Six years ago in March, we suddenly had to take up masking, distancing and sanitizing as weapons of choice in our early fight against the global coronavirus pandemic. The development of effective vaccines was relatively rapid, although the distribution was uneven around the world.
I recently went to a Habitat for Humanity ReStore on Belfast Road in Ottawa to donate some items (and to check out the used tools). The store is in an industrial building which used to house the automotive machine shop I worked in for the better part of two years in the late 1970s.
I have spent many hours on snowshoes. My first taste of snowshoeing was at age four or five in Fort Nelson, B.C. (Treaty 8 Territory). My father was serving there as a member of the Royal Canadian Army Pay Corps and was given training suitable to the environment.
Several years ago, I toured through parts of Germany that had been closed to the West when I lived there as a child of NATO in the late 1960s.
I am fond of November, a month when nature shifts from the richness of autumn, with its pungent smells, colourful leaves, golden days and temperate weather to a kind of stark, minimalist beauty.
Sutherland is a sparsely populated part of northwest Scotland. As you travel there the roads get increasingly narrow and twisty, with only a single lane in many places.
Our journeys in faith often bring us to a place where we are faced with a decision to relinquish our own hopes, desires, and plans because God is calling us to something else.