Don't Mess with God

Last week, Wednesday, August 26th, the opening of the B.C. Legislature took place. Prior to the official opening, there was a brief time of prayer for the government and the work it has set for itself.

I heard about this on the CBC Early Edition with Rick Cluff asking if it was appropriate to open the Opening of the Legislature with such a practice? The following day comments poured in.

“This kind of thing should never be allowed”, “Was it warranted?” “I thought it was rather pleasant”, etc. etc. All those for and against weighed in.

As I was listening to this, I realized that this practice had probably been used at every opening of the Legislature for a number of years. This point was borne out later by Rick’s guest the following day who confirmed that opening with a prayer has been the tradition since the first Legislature sat in B.C. I was asking myself why the appropriateness of the practice should suddenly be questioned now? If the Legislature feels that it must appeal to a higher power to guide its path in government decisions and policies, then so be it.

Listener replies were many and varied, the main question being the necessity of separating the church and the state. John Redekop a visiting professor from Trinity Western University assured listeners that there was no constitutional law or legal requirement in Canada to separate church and state. That prerogative was left to our neighbours in the south.

There was also the remark that we all prayed to the same God who not only listens to prayers as rendered on Wednesday, but also sanctions suicide attacks on innocent people. The professor hastened to assure us that the latter was not the God of his faith.

Surely the above is all perception – a faith or collective peoples’ opinion of what their God would have them do, not necessarily what God wants them to do.

What was intoned in prayer to God on Wednesday was something that we British Columbians all hope for, so what is the point of questioning the practice.

Benjamin Disraeli once said, “Never Complain and Never Explain”. What a fantastic piece of advice for all of us.

As the learned professor said, there should be no marginalizing of different faiths. What I say is that we should get on with the business of non-condemnation for those who hold different ideas from the ones we hold. Whether atheist, agnostic, Christian, Jew, Hindi, Muslim, Buddhist and with all due deference to the many other faiths not mentioned, respect other people’s views and religions, go about your own business, but don’t mess with God.

ORGANIZATION – OLD CODGER STYLE

If you have two items on a shopping list, I’m still thinking in terms of taking about half an hour to accomplish the tasks. Not so as the years move on; especially not if the trip involves a husband. Today, as well as the two items listed, we had to stop at the bank to sign a form, which would probably take a couple of minutes. Anything involving Denis immediately places the expedition in danger, so we need a half hour (or longer) planning session to figure out where we are going and what we are going to do. In fact the entire operation makes planning for a trek to the Himalayas looks like child’s play.

Naturally, dog had to come too, since Rufus refuses to accept the term ‘guard the house’. The first call, the bank, went very smoothly and when we returned to the car, I mentioned to Denis that the next stop was Fabricland to get a zipper. I also explained that he would wait while I purchased said zip and then I would take dog and walk to Superstore, while he went by car. I shouldn’t even have mentioned it as it took the whole of the car journey to Fabricland for Denis to understand what was about to happen.

Zip was purchased, I collected dog from car and off we went on our separate ways. I walked to the front of the store by the disabled parking lots but was beaten by Denis who not only swooped into a spot, but promptly reversed and went back the way he had come – at great speed, I might add.

“I paid for the gas”, he called from the car window, “but forgot to put the gas in the tank – won’t be long”. Rufus and I stood there with our mouths hanging open – has it really come to this?

When Denis arrived back to the gas pump, there was a car occupying the space by his pump, but of course the pump wouldn’t start. The attendant in the office told him that she saw him leave without filling the car and immediately turned the pump off. So, it fell to Denis to explain to the two people getting quite exasperated at the pump, that they had to move to another pump so that he could fill his car with the gas he forgot to put in on his first trip!

Finally he returned with a full tank of gas and we managed to shop without further incident, except that I couldn’t get the prescription I wanted, and we had to go to another store.

It was there, while waiting for the prescription to be filled, that I sat talking to a 90 year old, who, in my estimation, looked 70. She had quietly been waiting for at least 20 minutes for someone to give her some information. We commiserated about how long it took to do something these days. She was also bemoaning the fact that every time he saw her, her son-in-law was on her case about what to eat and what not to eat, plus the fact that she should come off all medication! She retorted on all occasions that obviously she was eating the right thing to get to the age she was and she saw no necessity to change.

As we entered the parking lot of the next pit stop Denis suddenly started to drill me about the Stilton Cheese.

“Did you get the Stilton at Superstore”, he asked. “No”, I said, I thought you were going to do that. “ No, I forgot to do it, would you mind to buy some Stilton in Thrifty’s”. And so it goes on.

What should have been a half hour shopping trip, turned into a whole morning nightmare.

Smile

A post today to remind ourselves that this short poem is very important. It's important to our well-being and to the well-being of others. If anything can lift a spirit, it's a smile.

Smile

Smiling is infectious
You catch it like the flu
When someone smiled at me today
I started smiling too

I passed around the corner
And someone saw my grin
When he smiled I realised
I’d passed it on to him

I thought about that smile
Then realised its worth
A single smile just like mine
Could travel round the earth

So if you feel a smile begin
Don’t leave it undetected
Let’s start an epidemic soon
And get the world infected

NM from Wales, UK

Beliefs

The following is an excerpt from a booklet written about changing a poor self image. We, as old biddies have probably made up our minds a long time ago on the issues discussed in this booklet. I was asked to talk about this booklet to a gathering of about 45 seniors and was extremely apprehensive because seniors were not my target audience. Surprisingly, afterwards everyone bought a copy. They didn’t want it for themselves, they wanted it for their children and grandchildren.

Beliefs

Whether we admit it or not, the one part of our life that has a profound influence on the way we think is our belief system. Take a few minutes to consider the following before flatly refusing to acknowledge that anyone, other than yourself, is responsible for your destiny.

Decide if you (we're not talking other people, we are talking you) believe that you hold the key to your own destiny and peace of mind, or whether God does?

Think about the enormity of that choice because it will affect every facet of your life in the future.

Ask yourself if you have a personal code of ethics to guide you along the way because you will need it, if your choice is to go it alone. This code might have headings such as ‘personal conduct’, ‘accountability’ and ‘commitment’, etc.

Ask yourself about the future and how you are going to conduct it by yourself. Think carefully. It is an awesome undertaking to be totally responsible for the rest of your life.

Determine if you are going to make yourself the person around whom your world revolves. Will you be the person who makes all the decisions, calls all the shots, and expects everything to fall into place immediately?

Decide if you will be forever seeking material things which you believe will bring you happiness and satisfaction, or, is there another choice?

Determine also if skills and knowledge, to the exclusion of all else, are going to provide you with the contentment you are seeking.


The above is just one part of one of the subject areas that affect our lives. The idea behind the booklet is not for me to play psychiatrist, but to nudge recognition of a problem by individuals, which will encourage them to seek professional help if needed.

The other subject areas are:

- The other side of beliefs
- Writing down your problems
- People
- Making connections
- Improve your people image
- Attitude
- Self awareness
- Acceptance
- For more information, please go to www.snosrappublishing.com

Let me know whether you would like to hear about the other side of beliefs.

Beautiful Madness: One Man's Journey Through Other Peoples' Gardens by James Dodson, Dutton Publishers, 2006

This is an enjoyable, chatty book that follows Dodson on his year of garden discovery. A must for the garden lovers.

Dodson lives in the north of Maine on a hillside where winters are very Canadian (subzero cold) and summer is at best seven weeks long. Apparently, he has tried to ignore that and build an English garden full of tender perennials – a true test of a garden masochist. Each summer he works in a frenzy trying to get everything as he would like it, spending hours and pots of money in the process, only to weep at the winter kill and proceed to envision new plantings the next summer.

His garden centre owner/friend suggested he take a year to be nosy in other people’s gardens and get a horticultural education, So he did, beginning with the Philadelphia Flower Show in March. His journalism skills and contacts brought him to Walt and Linda Fisher who force bulbs of all kinds over the winter to bloom all together in a great crescendo for the Show. From there it was a hop skip and a jump to other gardeners, other gardens and other shows, the famous Chelsea Flower Show being one of them.

One poignant chapter relates his visit to Sweet Alice Brown, an old friend of his mother’s. All her life she had loved her garden and her flowers, but was now in a nursing home suffering from slight dementia. Dodson remembers the riot of plants around her little blue cottage and offers to take her by to see it again. When they get there, he sees scrappy grass, a rusted Monte Carlo, sagging porches, and a chained yellow dog – nothing much left of the garden’s former glory. All that remains is two redbud trees. At her urging, he quickly digs one up (distracting the dog with the remains of his takeout milkshake) and they make a quick getaway.

This is a book for those who love to garden, and for those who love reading about gardens. Dodson has a conversational style that carries you along from page to page, garden to show to gardener to wonderful new discoveries. He invests himself in every scene and anecdote in such a way that you get to know who he is and the enthusiasm he brings to his investigations. His final story in the book is about visiting his mother’s house, long since sold to strangers, to spread her dog’s ashes. Great ending to a most enjoyable book.

THEY WOULDN'T DARE!

Yesterday morning as I was getting ready for the day, I heard the following story on CBC. It made me mad – and I decided to put it on the old biddy blog to see what other people thought.

The gist of the story is about a baby deer found near the dead body of its mother outside the town of Ucluelet in B.C. five years ago. Janet Schwartz, of Ucluelet, adopted the baby deer and raised it as a pet. Bimbo and Janet have become firm friends over the past five years.

Suddenly, out of the blue, along comes the Ministry of the Environment; not one month, or one year after this adoption occurred, but FIVE years later, and decrees that the deer must be returned to the wild! Where, oh where is common sense?

I have to agree with the Ministry that wild animals should not be kept as pets, but I have to ask what it has done in the past with real wild animals, lions, tigers and snakes, particularly pythons, smuggled into the province and kept in cages as pets; animals who pose a huge danger to people if they escape?

In this case, why did the government not intervene five years ago? I suspect they didn’t know anything about the situation and they only know now probably through the tales of a pious know-it-all neighbour or individual, or possibly one of these rabid environmentalists who cannot make any kind of exception to any rule.

I am outraged on a number of fronts, not the least of which is severing the bond between animal and human that has been forged over the last five years. I doubt that Bimbo could ever be rehabilitated and returning her to the wild is returning her to an environment fraught with dangers for her. She is absolutely no threat to the general public I agree with Janet that the separation of deer and human is not an option. The ‘damage’ such as it is, has been done, and the ministry should now butt out and leave the matter well alone.

You can find more detail about this report by going to www.cbc.ca/bc Select under headlines on left hand side, ‘bc woman fights to keep deer at home’.

On the Road Again with Verna

..............continued from last post

We finally made it to Ruth and Bill’s. Bill met us on the road, as he said he would and escorted us to the house. We had a great time there, played a lot of bridge and toured the area in his rebuilt 1939 car. I should mention, this is where our cameras came out and we managed to actually take pictures of some people. This was good, otherwise we would have ended up with numerous pictures of wheat fields, which would have gone nicely with my pictures of stunted trees!

After a very pleasant visit with Ruth and Bill, we took off from their house and made our way to the Yellowhead Highway and Prince George; Verna to visit her brother, and me to visit my sister-in-law. The only unplanned incident we had on the way to Prince George was the matter of gas. We followed one of those signs that say ‘Gas Ahead’. I might suggest to our readers, that when you see a sign that says ‘Gas Ahead’, unless you can actually see the garage, don’t go. I thought at the time we didn’t have much choice, but I since realized that we probably had enough gas for another one hundred miles.

Off we went following the signs along a side road. We seemed to travel for an eternity until we finally saw a house with a sign that said ‘GAS’. There were no pumps in sight, or people, so we drove round the back of the house. A young girl came out and directed us to where the one pump was. This was Alberta, so maybe you can have your own gas pump!

With a full tank of gas, we left the gas ‘house’ and instead of turning back the way we came we just carried on into unknown territory. Again, it was another long journey until we came to a house where a man and a lady were working in their yard. I stopped the car and asked the fellow if he could tell us how to get back on the Highway. He went into a lot of turn here, go half a mile, turn left etc. Finally, frustrated, his wife came over to us and said “Don’t listen to him, he will only get you lost. Men don’t understand how woman think”. So she told him to get into the car and lead us back on to the highway, and he did. We really liked that lady.

The rest of the trip was uneventful but very funny. However, this involved relatives so we won’t go into that; you’ll just have to take my word that it was funny.

Will tell you about our trip to Penticton next time.

Biddy Jean

Old Biddy Days Off

Dear Friends:

Even old biddies who are supposed to organize everything, do everything and remember everything, need a break sometimes. For the next seven days, this is my break. See you shortly with a continuation of On The Road Again.

Thank you muchly for your support.

Old Biddy Susan

On the Road Again with Verna

I decided it was time my oldest friend Verna, met my ‘old’ friend Ruth. Ruth and Bill lived in a Trailer Court just south of Edmonton. As usual, we had done nothing in the way of planning before we set off, except to get a few directions. I don’t really know why people give us directions because we never use them. Our friends seem to think we are renowned navigators and so should be able to follow simple directions. If that was true, we would just have to be told to turn right at the Big Red Barn. Those are the kind of directions we can follow, sometimes.

Once in Vancouver, I suggested we take the road through Port Coquitlam, Maple Ridge etc., rather than the Freeway straight out to Hope. We figured the back way would be much less boring than the Freeway. It all sounded simple enough and we would avoid a lot of traffic. I could always dream! I lived in Coquitlam for 29 years but who would have thought in the last 10 years since we left a whole new city had grown up. So eventually, being women and not men, we did ask for directions and managed to follow enough of them to get us on our way.

We got off the ferry at about 10:00a.m., and should have been over the Coquihalla before supper. As it was, we only arrived at Hope in the late afternoon. We had spent so much time finding our way out of Vancouver, instead of taking the Freeway, but what fun would that have been?

Getting out of Hope was a little easier than getting out of Vancouver. We only had to ask a service station guy once for directions to the Coquihalla and he just pointed over our shoulders at the very large sign that said ‘this way’. Not in those words, but you know what I mean.

Once over the Coquihalla, we took a secondary highway to avoid Calgary. We were getting close and weren’t sure (surprise) which was the road to Bill and Ruth’s place. A phone call to Bill and he said, turn on to such n’ such a road and follow it to their place and he would meet us at the road into the trailer park. We came to what looked like a good road, but couldn’t find a name on it. However, we figured this was the road Bill meant. We just went for miles and miles and the farms got further and further apart. The two of us reflected how many trailer parks, unprotected on the ‘bald’ prairie, had been flattened in tornados and we decided this is not right road. So, we turned around and went back to the main road.

Following the highway for a short distance, we saw ahead of us about six or eight RCMP officers with three or four police cars. Obviously, there was a serious problem for the RCMP. We just pulled into their ‘Road Block’. I mean people are usually pulled over at a road block, you don’t go into one! They really looked puzzled, like what the heck were these two old biddies doing? One officer came over to the car and I asked him if he knew where “such n’ such a road was. He pointed to a matter of yards from where they had set up their road block. Again, there was a nice big sign telling us that this was the road we wanted. As we pulled away, looking back we could see all these officers scratching their heads and smiling.

To be continued............

Biddy Jean