* not with ink

Last night I watched 12 Years a Slave . It was upsetting and disturbing, and rightly so. Based on a true story, it chronicled how  Solomon Nor thup , a free black man, was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the 1840's. I found myself hiding behind my scarf. They're actors , I told myself, This is a movie set. They're acting. That is not real blood . And then the next voice jumped in. But it really happened. Maybe not exactly like this, but worse. To more people. Who weren't actors. This isn't pure fiction. And this isn't over.. I feel a bit ill today, thinking about it all. About who I might have been if I had been born two hundred years ago and what I might have turned a blind eye to. About Grampie and last week's blogpost , about this photo series , about my friends' documentary on sex-trafficking & prostitution , and the horrors of sexual violence: I fear many things for my life, but I do not fear being enslaved. I don't fea...

Last night I needed to make cookies, and desperately wanted ginger cookies. Chewy, delicious, ginger cookies. So I found two recipes from brilliant food bloggers, and wound up with my own blend of a recipe. They were a huge hit with my Tuesday night-class Cookie Club and other friends, and most importantly, myself. Since I measured precisely (for a change), I thought I would share my recipe: 1/2 c. unsalted butter 2/3 c. packed brown sugar 1 1/2 tsp. ground ginger 1/2 tsp. cinnamon 1/2 tsp. cloves/allspice 1/4 c. molasses* 1 egg zest from 1/2 an orange roughly 1 Tbsp grated fresh ginger 2 c. flour 1/2 tsp. sea salt 1 1/2 tsp. baking soda 1/3 c. raw/white sugar, in a small bowl 1. Cream butter, brown sugar and spices. 2. Combine remainder of wet ingredients, add to butter mixture. Blend well. 3. Combine dry ingredients in separate bowl. Add to wet mixture, just to incorporate. 4. Forming small balls with the dough (I used a tablespoon-ish amount and rolled the...

Earlier today, my boss referred to me as "Queen Bee" in an email. I have been humming Royals ever since. If only he knew this song! The image of a 65 year-old Welshman grooving to Lorde makes me grin. This evening I attended an evening event in memory of CS Lewis, on the fiftieth anniversary of his death. If you think I am a book nerd, you should have seen everyone else there!! Seriously though. It was something good for my heart. After, I wandered briefly around a moonlit courtyard - my eye was caught by a tree with only one branchworth of leaves left hanging...somehow this sign of an imminent winter made me grateful. I'm not even sure what for.

It's November 11th, so you all know what and whom I'm writing about. When I sat down to write, I wasn't sure what thoughts I had. And now this is my preamble: the following is by and large a sermon to myself. I don't intend to point fingers anywhere but at my own self (and more broadly, at the whole of our culture). Remembrance Day isn't exactly a "holiday," but to me it is one of the most important days that we recognize as a country. This morning I stood in the small chapel at my seminary, participating in a brief service of prayer and rememberance while the cannons at Queen's Park echoed off the bricks and a distant horn sounded the Last Post. Grampie and I, last year. The sounds of war. Briefly, mutedly, minutely, a reminder of what too many people lived through for too many days, weeks, months. The act of remembering. An important occasion. But here's my question: does it matter ? What is the point of stopping to remember and h...

The other night, as I lay in bed, I realized I've dropped the ball on blogging recently, especially my weekly seminary updates. And then I thought, Right now, if I never posted on my blog again, I'd be okay with that. I have quite a few offline outlets for conversations and life-processing, and maybe this one is becoming unnecessary. This morning (for a moment, I thought it was yesterday!), I wrote a list of the things I've been thinking about recently. The list managed to come out as a poem: Thoughts. On being more myself, on jockeying for power and hearing others' stories. On writing papers for what I learn and not the grades I'll get. On Germany and Tanzania, on money and trusting it will come. Becoming old and wearing out. Remembrance Day, peace and whether we learn from the past. On gratitude and fear and how           everything is grace. And suddenly, I wanted to blog all these thoughts, unpack the seeds I h...