Hopewit

  “… Before I built a wall I’d ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offense. Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That wants it down.”   Robert Frost’s iconic poem, “Mending Wall,” takes us into the New England countryside and two properties where two owners get together every spring to repair the stone fence between them. Had they livestock, the narrating owner conjectures, the adage, “Good fences make good neighbours,” would suit. But here, one has fruit trees and the other a pine orchard, so why keep the fence/wall? Clearly, those who constructed the Berlin Wall had a good idea what it was they were “walling in or walling out.” Or attempting to. Visiting a family in East Berlin in 1988, we learned that the wall was much more than concrete, machine guns and guard dogs. Through the legal system, the wall cut through the school curricula, through personal freedoms of religion, movement, thought and speech. Bu...

  An episode of Real Time with Bill Maher  included commentary on a “man in the street” survey of   American adults. The question, “Which country is home to Queen Elizabeth?” yielded answers of “Egypt?” “Brazil?” The question “Which is the largest city in the world?” brought answers of “Asia,” and “England.” Clearly any such a survey report would have been edited and, conceivably, just the silly answers included in the published version. Surely a few would have known that Elizabeth is (was) at home in France! Maher’s comment was something like, “The USA is a country of morons!” Clearly, we’re not equally endowed with whatever equipment and experience allow one to be knowledgeable and “intelligent.” We used to have words in English to scale a person’s level of mental endowment: genius at the tip-top, moron at the bottom and between the extremes: idiots, imbeciles, and the mass of the average. Another measure used a number scale for scores achieved on a standardized te...

  Environmental researcher Tony Walker: “When the cost is a disincentive to do an activity, people change their behaviour.” She was talking about reusable bags when shopping.                 It’s a bit disconcerting to speak of people—or to be spoken of—as if one were a member of an enormous flock of sheep. It implies that reason alone won’t be enough to get individuals to break habits, to cooperatively join in a campaign to save the planet, for instance. But we need only look to ourselves to see how tenaciously we cling to present patterns of behaviour, even when our reason tells us the sloppy use and disposal of plastics, for instance, is like a poison to sea life on which so many people depend for food.                  It’s this tendency in human nature that makes Pigovian punishment/reward incentives like the carbon tax necessary. When tobacco-caused lung cancers overburdened...

  Eigenheim Mennonite Church, ca 1950 Exodus 20: 8-11: “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work. But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God, in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy …” I sometimes think about this on a Sunday morning when I’m all dressed and ready for church, sitting in my recliner with a hot coffee on one armrest and a bowl of oatmeal on the other and the sun streaming in across the carpet and the Post Office closed, Bigway closed although the Coop Gas Station will undoubtedly be open. And I know the Seventh Day Adventists hold Saturday to be that seventh day and so gathered for worship yesterday and observed in their way what they understand is meant by “the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord.” And I did some Spanish study preparatory to a month in Mexico and learned tha...

  RAINBOWS DON’T COME EASILY  (copyright)          - A Good Friday Lament George G. Epp Rainbows don’t come easily. Mostimes a storm is wanted first with roiling, darking clouds, With hail and snow or sleet Or at the very least sharp rain.   Or, sinfulness of man: A flood, a storm-tossed ocean Drowning out a dross of Snoring, drunken men And laughing slatterns Lying in some gutter east of Eden;   A moaning wrings grief from out The sorrowing sky.   Much later, then, a dove A timid olive branch A patch of bluest sky That whispers hope, And paints a rainbow there.   On Golgotha, a waning moon threw Crosses rude in silhouette Beneath an angry sky. It’s not enough, the suffering servant said, To leave these moaning, weeping women thus, Tore loose an arm and with triumphant cry Painted a pallid rainbow ‘cross the sky, And died.   Rainbows never come easily: Mostimes a s...

  ACTS 9: Paul Becoming ... some thoughts It’s hard to pick a single theme to pin to the story of Paul’s (Saul’s) conversion in Acts 9. That a zealous informer, agitator against people of “The Way” should become their most ardent advocate seems core, however. Conversions of people from the “wide road” to the “narrow” are common; the dramatic appearance of Jesus in a blazing light, the blindness, the three days of fasting and the recovery of strength are not common, at least not in my experience. Luke’s narrative seems necessary to establish Paul’s legitimacy as an apostle. Ananias’ first response when the Lord orders him to minister to the fasting Saul is skepticism; he’s aware of the man’s reputation of cruelty toward Christians; the knowledge of Saul’s treachery would have been common knowledge in the small circle of The Way. The story can serve as a study in conversion. A zealous anti-Christian has a born-again experience and exits as a zealous Christian … i.e. the ...

  All the talk of Joe Biden’s unfitness for the position of president of the USA must have others of his age—80 plus—wondering about their own fitness. Most of us octogenarians are well aware of our physical limitations, I think, but mentally? How can I know, for instance, if the lines I’m writing are logically sound, or if they fall somewhere between inane and gibberish? How can I know if my diminished capacity can be trusted to make such a judgment? And what if my friends are too kind to tell me when to close my laptop? Hearing an aging loved one tell the same stories to the same people every day has the able-minded nodding knowingly and cluckingly (that’s a word, isn’t it?). We’re obviously too kind and too hip not to know that people experiencing obvious dementia deserve to be “handled with care,” and we’ve devised places and strategies to preserve for them whatever dignity is still possible. But it’s not dissimilar from the pain-relieving, ointment applying, chair-exercisin...