Snow!

Our first real snowfall of the season last night left a beautiful white carpet for us to wake up to this morning.

When I was a kid I used to earn quite a bit of money each Winter going door to door in the morning to offer to shovel neighbor's driveways for them on days like this. The experience left me with the lifelong habit of seeing snow as Opportunity... and to think of Winter as the time for renewed enterprise.

The tapestry of white serving as a blank canvas... ready for an imprint.

And so, to work...

Voting For Life Or Death In Minnesota

A Minnesota couple have established an online poll at their blog to determine whether or the pregnant wife should give birth to their baby, or not.

"Help Us Decide"

You can vote and choose whether we abort or keep our unborn child. For the first time, your vote on the topic of abortion can make a difference.

A grim countdown calendar ticks downward, day after day, with a fateful cut-off to determine whether or not a child will live or die.

Dec. 9th is the last day we could legally get an abortion in our state. This vote will remain open until 2 days prior to allow for the procedure if decided.

The Daily Mail UK newspaper, whose reporter has more time to read blogs than I do, quotes an older post (without supplying the link) from the mother-to-be:

She wrote: 'I'm not convinced that I want to change the status quo. I feel that as I age I've actually gotten more selfish and set in my ways.
'I'm afraid that I will eventually regret starting a family and "settling down", as they say.
'I fear that the constant pressure to be the perfect wife and mother while maintaining a full-time job will eventually cause my brain to implode and lead to a nervous breakdown.

To value life as the blessed gift that it is, why not grow to see how we can never really "know" whether or not we will succeed at the tasks most worth doing. We can hope, but we can't "know". Studying for a trade, starting a business, getting married, starting a family. These acts require faith, and embracing these challenges is an act of faith.

Sometimes simply living is an act of faith.

Remembering A Happy Warrior

Reagan grinned. He was breaking the ice. But he was also doing more. As always, his stories had a point or purpose behind them; it had been that way ever since he started using illustrations in his public speeches thirty years earlier. Reagan was telling a funny joke about communism. But just below the surface, there was a sharp edge of truth that revealed the absurdity of the Soviet system.

Every time [Gorbachev and Reagan] would meet, Reagan would have a couple of jokes ready in his arsenal, gently zinging the Soviet leader about the absurdities of his system.

... An American took a trip to the Soviet Union. On the way to Kennedy Airport, he rode in a cab driven by a college student.

"What are you going to do after graduation?"

"I haven't decided yet."

When he arrived in Moscow he jumped into another cab, which was also driven by a university student.

"What do you want to do when you finish college?" he asked.

"I don't know", the student responded, "I haven't been told yet."

Gorbachev sat grim-faced when he heard that one.
__Peter Schweizer, "Reagan's War: The Epic Story Of His Forty-Year Struggle And Final Triumph Over Communism, pgs 250-251

Lest We Forget

Vancouver's 2010 Remembrance Day ceremony attracted an even larger crowd than usual to this year's event; it seems part of the tradition now, to see an increase in attendance each November 11.

The ceremony at the Cenotaph concludes with the remaining WWII veterans placing their single white roses with singular determination, in memory of those whose hair never got to grow as grey, whose children, and grandchildren, could not accompany them during this traditional gesture of remembrance.

We may sincerely say Thank You, but the words are like the raindrops also seemingly part of the fabric of this ceremony's tradition. They come, and they go. It's the memory of the gesture that tends to remain; the tender hand on the shoulder speaking more eloquently and casting a longer shadow on the mind than mere words could ever do. The gestures, and the contact that comes with them: these are what renew the shared hope that there may still be a better tomorrow.

We watch, and we can't help but wonder: was the sacrifice worth it? What promise, is there, for Peace?
As ever, the answer is everywhere around us, carried in the thoughtful eyes of the young.

Many are not yet old enough to read the names of those represented through the many wreaths laid in their memory. Still, their young minds, like their delicate hands, reach out to understand the deeper meaning to what they witnessed today. And Thank God, there are many who make a point to help them appreciate what these gestures are to mean to them.

"Say Thank You", they are coached by grateful parents, and the bashful smile that animates the child's grateful touch must surely bring a renewal of faith to the older hands that gently receive it. A renewal of faith through gratitude, and with it, a chance for Peace.



Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget.

Remembrance Day, 2010

We haven't been writing much of late, and I'm off to the Cenotaph in few minutes. So I thought I'd just remember that there are countless signs, all about us, from your favorite free-wheeling blogs to innocent children, to all the fruits of a free-trading entrepreneurs, that are the legacy of those who fought in the wars of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries against the evils of totalitarianism. Here are a couple of photos I took last spring in Fort Langley, BC.