Hopewit

“Leven zonder vrijheid ist geen leven,” is a Dutch, proverb-like sentence Duo-lingo includes as a learning sample. Life without freedom is no life at all, is easily memorized ... in either language. Another jingle springs to mind: “Free to be, you and me.” which in Dutch would be, “Vrij om te sijn, jij en ik.” (I don’t know much Dutch, but my interest in it is routinely whetted by Agnes’ practising of the language ... plus Google Translator in this case, of course.)             I think we can agree that it’s freedom and not license that’s being referenced here. And although freedom is more easily defined if we limit ourselves to movement—as in incarceration—in a democracy like Canada, defining freedom of speech, for example , isn’t simple at all.             In WWII, Londoners were required by government decree to shutter their windows so no light would show that mig...

The Scales of Justice     We all face moments when our consciences and our preferences wrestle with moral dilemmas.   Very few of us will face the big moral dilemmas, like President Harry Truman giving the OK to drop a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, but smaller moral dilemmas face us almost daily. We love pineapple and buy one even if we know that people far away were dispossessed of their land to allow big business to grow this very one at a profit.                In an age of climate-change worries, a twinge of conscience surely afflicts many of us when we take our car even though our errand is only a few blocks away. Or when we shovel a pile of rhubarb leaves, carrot tops and other garden-harvest detritus into the garbage because the composting service is just too inconvenient.                Indeed, effort-saving convenience ...

The Parable of the Seed   Thomas Yoder Neufeld, 1979   Matthew 13 is a gardener’s guide to proper soil preparation , planting and harvesting of crops .   Or is it? Jesus’ parables, allegories and metaphors follow in a long tradition of how teaching for retention has been done through the ages. Greek philos o pher, Aesop, wrote the parable of “The Boy Who Cried ‘Wolf ” in about 600 BC, making him contemporary to the prophet Jerem iah, Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel . The Old Testament is primarily an account of the relationship of the Hebrew people to Yahweh and to others through the medium of allegorical stories: Creation, Tower of Babel, Jonah and the Big Fish , even the sojourn in Egypt and the celebrated Exodus through the Reed Sea may be better described as a story told for its allegorical teaching , than as an historical record. (For the debate over the historicity of the Exodus, Just search "Is the Exodus real?" or similar.) The chapter begins with the par...

  … but what if they threw a war and no one came? This anti-war slogan from the 1970s apparently did little to change public opinion that … what? …war is inevitable given human nature? For centuries, Mennonites, Quakers, Doukhobors and various secular peace movements have responded to the appeal to fight in wars by refusing to show up. They’ve always been minorities; the consensus being that the right, the patriotic response to aggression is counter-aggression-in-kind. W.B. Yeats wrote The Second Coming in 1920 just after World War I and at the beginning of the Irish War of Independence. An exceedingly difficult time for humanity with little reason to hope for the Peaceable Kingdom any time soon. He might well have been writing about today: Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of pas...

  Gestalt Gestalt (ɡəˈʃtælt) something such as a structure  or experien- ce  that, when considered  as a whole , has qualities  that are more than the total  of all its parts : (Cambridge Dictionary) Take the word home. Its parts include a house or apartment, furniture, people, a cat and dog, etc. But to list the parts to an immigrant, say, when he asks for the word’s meaning would NOT do it justice: home is more than the sum of its parts. Home is a gestalt . And it’s a different gestalt for all of us because it’s shaped by the included parts. My home-gestalt has no cats in it; yours probably does. We may share the family-love part ... or not. Understanding gestalt is helpful in grasping both the joys and the heartbreaks to which relationships are subject. We sense this when we invent maxims like “Don’t judge someone until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes.” There are very few people on earth whose shoes would fit you; nobody in the world share...

A news analysis recently included an inappropriate metaphor. The “analyzer” wondered if in future we would be able to “shelter under the USA's nuclear umbrella.” The pressure is on to raise Canada's defence capability, to buy jet fighters, submarines, warships and to recruit more young people to join the military, and possibly to have our own “nuclear umbrella” to make us safe?? It's hardly appropriate for us to call President Trump “stupid” when his blinkered megalomania is simply a logical product of our collective lack of intelligent thinking about war and peace, our screwed up "codes to live by."             I live in a multi-unit condo. How can I be sure that one of my fellow residents won't rob me or kill me in my bed? Maybe if I had a gun, I'd be safer from such an eventuality. But if others found out that I had a gun, wouldn't they feel that they ought to have one too? Probably I should then add an assault rifle, just in ...

  Social media resemble picnics. We don’t prefer to eat every meal outside on a blanket, but the blue sky of summer, the birds singing, the sea breeze promise something different, something pleasant, something interesting, and so “I know what let’s do! Let’s go on a picnic!” seems an escape from tedium, a brief reprieve from the cares and stresses of the daily grind. (Forgive me for this crusty choice of a pleasurable “thing to do;” I’m old, and a bit old-fashioned.) And when the blanket is spread and the basket with its egg salad sandwiches, cake and lemonade is opened, it feels like a promise fulfilled. At first, the ants are just small irritants, at least compared to the wasps. Both seem to multiply as you juggle a plate of cake and a lemonade. And at some point, exuberant kids start up a game of frisbee football between you and the ocean ... about the same time as you notice a man with sunglasses leering at your daughter who's showing a bit too much leg, possibly. And if yo...