We gather

We gather
to give thanks for my 25 years.

Thursday, October 31, 2024

It's Melbourne Cup Day!

Everyone is going on about an election happening somewhere in the world, on the first Tuesday in November.  But don't they get it?  The first Tuesday in November is Melbourne Cup Day.  The Melbourne Cup is a horse race that holds the title of "stopping a nation", namely Australia.
  

While the US election may raise people's prejudices, fears and ire, the Melbourne Cup is about enthusiam for life and gladly belonging somewhere in the world.  It is a gala event that can excite any heart or community.    

Life is too short.  That may be a cliche, but it is true, for life is meant to be lived and enjoyed.  We just get distratced too easily, along the way, by the loaded agenda of others.  Despite all in our world that may say otherwise and disturb us, life is a gift to be grabbed and savoured.  It is a Melbourne Cup event, not a US election campaign.    

Sunday, October 20, 2024

I am so Western

A few days ago, I went to the hospital for a health check procedure.  As I do, I went on my own.  That is just normal for me. 

As part of procedure, staff at the hospital needed to look after my belongings, while I was being checked elsewhere in the hospital.  So along came a person from the Finance Department to take my bag into their care.  Before taking it into their safe keeping, she asked me to count any money I had on me.  I was to do so there and then, in front of her and the nurse.  I found this to be confronting and intrusive.  I thought to myself- Why don't they just have a locker for me to use?  

But then I thought, the nurse had asked me - Don't you have family with you? 

It struck me.  That's it.  Here, there is no need for any locker, as the family accompanies any patient to the hospital.  They are the security system.  Once again, it is the cultural card.  They have their system, their security.  It is their family.  I am ever so Western, just going along alone and independently.  Our western, male way serves a good purpose, but it is not always the way to go.  That is for sure.  

Life is ever full of insights and learning, when one lives outside one's own comfort zone.      

Monday, October 7, 2024

And the journey can be rough going.


 




They say that a picture tells 1,000 words.  Well, here are more than 4,000 words.  These are the Four Lubeck Martyrs - a Lutheran Pastor and three Catholic priests.  For being good Christians, standing up for good and doing the right thing, they were executed.  This says it all.  

.  On November 10 1943, four Lübeck churchmen were beheaded in Hamburg:
The Lutheran Pastor Karl Friedrich Stellbrink and the Catholic Chaplains Hermann Lange, Eduard Müller and Johannes Prassek. The National Socialist People's Court had sentenced them to death in the summer of 1943 for "subversion of military strength, insidiousness, favoring the enemy, and listening to enemy transmissions."