what they’re saying to me about how I ought to live my life. I’ve read the entire Bible in less than a year, but most often it takes me considerably longer. With its illustrations, fascinating background and daily life notes, timelines, maps and charts to help bring the cultures and people of biblical times alive, this one could take me two years and that’s okay.

7 ways

I’m not going to air our dirty laundry here, but Richard and I have hit a rough patch in our marriage. To be entirely honest, it’s actually more like we’ve fallen into a sinkhole or gone careening off a cliff, but long term marriages are like that sometimes and we’re working on it. Since we’re both academically minded, we tend to turn to books for help at times like this. He went to a Promise Keepers conference last weekend and came home with this one, 7 Ways to Be Her Hero by Doug Fields. He read it in a couple of sittings so I thought it must be worth looking at. It’s written for men by a man, but Fields acknowledges that “some women will sneak around and read it (and will most definitely get something out of it).” The book, which he originally wanted to call How Not to Suck as a Husband, is written in colloquial man-speak that is fun and easy to read. It’s definitely not a textbook! I read eight of its ten chapters in one sitting last night and all I can say is that I’d like to give it back to my husband and tell him to read it again, memorize it and put it into practice. It’s that good!

Love & Respect

This is another one that I’m hoping might help us through the rough patch. Based on more than three decades of counselling, as well as scientific and biblical research, Love & Respect by Dr. Emerson Eggerich is based on the premise that a wife’s greatest need is to feel loved while a husband needs to feel respected. We’ve decided to go through this one together, reading and discussing one chapter a day. It definitely isn’t as fun and engaging as 7 Ways and we’ve only read the first two chapters so it’s a bit too early to pass judgment but I think it does make some good points and it’s already provided a good jumping off spot for discussion.

Outlaw

This is another one that we’re reading together along with two other couples that we meet with for a weekly time of prayer and Bible study. Sadly, it’s been a huge disappointment. John Eldredge is probably best known for his first book, Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man’s Soul. I have to wonder if he wrote Beautiful Outlaw simply hoping to cash in on the success of the earlier book. He attempts to introduce the reader to the real Jesus by squashing typical stereotypes and focusing on what he calls Jesus’ playful, disruptive, and extravagant personality. He spends most of the first three chapters dwelling on Jesus’ playfulness. While I expect that our Lord did have a playful, exuberant side, I don’t think that a single one of the scriptures that Eldredge uses points to that. In addition, as one of our group so aptly put it, he could have said everything in the first three chapters in three sentences. As a group, we’ve decided to read and discuss two or three chapters a week instead of just one so that we can get through it sooner and move onto something else. My assessment of this one is that it’s just fluff!

Rainbow

And finally, book #5, the novel that I’m reading for sheer enjoyment. When our small town librarian saw me looking over the shelf of recently acquired books, she pointed to The Dark Side of the Rainbow by Caren Powell and told me to try that one. “I thought of you when I bar coded it,” she said. “It looked like an Elaine book.” She knows what I like to read and hasn’t steered me wrong yet. According to editor, Ann Westlake, “The Dark Side of the Rainbow tells of Nelson Mandela’s South Africa – a country struggling with racism, fear and determination.” She calls it “a wonderful, endearing blend of characters, scenery and history.” I’m still in the early pages so I’m just getting to know those characters but I can hardly wait to dig deeper. Caren Powell lived in South Africa for 38 years during the apartheid era and the changeover to democracy. She and her husband owned a farm there and much of the detail in the book was drawn from her personal experiences.

It’s unusual for me to have so many books on the go at once but tonight’s choice is easy. I’m going to read the last two chapters of 7 Ways and then escape to The Dark Side of the Rainbow!

International Women’s Day 2015

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Tomorrow, March 8, is a day set aside to celebrate the economic, political and social achievements of women past, present and future. Women’s rights have come a long way since the first International Women’s Day in 1911 but we still have a long way to go. This year’s theme is ‘Make It Happen’, a slogan aimed at encouraging effective action for advancing the rights and treatment of women. We need to make it happen in those workplaces where women still earn less than men, in countries where women are regularly sexually abused and forced into marriage, and for girls who are still denied an education or forced to undergo female genital mutilation.

makeithappen

I couldn’t help laughing at the tongue in cheek parody of the lists that women are given to prevent rape that has been circulating on the internet today. At the same time, I felt guilty for laughing. I realize that rape is never a laughing matter but sadly, there are still those who believe that women are to blame for their own abuse.

Rape prevention

I was absolutely incensed when I read this week’s news reports about one of the men convicted in a 2012 gang rape and murder case in Delhi, India. In an interview from jail, 26-year-old Mukesh Singh said that women who went out at night had only themselves to blame if they attracted the attention of gangs of male molesters. “A girl is far more responsible for rape than a boy,” he said.

Singh also claimed that had the 23-year-old victim and her male friend, who were returning from an evening at the cinema, not tried to fight back, the gang would not have inflicted the savage beating from which she died two weeks later. Describing the killing as an “accident” he said, “When being raped, she shouldn’t fight back. She should just be silent and allow the rape. Then they’d have dropped her off after ’doing her’.”

Equally appalling was this comment made by one of the lawyers in the case. “If my daughter or sister engaged in pre-marital activities and disgraced herself and allowed herself to lose face and character by doing such things, I would most certainly take this sort of sister or daughter to my farmhouse, and in front of my entire family, I would put petrol on her and set her alight.”

I wish I could say that things like this were unique to India, but that’s far from the truth and as long as my granddaughter is growing up in a world where any man, anywhere thinks it’s okay to rape a woman, we need to do more than celebrate the achievements of women; we need to ‘Make It Happen’. I am neither a man hater or a radical feminist but I dream of a world where every child has the right to an education and every woman feels safe.