Thursday, June 12, 2008

A Great Place Name

Purple Springs, Alberta.

Sounds beautiful doesn't it? Like a place that would be a good place to live.

I'm fairly certain it's a bump on the road in the middle of the prairie, but I do love the name.

The Ongoing Saga

Would you believe that the woman who screwed us out of a house yesterday afternoon had the nerve to phone me this afternoon and see if we still wanted the house?

This would be the woman who rented the place out from under us, even though we'd put a deposit on it.

Seems her other plan didn't work out, and she's still looking for tenants.

I very nicely (but strongly) told her that I would have to speak with my roommates, but that we'd been very angry with the way she had handled our situation, and that I felt it was unlikely (something my roommates and I discussed yesterday) that we would still want to do business with her.

So, later this afternoon, on our way to check out a new house, I'll speak with my roommates, but I would suspect that we won't be going back to our original plan. It doesn't seem that it would be a wise decision to put our living arrangements in the hands of someone who has already treated them flippantly once.

An Old Link

I was reading some old blog posts this morning, and came across a link to a story my friend Debbie put up from her trip to Israel in 2006.

Have you ever heard of "Jerusalem Syndrome?" I hadn't either.

But I did have to laugh at Deb's story of her first hand encounter with it!

Funny for Someone who Isn't a Morning Person




You Are Sunrise



You enjoy living a slow, fulfilling life. You enjoy living every moment, no matter how ordinary.

You are a person of reflection and meditation. You start and end every day by looking inward.

Caring and giving, you enjoy making people happy. You're often cooking for friends or buying them gifts.

All in all, you know how to love life for what it is - not for how it should be.

Grocery List and Other Domestic Thoughts

I'm desperately in need of groceries. If one of my roommates hadn't made a huge pan of lasagna last night, I'm not entirely certain I'd have managed to eat a relatively balanced meal.

Grocery shopping while public transit dependent is a bit of pain.

However, since we're looking at another house tonight, one of my roommates is picking me up from work. That means that if I shop, I won't have to carry the food with me on an over-crowded train at rush hour.

So, I brought my cloth grocery bags with me, and at lunch I'll head to the grocery store and I'll buy at least the essentials, to complement the frozen meat and dry goods I've got in the freezer and cupboards at home.

On my list?
  • individual tins of canned peaches
  • a variety of berries (I'm hoping for blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, and maybe cherries)
  • oranges
  • carrots
  • cucumber
  • lettuce
  • snap peas
  • bananas
  • kiwi
  • mango
  • granola bars
  • multivitamins
  • soap
  • facial wipes
  • a kit-kat bar (or maybe two)
  • hangers
  • and an umbrella!

I think I'll make couscous, and some sort of meat for dinner. Perhaps couscous with beef strips and strawberries in balsamic vinegar. Steamed veggies or maybe just sliced cucumbers on the side.

After dinner? I need to unpack my suitcase from the weekend, so that I can find my clothes again instead of rummaging through a pile. I need to do laundry. And I need to attack a variety of other tasks.

(But in reality I'll probably throw the laundry in the washer and settle in in front of the television to watch "So You Think You Can Dance").

Empowered to...

Two more thoughts from Henri Nouwen.

Empowered to Call God "Abba"

Calling God "Abba, Father" is different from giving God a familiar name. Calling God "Abba" is entering into the same intimate, fearless, trusting, and empowering relationship with God that Jesus had. That relationship is called Spirit, and that Spirit is given to us by Jesus and enables us to cry out with him, "Abba, Father."

Calling God "Abba, Father" (see Roman 8:15; Galatians 4:6) is a cry of the heart, a prayer welling up from our innermost beings. It has nothing do with naming God but everything to do with claiming God as the source of who we are. This claim does not come from any sudden insight or acquired conviction; it is the claim that the Spirit of Jesus makes in communion with our spirits. It is the claim of love.

Empowered to Receive Love

The Spirit reveals to us not only that God is "Abba, Father" but also that we belong to God as his beloved children. The Spirit thus restores in us the relationship from which all other relationships derive their meaning.

Abba is a very intimate word. The best translation for it is: "Daddy." The word Abba expresses trust, safety, confidence, belonging, and most of all intimacy. It does not have the connotation of authority, power, and control, that the word Father often evokes. On the contrary, Abba implies an embracing and nurturing love. This love includes and infinitely transcends all the love that comes to us from our fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, spouses, and lovers. It is the gift of the Spirit.

My Park

This article, about walking in the rain, made me smile this morning.

It talks about the park that I go to at least two or three times a month to walk and pray. The park I particularly enjoy walking in in the rain. (Though the article talks about a different part of the park then where I generally go.)