Christmas Gift

Here is a Christmas laugh for you:

Growing up in Edmonton we had a boxer dog named Sam. She was never properly trained; I took her to Obedience Lessons where she would get in fights with the instructor and only come when I called her after a saucy look at said instructor. She and I failed the course and since this was the first thing I had failed, I had to go outside and have a cry. Forever after when Sam escaped out the front door we had to grab a hot dog to entice her home.

Often my mom would drive downtown with Sam to pick up my dad from work. He worked in an office tower and she would park in the alley around the back. Being somewhat... um.... frugal, my mom had never bothered to get a dog license for Sam as was required by the City of Edmonton. However, the smallness of the license fee had an inverse relationship to how much she worried about not having it. One day my mom was parked in the alley waiting for my dad with Sam, of course, sitting in the driver's seat. A police officer walked by, knocked on Sam's window and jokingly asked if she had a license. Overcome with guilt my mom hastily said no, not yet, but promised that she would get one very soon.

John

This picture was taken summer 2009. This is an art installation by Kathleen Hull, part of Uncommon Art which was a series of different artists creating scenes in the outdoors in and around Wolfville. I see tears falling down, or maybe a screen hiding a dimension beyond what we know. What do you see?

You are my father, grandfather, uncle, friend, brother, son
You prayed to be free and light and floating

But sometimes your darkness won;

Yachanan (God is gracious) was your name before

You are the Lennon of the Beatles, tragic genius nevermore;

You are pure as John the Baptist who gave his life for God

And John the Apostle too, to whom Jesus gave a nod;

You are chivalrous and caring as the Order of St. John

But you can be querulous and difficult and hard to get along;

You are open and uncanny

You are Ivan, Juan and Giovanni;

You are the prickly pear with the sweetest juice inside

But there is a cost for you Sean, and sometimes you must hide;

You are Johann and Iain and we're never sure who's who

But once you set your sights on love your aim is always true;

Ultimately you are too good to live in this hardscrabble place

But you are in us, through us and around us

And you fill our lives with Grace.