Traffic report

So, I'm just stepping on to the crosswalk, when I noticed that I can't see the face of the guy who stopped at the stop line.  So I slowly approach, until I can see his face, and confirm that, yes, he is looking to his left, rather than to his right, where I am.  And he's fixated on his view to the left.  So, I figure that I better not get in front of this car.  And, sure enough, standing right beside his right fender, as soon as he sees a clear space in the traffic, he accelerates out onto the roadway, without even glancing to his right.

So, a little while later, at a traffic light, there's another person on foot, who notes, with approval, the reflectors on my clothing.  Since he's got a big safety reflector on his jacket, we are discussing how nobody is going to be able to miss us.  Just as the walk signal turns in our favour, somebody zorches into the crosswalk right in front of us ...

Exodus 2:22, 18:3

I have been a stranger in a strange land.

MGG - 2.1 - Teaching

Dad was a teacher, and later an administrator.  Mom was a teacher, for a brief time before I was born.  I did not want to be a teacher, when I was growing up.  I think this is possibly because, while both Mom and Dad were teachers, they weren't very good at it, and certainly didn't love it.  I remember my father giving me some career advice at one point, and suggesting that I become a teacher because you could put in your thirty years and then retire.  I found this rather questionable as career advice.

Eventually I became a teacher.  It was almost an accident.  However, once I became a teacher I discovered two things: the first was that I had been doing teaching for a significant number of years.  It just hadn't been called that.  The second was that I absolutely loved teaching.

I, having graduated with a bachelor of science, didn't take a bachelor of education, but took a one year "transfer" program, giving me the qualifications to apply for a teaching certificate without having a bachelor of education.

When, after all of that, and some other things, I did apply to the old Teacher's Qualification System, back when there was a TQS, I obtained a TQS 5+.  Getting a TQS 4 meant that you had a four year Bachelor of Education.  If you took a five-year Bachelor of education, or a bachelor's degree in something else, and then a one-year education program, you got a TQS 5.  A TQS 5+ meant that I had an awful lot more courses than any mere baccalaureate should have, and yet did not have a Masters, which would have been a TQS 6.

A couple of stories from my student teaching (possibly leaving out the back that driving to the school one day was the only time in my life that I have ever gotten a speeding ticket).

We had more than the normal allotment of time student teaching, in this particular program, since we had the usual three practicum sessions of three or four weeks, but we also had two days a week in the school while we were still taking other courses.  For much of the year I was in a grade five classroom, and, given my science background, I was asked to produce a science unit.  I did it on paper airplanes.  Not just folding them: setting up experiments to assess their performance, with regard to time aloft, distance, and aerobatics.  After we had finished the science unit, the results of the science unit became a kind of an art project, with the various models of paper airplanes hanging suspended from lines strung across the classroom.

But we did spend time in all of the grades available to us in that school.  Because of that, and a few other things, I have, in fact, taught every grade from kindergarten to grade 12.  And then up into college and university courses, post graduate courses, and, of course, commercial training in business and industry.

At any rate, this particular story takes place in a grade two classroom.  I also have to admit that, unlike the spelling test, this is possibly my least favorite experience of teaching, and I still feel terrible about it to this day.

I wasn't particularly doing much teaching in this grade two class, but one student had not yet finished the assignment when the bell rang for recess, so I was deputed to stay behind and monitor her completion.  As I was paying attention to what she was doing, I realized that the answers that she was providing were not the ones assumed, and expected, by the teacher in that class, but were, in fact, completely correct given the wording of the questions on the assignment.

I found this fascinating!  To my mind it was a really interesting example of the care that you had to take, teaching, when designing practice instruments.  If the students could answer something completely divergent from what you expected, and still be absolutely correct in regard to the question you had asked, it indicates that you weren't careful enough in wording the question in the first place.

I said, "Oh!  Look!  That's really interesting!  I know that the teacher was expecting a completely different answer, but the answer that you are giving is completely correct!"

(I should have kept my big mouth shut.)

The grade two student, all of 7 years old, looked at me with a pretty blank face.  Then she looked at the question again, and starting erasing all her answers.  And writing in the ones which the teacher probably expected.

I felt terrible.  I felt crushed.  Crushed that I had possibly crushed the spirit of inquiry and adventure in this seven year old girl.  I should have pointed it out to the teacher, not the student.  I should have expected that the student would only have been interested in pleasing the teacher.  The student was far too young to be interested in the labyrinthine twists of the nuances of language.

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/01/mgg-1d3-cooking.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html

Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/02/mgg-22-teaching.html

2 Samuel 11:1

In the spring, when kings go off to war ...

MGG - 1d.3 - Cooking

Back to churches, one time the church I was at decided that they wanted a Hawaiian luau.  I managed to get a seventy-five pound porker, and, in one of the enormous trays that they had in the kitchen, managed to cook the thing whole.

On another occasion, a church, in Eugene, Oregon, where I was taking my masters degree, wanted to do an Easter dinner, but they wanted to do it as close as possible to a Passover Seder dinner.  Americans are not great at "foreign" foods, particularly since they don't actually believe that there are any other countries in the world.  So, nobody in the church knew how to cook lamb.  In fact, it *wasn't* lamb that they had, but goat legs, that a farmer had donated.

I didn't know this at the time that I volunteered, I only knew that they were asking for volunteers to help out with the dinner.  When I volunteered, the woman in charge asked me if I knew how to cook lamb.  I said yes.  I had never actually cooked lamb in my life, up to that point.  (But, hey, it's meat, right?)  And then I learned about all the subtle oddities that they wanted for the dinner.  They were thinking of baking the lamb in the oven, and I said, well, if you really wanted to be as close as possible to a traditional seder, the lamb is supposed to be roasted, and the closest thing would be barbecuing.  The church didn't have a barbecue, so I dug up a hole in the backyard, and covered it with one of the grills from the commercial ovens.  I built a fire in the fire pit, and barbecued the goat legs.  At one point, as people were starting to show up to help with the meal preparation, somebody came up and said everyone in the neighborhood hates you.  Everyone, that is, except the burger place across the street, which is doing land office business.  Everyone else is frantically hungry because of the wonderful smells of the barbecuing meat for the past three hours.

As noted, Mom taught me portion cooking.  In this particular case, they had decided on rice, as the starch for the meal, and I had suggested baking it in the oven.  We had to very large pans of rice ready to go, and, standing at the head of the line plating the food, I just started dishing up with a scoop of rice per plate.  I finished the first pan and started into the second.  As the second pan was getting empty, I was realizing that nobody had given any indication that we were nearing capacity in terms of the number of plates.  I kept on going until somebody called out that was the last plate needed: everybody had food.  I looked in the pan.  There was one scoopful left.

As I say, I have helped out with dinners and receptions at a lot of churches.  Since I've spent an awful lot of time in an awful lot of different kitchens, I appear to have developed a kind of sense for where things are in a kitchen.  Where people will put the cutlery.  Where people will put the plates.  Where people will put the glasses.  Where people will store canned goods, and where they will store oil and spices.  Therefore, I can walk into a kitchen; any kitchen, even a church kitchen, which are somewhat different given that they are designed by a committee rather than an individual; and find where various things are that are needed for whatever project is underway.  So I help out with men's breakfasts.  I help out with church dinners.  I help out with funeral and memorial service receptions.  I know my way around a kitchen.  Within a week of being in Port Alberni, I was helping out at the memorial service of a woman whom I had never met, but who was very, very important to this particular congregation.  All the normal church kitchen ladies wanted to attend her service.  So, simply by being available to be in the kitchen, I allowed all of them to do that.  When everybody was upstairs, someone came in, and wanted a cup of coffee.  I pointed out that the large perk coffee urn had finished its cycle, so he was welcome to help himself to a cup.  That's when we discovered that the church ladies, in their upset over losing so important a one of their number, had, in fact, made one hundred cups of hot water.  Fortunately, having discovered this, we were able to find one of them in the service, get her to put actual coffee into the machine, and then I babysat it while she went back upstairs.  The minister went a bit overtime in his message to the congregation for that service, which was a good thing, because for my by the time he was finished, so was the coffee.

At one time, I had some sourdough culture, and kept it alive and useful for some years.  When I went to visit a friend, he wanted me to bring some, so that he could use it.  So I packed up a sample as securely as I could, and took it with me on the trip, which was several hours.  We knew that I would arrive at his place while he was still at work, so he had left a key for me.  When I got there, I figured that the culture had been through enough, and mixed it up with some flour and water to keep it going, and settle in to it's new environment.  In doing that, I spilled some flour, so I used the spilled four and some other ingredients to make an apple crumble.  When my friend got home, I explained why the dessert was ready: I had made a mistake, and fixed it by making apple crumble.  He sounded off: he loved apple crumble, and was annoyed that people only made it to fix cooking mistakes.

When Gloria and I married, we had both run our respective households, and so were competent in the basics of living.  As both of us were working, we divided up the chores.  Gloria always liked fabric, all aspects of fabric and textiles, so she took on the laundry.  I, somewhat naturally, took on cooking and shopping.

Gloria was no slouch as a cook, and certainly she had kept the girls alive.  She just didn't like cooking as much as she liked laundry.  Although I'm not sure that it would be fair to say that she liked laundry: she was good at it and knew pretty much everything about it.  (I did teach her about washing soda, when one family member got to the point of wearing clothes too long and they started to smell.)  Gloria did make the world's best potato salad.  Somebody once told her that potato salad was not so much a recipe, as an expression of love.

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/01/mgg-1d2-cooking.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html

Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/01/mgg-21-teaching.html

Exodus 23:1

Don't spread bad rumours,

or help a criminal by

false testimony.

MGG - 1d.2 - Cooking

In another case, I was taking an outdoor education course, and, as a graduation exercise, we ran an outdoor school for a particular school elementary school.  We did all the planning, taught all the activities, and but had the teaching staff of the elementary school, whose students we were running through the program, attend, partly for legal responsibility, and for their oversight, and also a bit of a break for them.  The instructor for our outdoor education course felt that it would be a great thing if we could do absolutely everything ourselves, including the cooking.  So, having demonstrated some cooking prowess in other events that we did during the year, I was kind of volunteered for the job.

This type of cooking, of course, involves not just cooking but meal planning, inventory planning, and shopping.  There's a bit of budgeting involved there as well.  In this particular case, students in the outdoor education course, and the instructor, felt that it would be a good idea to have cooking be one of the activities.  I warned them that having such an extensive program centered around the kitchen would require a lot of work on their part.  Everyone assured me that they would be helping out in the kitchen when they weren't doing their own activities.

On the first day of this outdoor school, none of my fellow students did show up at the kitchen to help out.  The teachers, whose students we were teaching, did come to the kitchen.  The first day of setting up in a kitchen is pretty hectic, so I didn't have an awful lot of time to school them in the niceties of cooking in preparation for eighty people, but I got out the large baking sheets, cut up appropriate portions of bread dough, and instructed them to roll or flatten the dough out so that it completely covered the baking sheets.  This was, of course, in preparation for pizza.  While I was working on the other side of the kitchen I could hear mutterings from the side where the teachers were working about how impossible a task this was.  Bread dough is elastic stuff, and you have to stretch it further than you need, so that it will snap back to the right size.  In addition, of course, bread dough is not the toughest construction material in the universe, and, if you pull it too much, it will tear.  So the teachers were muttering away to each other about how the lumps of dough were too small, and this was impossible, and various other things.  I had an awful lot of work to do, but finally I had enough, walked over to their side of the kitchen, took one of the baking sheets, took the smallest lump of bread dough that I had given them, rolled it out so that it more than filled the pan that I was working on, took a knife and cut off the excess around the edges of the pan, and then used the excess pieces to patch the holes in the bread dough in their pans.  And then walked back to my side of the kitchen where I was working on salads, without saying a word.  There was a short pause in the muttering, and then the comment, "Oh.  I guess it is possible."  They continued work without further comment.

Pizza is a great meal, but it does require a little dietary balance, and so I had planned for a quantity of salad to be the adjunct to this meal.  At the appointed time, one of my fellow students showed up with the group of elementary students who were to have the cooking lesson for this particular activity.  Again, I still had a ton of work to do to get ready for dinner, but the group was there and they needed the activity.  There were about a dozen of them and I had a dozen heads of iceberg lettuce, for the salad.  I got the students around a work table in the kitchen, and rolled a head of lettuce to each of them around the table.  Then I showed them how to identify where the core of the lettuce was, and demonstrated holding the lettuce up above your head (making sure that the stem was on the bottom), and then bringing the head of lettuce down sharply on the table surface.  This breaks the attachment of the core to all the leaves in the head of lettuce, and you can then turn the head of lettuce over, and simply pull out the core.  It's a lot easier this way, particularly when you're doing a lot of salad and need a lot of lettuce, than slicing up the heads and individually cutting out the pieces of core.

Again, I know that none of my fellow students showed up to help in the kitchen that day.  Every evening after the kids were bunked into their cabins, we had a debriefing meeting.  At that evening's debriefing meeting I noted that I had had no help in the kitchen that day, and that I felt that, while I could possibly continue to provide the meals, that I wasn't sure that I would also be able to do cooking activities for the elementary students attending the outdoor school.  All of my fellow students objected.  One told me, "We have been teaching them canoeing, first aid, nature walks, and a bunch of other things, and do you know what everyone, in every cabin, is talking about tonight?  How to take the core out of a head of lettuce.  You've got to keep on doing the cooking lessons."  So we continued with the cooking lessons.

Of course, I didn't get any more help in the kitchen.  I struggled through, but, by about Wednesday night, I figured that I needed to speak up again.  I again reiterated that they had promised to help in the kitchen, and weren't helping in the kitchen.  One of my fellow outdoor education students agreed that they had fallen down on the job.  But she said she had a solution.  She would take over as the lead cook, my fellow students would help in the kitchen, and I would have the day off.  Completely.  I thought about it for about 15 seconds and figured that the resulting disaster probably wouldn't actually kill anybody.  So I agreed.  The menu was planned and noted, and all the recipes were available.  The provisions were stocked in the kitchen.  I knew there would be problems, but I figured that it wouldn't be problems that anybody was not going to survive.  I figured that I would just stay completely away from the kitchen, not interfere, not assist, and that people might learn a valuable lesson.

I was right.  Breakfast, the next morning, was a half an hour late.  Lunch, despite the fact that yes, my fellow students did rally around their new head cook, was 45 minutes late.  Dinner was an hour and a quarter late.  I stayed out of the kitchen.  Although after dinner I did go up to one of the serving hatches where the new head cook was resting, and looking very tired.  I asked her how her feet were.  She looked up, rather woebegone, and said, "I think that's what hurts the most."  I nodded.

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/01/mgg-1d1-cooking.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html

Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/01/mgg-1d3-cooking.html

Deuteronomy 4:35

You were shown these things so that you would know that the Lord is God; there is no other besides him.

Port Alberni snow

 

As the only pedestrian in Port Alberni, I can definitely tell you that this is not a pedestrian-friendly city.  As well as the fact that most of the sidewalks are older than I am, and therefore buckled, cracked, and a danger to footing for those of my age, there is the fact that the city allows householders to overgrow the sidewalks that *do* exist with hedges, sometimes taking up four feet, of a five-foot wide sidewalk, as well as moss which, despite its extremely slow growth, has, over the years that it has been unimpeded, grown to considerable size.

But the real test of Port Alberni's aversion to pedestrians comes during the snow.  Almost nobody clears their sidewalks.  There is, supposedly, a bylaw about snow clearance on sidewalks.  It is not enforced.  And therefore everybody ignores it.  Snow clearance on sidewalks is extremely limited at the very best.  Generally speaking, it's non-existent.  Nobody walks, so nobody cares about the sidewalks.

Of course, there are some who do clear their sidewalks.  Sometimes two or three houses in a row may do so.  But, that leaves the rest of the block.  Which means, it's pointless to try and walk, even on the cleared areas.  You come to the end of the cleared areas and then you have to clamber over snow banks, compressed snow, and possibly icy patches.  If you don't want to fight your way down those stretches of sidewalk, then you have to make your way, through the snow banks, on to the roadway, to continue your journey.  Oh, and remember, those extremely wide streets in Port Alberni?  Well, most of them, when the snow falls, have one lane of traffic that has been worn down by cars driving on it.  Right in the middle.  So you've got twenty feet, or more, of snow that you have to clamber over, to get from the sidewalk to the road, or from the road to the sidewalk.

And, of course, this includes the corners and intersections.  As a matter of fact, the corners of blocks, at the intersections, are possibly the very worst.  No one clears the wheelchair ramps, of course, because they don't belong to anybody.  And, in any case, they are at the corner, and the corner is where everybody doesn't drive.  So you have the greatest depth between the curved sidewalk, and the point where one travel Lane going in one direction meets another travel plane going in the other direction.  Generally speaking, this extends out about thirty feet, rather than the twenty that is the normal margin of snow bordering the driven area.

So, generally, you have to walk on the road.  The Port Alberni drivers, not the best drivers in any case, seem to have real trouble with this.  Not knowing what pedestrians *are* (after all, I'm the only one), they seem to see pedestrians as oddly shaped and very slow vehicles, whose owners must be intimidated into buying larger and faster vehicles.

And then, of course, it starts to rain.  And the water percolates down through the snow, forming considerable depth of wet snow, which, to your shoes, is indistinguishable from a puddle.  Although puddles usually aren't eight inches deep.  The snow, of course, dams up the water, and so there is nowhere for the water to drain away to.  So we have standing water of quite incredible depths, damned up by various snow banks.  These, of course, generally occur where you, as a pedestrian, have to try and gain access either to the sidewalk, or to the road, or some other location.  The areas that have been cleared out in order to create a driveway for the cars, provide snow banks on either side, which prevent drainage.  Yet more ponds and lakes.

Snow generally doesn't last too long around Port Alberni.  This is a temperate climate, and so the temperature generally falls just enough to create snow, if indeed it does fall that far, and then warms up again, generally turning to rain.  The population of Port Alberni depends on this.  Part of the reason that they don't clear their sidewalks is that they think this is a useless exercise: the snow is going to be washed away by the rain in a couple of days anyway.

Except that sometimes it doesn't.  The snow, in our current situation, has been rained upon.  The temperature has warmed up some.  We are no longer in any danger of having any more snow.  However, there has not been sufficient rain for it to have washed away the snow completely.  So, we have heavy, water-soaked snow lying everywhere around town, creating the aforementioned lakes and ponds.  But it's not going away.  Today it's not raining.  So, even though the temperature is slightly above freezing, the snow isn't going to go anywhere.  And, of course, if the temperature does fall, even just a degree or two, the water soaked snow will, of course, freeze.  And we will have tons of ice everywhere.  And, of course, if that happens, and the sidewalks are covered with ice, nobody is even going to attempt to clear their sidewalk, because nobody has really serious snow removal shovels.  The metal kind.  With sharp front tips to break and lift the ice.

Help ...

[...], thank you for your follow-up email, and for your follow-up phone call, more recently.  I apologize for the terse nature of my initial response to your email, but this entire episode has been very frustrating.  As it concerns mental health, I can't help but think that situations similar to mine must be happening to those who are possibly least able to address their needs and issues.

I am currently under treatment for depression, which is possibly related to grief over the death of my wife.  However, I have suffered from depression for more than fifty years, on a cyclical basis.  Currently I am suffering the deepest depression that I have had since before I was married, and the longest uninterrupted cycle of depression in my entire life.  Apparently my depression is characterized as treatment resistant.  I am on an antidepressant, the second to be tried in the past year (and fifth overall, with none showing any benefit), as well as sporadic meetings with a psychiatrist, and more regular visits with the [...] office.

My initial concern, prompting the contact with your office, was with regard to the gap and sudden cessation in follow-up calls from the [...] office.  Subsequently, it has been agreed that I will drop into the office on a weekly basis.

I am, of course, well aware of the financial, and personnel, limitations of medical care here in Port Alberni.  I am currently awaiting tests, and an MRI, and know that I am fortunate in actually having a GP.  I understand that the initial problem with [...] office failing to contact me was due to a staffing issue.  However, there was no contact or explanation, at the time, and no notice to myself of the situation.  There was no information about the fact that they were under pressure because of lack of personnel, and no other attempts to contact me, or to suggest any alternatives in this situation.  At the time, when I went to the [...] office and tried to raise the issue, the only response I got was being handed the "concerned about the quality of your care" pamphlet, which prompted my initial contact with your office.  I understand that your office is probably limited, and doubt that any improvement will result from this contact, but I felt that I should give you the details of the situation.  I do not know what to ask for in terms of help because, of course, I have no idea what your office *can* do.  I thought I was asking for help in turning to the medical system in the first place.

As noted, I am aware of the considerable constraints on the medical system throughout the province, and particularly in regard to Island Health, and specifically in Port Alberni.  However, this entire experience has been extremely frustrating.  I have been in depression for almost a year now, without any kind of relief, and under treatment for eight months, again without any relief.  It is extremely hard to keep faith in the medical system in this situation, and it is difficult to stay motivated to follow through with the prescribed process, when the system itself seems to keep breaking down.

Jeremiah 29:11

For I know the plans

I have for your good, and not

for evil, so hope.

MGG - 1d.1 - Cooking

One of the things that my mother did teach me was portion cooking.  That is, the ability to cook for large numbers of people.  I am not a gourmet, and I can't turn out anything fancy, and I don't know very much about bakery, pastries, or desserts.  But I *do* know how to cook for 150 to 500 people.

I've used this in a variety of different ways over the years.  I have cooked for logging and other work crews.  I have cooked for residential children's camps.

One of my party pieces for use with this skill was the potluck pizza party.  For an indeterminate size group, such as a volunteer organization, or a company party of some type, I would create a sign up sheet.  Everybody would be bringing ingredients for pizza.  The potluck part wasn't exactly potluck: when I made up the sign up sheet, beside every sign up space there would be an item to bring for pizza ingredients.  The first entry would generally be four or five cans of tomato paste.  Roughly every fifth item would be a half a pound of grated cheese.  Roughly every sixth item would be a half a pound of sliced dry sausage or cubed ham.  Other entries might be a pound of sliced onions, half a pound of sliced green peppers, and various other items that one might find on different varieties of pizza.  As people signed up they would note what they were to bring for the party.  As people showed up at the party, wherever it was, I'd bring along several pounds of refrigerated bread dough, which I had prepared beforehand and allowed to rise once.  At the party venue, I would roll out pizza dough into whatever available baking sheets were available.  As people showed up I would start assembling the ingredients that they brought.  As the night wore on I would be creating a variety of different pizzas, depending on what had already showed up.  This works nicely for anywhere upwards of a dozen people, and makes a nice change from the standard chips and dips.

As I said, I cooked for children's residents camps a number of times.  I usually did a variation on pizza for at least one of meals.  It wasn't the potluck version, of course, but I was able generally able to create a half a dozen different varieties of pizza for a dinner on the huge baking sheets that were generally available in commercial kitchens.

At one memorable winter camp, I was also asked to be the camp nurse, because I had an industrial first aid ticket at the time.  At one point, during the camp, when one of my kitchen staff have made a particularly stupid mistake, I was reaming them out, when I realized that the entire kitchen had gone silent.  I turned, and there was a woman in the door of the kitchen, looking at me, quite horrified.  I asked what I could do for her, and she said, "Are you the camp nurse?"  Yes, I said.  She said, "I have a girl in my cabin who is having a difficult period."  I said I don't make house calls.

One evening one of the campers was exhibiting symptoms of stomach pain.  We couldn't determine what was wrong with him, and so took him off the island, over to Gibsons, and drove up to Sechelt to the hospital.  There they x-rayed him, and found that his stomach was seriously distended.  The medical staff finally got him to admit that he had had five servings of my meatloaf.  I suppose it was a bit of a tribute to my cooking.  But it was a little annoying, and, coming back to the island at three in the morning, and having to get up at six in order to make breakfast, I simply stayed up, making trays of uncooked cinnamon rolls that could be kept in the fridge for later use, and about a dozen lemon meringue pies, for use in the next few days.  I had made up an enormous match of bread dough, which could be kept in the fridge, to make the buns, and also pizzas.

As it happened, the camp changed that particular day, and another camp came in.  That day was New year's Eve, and so a party was planned for that evening's dinner, and after.  I therefore planned the pizza dinner for that night.  But, because I was short on sleep from the previous night's activities, I left the pizzas ready to be served cooked and served in the evening, and, giving instructions to the rest of the kitchen staff, went to bed early. 

I was awakened by a strange sound, which I subsequently determined was the island's fire alarm.  One of the cabins had, in fact, caught fire.  On an island when there's a fire everybody turns out.  The house was well and truly engulfed in flames and we didn't have proper firefighting equipment and certainly not sufficient training.  However I went down with some others to make sure that the burning house didn't set fire to anything else.  At one point, a son of one of my friends, who, at the time, had decided that he would like to be a firefighter when he grew up, ran into the house with a one pound dry chemical fire extinguisher, intending to fight the fire.  I know it's not the right thing to do, and it was probably a fairly stupid decision, but at the time all I could think of to do was run in after him, grab him, and haul him back out of the burning house.  Fortunately neither of us was injured.

Eventually the Gibsons volunteer fire department did respond to our fire.  They, of course, had their own equipment, and, using our firefighting standpipe system, hooked up their pump, to our pipe, and ran hoses from a stand pipe up to the burning house.  They did put the fire out, although the house was, by that time, completely destroyed.  All of this activity had put paid to the evening's pizza party as most of the counselors and staff for the camp were fully involved in making sure that none of the kids attempted to get anywhere near the burning house.  So we invited the volunteer fire department crew up to the camp and they joined in the pizza party.

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/01/mgg-1c-memoirs-of-grieving-gnome-bcyp.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html

Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/01/mgg-1d2-cooking.html

1 Samuel 17:45

But David replied to the Philistine, “You are coming against me with sword and spear and javelin.  But I am coming against you in the name of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel’s armies, whom you have defied!

Port Alberni is closed. Try again tomorrow.

Today, for the first time in quite a while, I was scheduled to present my online security seminar.  It's not the CISSP, of course, but I always enjoy teaching, any subject, at any level.

It is snowing in Port Alberni.  The roofs, streets, and fields are covered in two inches of white, and any normal imperfections are covered over.  The flakes are still falling gently, hushing normally harsh sounds into silence.

It is also silent because, whenever it snows, Port Alberni is closed.  Everything shuts down.

I am assuming that my seminar is cancelled.  Which is very disappointing.  I've had a pretty rotten couple of weeks, and could have used a boost.

As the only pedestrian in Port Alberni I am, of course, not subject to the limitations of mere mortals (read, "those who depend upon automobiles").  I can get out, and around, to anywhere I want.  But, of course, there is no reason to go anywhere, because everything is closed.

Because it is snowing in Port Alberni.

(Our snow clearing service, with it's usual skill for doing the right thing at the wrong time, plowed the lots at 4 AM, when there was only a couple of inches of snow.  Three hours later, we have another three to four inches, so what they cleared is actually less than what is on the ground, now, in the area they cleared ...)

Came down to the library and got a couple of things, since they said they were going to be open at noon.  An awful lot more sidewalks have been shovelled than even an hour and a half ago.  Those who have shovelled are getting an assist from the rising temperatures.  Those who haven't shoveled are going to get a bit of a shock when it freezes overnight.  Enough people have shovelled their walks that it is *almost* worth trying to walk on the sidewalks, but there is always that *one* guy who hasn't shovelled, in the middle of the block, which means that you have to fight your way through the snow banks onto the road.  Generally, you can walk down the road, but the compacted snow makes it pretty slippery.  The main streets are pretty good, but there is only one lane that has been worn away by the cars, so the cars are really aggressive about chasing you off the road.

Here comes the ... snow?

I should reiterate, for those who think that all Canadians live in igloos, that I live on the west coast, where winds, unimpeded across the biggest expanse of ocean on the planet, bring mild and moderate temperatures all year round.  We get a lot of rain, but we don't get much freezing.

We get snow--occasionally.  There are winters when we get no snow at all.  Snow is a rarity: a pond or small lake freezing over is a wonder.

We are having a cold snap.  The *high* temperatures have been, and will be, freezing or below for almost a week.  We are having what TROC (The Rest Of Canada) refers to as "but it's a *dry* cold!"  It's common there: it's unusual here.

Thursday was the prototypical "dry cold."  Below freezing, but sunny.  Friday, though, was colder, still sunny--and with snow.  Mostly *light* snow, to be sure, and not enough to stick on the ground except in the cracks in the sidewalk (although there was a brief time when the snow was getting pretty heavy).  But it was falling out of a not-quite-completely-clear but definitely-*patches*-of-blue sky.

(I've now got blinds on my windows.  The windows are double-glazed, but still allow some cold to seep through.  The blinds, when closed, definitely reduce the heat transfer.  But, even though it's very cold right now, I still find that I am keeping the blinds open as much as possible, even before the sun comes up [which means the-second-best-view-in-Port-Alberni is not quite as impressive as usual].  I'm not sure why.  Am I still trying to convince myself that the-second-best-view-in-Port-Alberni is still worth living for, in spite of everything else?)

Joshua 14:12

Now, therefore, give me this mountain whereof the Lord spoke in that day, for thou heardest in that day how the Anakim were there, and that the cities were great and fortified. If it so be that the Lord will be with me, then I shall be able to drive them out, as the Lord said.

MGG - 1c - Memoirs of a Grieving Gnome - BCYP

I have always been involved in volunteer activities and organizations.  I'm not sure whether the British Columbia Youth Parliament (BCYP) counts in this regard.  We certainly did a fair amount of it.  I will speak elsewhere about the importance of volunteer work and what it can do for your career, but BCYP certainly taught me some very important lessons that came in very useful in the course of my career.  It was one of the high points of my volunteer career, as well.

When I joined, it wasn't yet the British Columbia Youth Parliament.  At that point it was still the Older Boys Parliament of British Columbia.

The older boys parliaments of various provinces in Canada came out of the TUXIS organization which was a Christian young men's group.  Well, boys group, as they would have put it at that point.  These were teenagers in church groups in Canada.  The TUXIS organization took its name from a rather convoluted acronym: training through service (T and S), you (U) and I on either side, and Christ (X) in the middle.  As the name would indicate, this was an organization that was involved in various service works, but it was a church group organization, and initially, the older boys parliaments that were created across the country were church-based, and drew their membership from the church service groups.

Our church never did have a TUXIS group, but the Older Boys Parliament was undergoing a bit of a transformation itself, which eventually, within a few years, meant that it was a secular organization.  I did get the information about the Older Boys Parliament initially from the church, but not for any contact with the original TUXIS organization.  I only learned about the TUXIS organization, and its contacts, later when I did some research into the history of the Older Boys Parliament itself.

At the time that I joined it, the Older Boys Parliament of BC was one of the last older boys parliaments operating in Canada.  It was also one of the more socially active of the organizations.  The Older Boys Parliament of British Columbia ran a number of charitable projects during the year, including a resident summer camp for kids one week during the year.  As I had already been involved with resident camping I was very interested in this project and tried to be involved in the planning as much as possible although I was not always able to attend the camp itself as a counselor, since by this time I was generally working full-time during the summers in order to make money for university.

The Older Boys Parliament gave me two fairly valuable lessons.  The first was an early exposure to legal and legislative language, and the importance of seemingly minor changes in wording in any type of legal document or legislation.  That lesson, leading to an awareness of policy and procedures, and a much better understanding of the rules of order and procedures in both legislatures and committees, was helpful both in a number of the initial jobs that I had, where I was able to create procedures manuals because I was aware of what procedures were, and also a much better understanding of the importance of policy, when I got into the field of Security Management.  The second was rather more complex.

The first year that I attended the Older Boys Parliament of British Columbia, 1971, a resolution was put forward, suggesting that we allow the inclusion of girls and women into the organization.  This was hotly debated by the group of the day.  There were a number of us who felt that this was the 70s and therefore why should we still have an exclusively male/boys organization.  However, a number felt that feminism was going too far, too fast, that male society was under attack, and that we had to hold the line against creeping feminism.  In the end however the ayes had it and the resolution passed.

I can't remember whether the shock was immediately after the passage of the resolution or at some point later in the proceedings.  The Older Boys Parliament, while modeled on the Parliament, had certain positions, including that of the speaker, filled by senior members of the organization, constituting the Senate, who were essentially alumni of the organization who were still supporting it in a variety of ways.  The speaker of the day at some point informed us that the resolution admitting women to the Older Boys Parliament was invalid.  That a resolution tended to be a short-term piece of legislation, and was not intended to make a major change in policy or operation.  There were a number of pieces of legislation that were bills, and therefore more important to the long-term operation of the organization, which mentioned men and boys and excluded women.  Therefore, the speaker felt that a mere resolution could not make the sweeping change that the admission of women to the organization would entail.

The announcement of this decision caused some very predictable reactions.  Those who had opposed the resolution were gleeful about the fact that the Older Boys Parliament of British Columbia was protected from an invasion of women.  Those who had supported the resolution were crestfallen, and some felt that the Senate had done us a grave disservice in using a legal technicality to obviate the fairly clear mandate that expressed the wishes of the House of the day.

I took a different lesson from it.  I was disappointed, yes, but I noted that the Speaker's rationale had some basis behind it, and was, in fact, reasonable.  I also learned that if something is important to you, you learn the rules, and you follow them properly.

I had, already, learned from the debates, and the amendments, sometimes turning on seemingly minor points of wording, as well as study of the standing orders, which lay out the rules of debate and the operation of the house.  I was already interested in studying them.  I was already interested in the position of Deputy Speaker, which, unlike that of the Speaker, was not restricted to members of the Senate, but was open to those of us who were members of the parliament itself.  So I studied further in this regard.  This interest was further strengthened by the disallowance of the resolution admitting women.

In a subsequent year, I was asked, by the Premier of the day (Premier was another elected position open to the members of the parliament, and was decided by an election held by the previous years parliament, along with the deputy speaker, and the leader of the opposition) to be a member of his cabinet, and therefore government.  I agreed, and, since he was asking me to be Attorney General, got him to agree in return that I could propose a bill admitting women to the organization.  The premier agreed.  He didn't actually want women to be admitted to the organization, but he felt that such a bill would be would lead to vigorous debate within the house and could be a lot of fun.  He didn't actually know that I intended it to pass. 

I had studied both the rules and standing orders of the organization, and all the existing bills which made up the policies of the organization.  I created a fairly massive bill, which eventually ran to nineteen legal sized pages, listing every instance where men and boys were specified in any piece of legislation, and amending that to include women and girls.  That was the bill; and it was a bill; that I introduced to the house.

When I introduced it I was allowed to speak initially to open the debate.  However, under the standing orders, I would only be allowed that one opening statement, and then a final statement, which, if I chose to make it, would, in fact, close debate.  So, I made an opening statement.  I outlined my basic position, that it was well past time when we should have become an inclusive and co-educational organization, and that this bill was a comprehensive vehicle to do that.  I sat down.  Basically, nobody else stood up to debate.  Finally the Premier stood.  He had obviously wanted to hold his statement (he was allowed only one) until some debate had been established.  He pointed out that if we were to pass this bill then, the following year, there would be girls sitting in the parliament with us.  The reaction, although unstated, because I don't recall that anybody else much got up to speak, was a massive "Yes? So what? This is the right thing to do."  The bill passed, and the Older Boys Parliament of British Columbia became the British Columbia Youth Parliament.

I am rather proud of that particular accomplishment.  But more than that it taught me the lesson: learn the rules, follow them properly, and, if the matter is important to you, you will succeed.

There was an addendum to this story.  Many years later Gloria and I arranged to be in Victoria during an anniversary year for the group.  At an alumni reception, unbeknownst to me, Gloria spoke to the then premier, and other people in leadership, and arranged for me to tell the story of the change to the youth parliament of the day.  I had told the story a number of times over the years, and was used to people being not terribly interested.  So I was surprised, when I got to the part about the first resolution being refused, when there was a collective gasp (from about fifty percent of those present).

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/01/mgg-1b3-memoirs-of-grieving-gnome.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html

Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/01/mgg-1d1-cooking.html

Merry Happy ...

Please endeavour to have one or more satisfactory events at or near the solstice near the end of the year as befits your sensibilities.

(stolen from VC)

James 2:15-16

Suppose you see a brother or sister who has no food or clothing, and you say, "Good-bye and have a good day; stay warm and eat well"—but then you don’t give that person any food or clothing.  What good does that do?

Comfort and listening

So, he asks a bit about my situation.  I tell him a bit about my situation.  I don't think anything that I say indicates any particular need for theological education, or distinctives on finer points.  But, regardless, having obtained absolutely minimal information on me, he decides to launch into a hard sell.  He is pointing out the advantages of his particular denomination's theological correctness.

Now, I have already indicated that I have some theological training.  In fact, I've got more than a little theological training.  I didn't just go to The standard Bible school, where you spend one year after high school.  But he's still pushing particular theological points.

I'm not looking for theological debate.  I'm not looking for theological education.  I am looking for a church that cares whether I live or die.  I am looking for a church that is willing to provide some kind of comfort, given the damage and pain that I am suffering from grief and depression.  But he's not interested in that.  He's only interested in pushing his church's theological advantage.

No, I don't think this is my church either.

Romans 13:6,7

Pay your taxes too, for these same two reasons.  For government workers need to be paid so that they can keep on doing God’s work, serving you.  Pay everyone whatever he ought to have: pay your taxes and import duties gladly, obey those over you, and give honor and respect to all those to whom it is due.

MGG - 1b.3 - Memoirs of a Grieving Gnome - Parents

I never knew my maternal grandfather, since he died when my mother was only sixteen years of age.  From my mother's accounts, which, as noted, are not always reliable, he had some odd relation to Scottish nobility.  Mother always insisted that he had made two fortunes, and lost both, and was on his way to making a third when he died.  It was true that he left my grandmother well enough provided for that she was able to live in reasonably comfortable circumstances, and to leave my mother and aunt some money after her death.

My maternal grandfather came from Scotland: the only one of my grandparents not born in Vancouver.  He was, apparently, an iron worker as a tradesman.  But, if even part of what my mother said about him is true, he eventually became a developer.  At one point, possibly when I was in my twenties, my mother identified a fire escape and assorted railings as being the actual work of my grandfather.  Somehow she obtained this material from a building that was being torn down, and we had it lying around our backyard, beside the house, for a number of years.  Mother intended to build a fence with this material.  None of the fence ever got built, although three brick pillars were constructed, standing unconnected to each other, for a number of years before that house was eventually sold and torn down.  I have no idea what ever happened to the iron work.

Mother was a bit of a social climber.  That might be understating the case.  Mother was a bit of a social mountaineer.  She seemed to regard her lack of social standing, and the lack of a personal family fortune, as a bit of a personal insult.  She was, therefore, always on the lookout for some way to increase her social standing.  In later years I had the very strong impression that we, as children, were primarily there as props to give mother greater standing as a Supermom.  Mother was famous for her hospitality.  This hospitality that Mom provided always seemed to come at someone else's expense.  For example, we, as children, were often subjected to the fact that our family celebrations, such as Christmas, would sometimes be added to with strangers being invited to our house.  Mother became famous for her dinner parties.  All during my teen years I was deputed to make hors d'oeuvres for these dinner parties.  I wasn't given very much, either in the way of materials, or directions, to make these hors d'oeuvres.  I was just expected to make them.  Mother also got a reputation for being a tireless Church worker.  She was able to do an awful lot of this church work because I was left to babysit my younger siblings.  I did an awful lot of babysitting during my teen years, almost all for my younger siblings, and all of it unpaid.

Maybe it's genetic.  All of my siblings, all of my brothers and sisters, and myself, are conceited.  Not self-confident: that's a different thing.  We have an inflated sense of our own importance and abilities.  I have had to fight against this all my life.

It was Gloria who really identified this to me.  It was a very painful realization.  It's not something that's a particularly attractive quality, and it's something that's very hard to fight.  I have to remind myself that I am world famous - amongst a vanishingly small and select population.

I don't know where this conceit comes from.  It's not as if we were showered with praise as kids.  In fact, the night before my first real, full time, job, my parents sat me down, and provided me with an extensive list of all of my failings as a person.  (They did this from the best of all possible motives of course: so that I could, in the few remaining hours before I started work the next morning, rectify all these myriad faults.)  I suppose that it is due more to nurture than to nature, since my two surviving sisters, both adopted, both carry the trait.  It may be that we, in reaction to a lack of praise as children, went overboard in trying to build ourselves some small piece of self-esteem.

Mother's reputation for giving dinners was all the stranger given our experience, as children, at the dinner table.  Food in our house was provided, plated.  You didn't take what you wanted.  Not during regular meals anyways.  This may explain why all of us in the family have difficulty in buffet style situations.  We didn't encounter them in the course of normal family dinners.  Mother served up the plates: you ate what was put in front of you.  I don't recall ever going into the cupboards to get food for myself while I was growing up.  I don't know why I didn't: I certainly knew where everything was, because I had to help out either preparing regular meals, or definitely helping out when it came to mother's lavish dinner parties, but it just never occurred to me that I would be allowed to go into a cupboard or the fridge, and get something to eat for myself.  This inferred injunction was still in effect even after I was babysitting for my siblings and preparing and feeding them dinner.

Mother's lavish and complex dinner parties were all the stranger given one of the meals that I recall, least fondly, from my childhood: leftovers.  Leftovers were taken out of the fridge, and piled into a frying pan, in separate clumps, which nonetheless ran together somewhat along the edges, and heated up.  And then plated and served up.  Yes, it is as unappetizing as it sounds.  This was my experience of my mother's fame as a cook.  It was somewhat at odds with her reputation with everyone else outside the family.

Mother's reputation for hospitality at the church, or in other related situations, also relied heavily on help from other people.  A number of other people were involved in the dinners that my mother got credit for.  Most of them over and over again at the same dinners that my mother was involved in.  Somehow, my mother always got the credit for these dinners.

Dad was a teacher, and later an administrator.  Mom was a teacher, for a brief time before I was born.  I did not want to be a teacher, when I was growing up.  I think this is possibly because, while both Mom and Dad were teachers, they weren't very good at it, and certainly didn't love it.  I remember my father giving me some career advice at one point, and suggesting that I become a teacher because you could put in your thirty years and then retire.  I found this rather questionable as career advice.

Mom and Dad certainly weren't intellectuals.  My home is full of books.  I love books.  I love reading.  I love libraries.  I love learning new things.  I love the Internet.  Initially I loved the Internet because it allowed you to communicate with all kinds of people, in all kinds of specialties, all around the world, but laterally, since the advent of the World Wide Web and search engines, I love the Internet because you can find out anything about anything from the comfort of your desk, or even your phone.

Growing up our home was not full of books.  There weren't bookshelves.  Or, sometimes there were bookshelves, but they held knick knacks rather than books.  My parents did not seem particularly interested in learning anything.  My parents were not particularly interested in reading.  They didn't have books.  They didn't read books.  Other than to us, as children, and that was more because you were supposed to read to your children for some reason.  Once I learned to read, and could read to my siblings, that became part of my job and taking care of my siblings.  But I really enjoyed reading to my brothers and sisters, because I enjoyed reading.  Not that, even at that point, I had many books.  My collection of books didn't really start until I left home.  The books that I read while I was still in my parents' home came from the library.  The library at school in many cases, and later, once I discovered them, from public libraries.  Which, as I noted, I dearly love.

I suppose that I am saying unkind things about my parents.  I do not want to leave any impression that we were mistreated as children.  We always had a roof over our heads.  We always had food to eat.  We always had clothes to wear.  The food might sometimes have been unappetizing, and the clothes were very often unfashionable, but we were provided for.  We weren't abused.  But, possibly oddly for people who are supposed to be teachers, very little teaching went on.  Dad loves to fish during the summer.  We were taken out, occasionally, on fishing trips.  But Dad had very little patience at teaching us what we needed to know in order to learn how to fish the same way that he did.  Dad spent an awful lot of time in his workshop in the basement.  Dad spent some time tinkering with the car.  But Dad couldn't be bothered teaching us what to do in the workshop, or teaching us how to change the oil in the car.  As noted, I helped Mom in the kitchen.  I did pick up some things from helping Mom over the years, but I can't say that Mom really taught me anything in that regard.  Like Dad she didn't seem to have much patience with the activity of teaching.  No, we were not abused, and I can't say that we had an unhappy childhood, but when I think back on my childhood, we children were kind of treated with a sort of benign neglect.  Mom and Dad had other things to do that were more interesting than we were.

Eventually I became a teacher.  It was almost an accident.  However, once I became a teacher I discovered two things: the first was that I had been doing teaching for a significant number of years.  It just hadn't been called that.  The second was that I absolutely loved teaching.

As I said, despite the death of my sister, and the other deaths in my family, and the almost complete lack of support that I got from the church while trying to process my own faith, I did maintain my faith.  I still believe in God.  This makes me a rather a rarity in the modern world.  It makes me even more of a rarity in my chosen field.  In information technology, and in the rarified higher forms of it, and particularly in the field of information security, atheists tend to predominate for some reason.  Many of my closest colleagues in the field are not simply atheists, but very militantly so!  They must find my faith not only annoying, but proof of my intellectual unfitness to work in this highly demanding and rigorous field.

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/12/mgg-1b2-memoirs-of-grieving-gnome-faith.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html

Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/01/mgg-1c-memoirs-of-grieving-gnome-bcyp.html

I don't know why I told you that.

Somebody said it again today.  I don't know why I told you that.  People tell me personal things, and then say, "That was personal.  I don't know why I told you that."

Well, I know.  I listen.  Because I listen, people tell me things.

If you don't listen, people know it, and don't tell you things.  But it wouldn't matter anyway, because you weren't listening, were you?

Where's the line between "negligence" and "scam"?

I tend to say that, in relation to grief, a loss is a loss.  However, I may have to rethink that.  What I meant by it is that a grief group is not necessarily a contest as to who's loss is the biggest.  It doesn't matter if you have lost a wife or a granddaughter.  It doesn't matter if you have lost a spouse to death, or to divorce.  The grief will vary in intensity, not only because of the significance of the relationship, but also because people react differently to grief.  So it's not a contest, and grievers tend to feel for each other.

However, recently I was made aware of a situation where somebody is taking this concept a little bit too far.  They seem to be trying to be "all things to all people," or to make a grief support group fit all kinds of situations.  In this particular group there was someone who had made a purchase, and was then disappointed in the result.  Now, possibly, and even very likely, this was more than simple "buyer's remorse."  There was a fair amount of money involved, and this person had had a set of requirements which were not fulfilled by the actual item purchased.  But, unfortunately, this person was sitting next to a person who had lost a spouse of very long standing.  I don't think that anybody would argue that the two situations were in any way comparable.

Which has led me to the realization that a number of people are seeing the grief, of others, as an opportunity.  They see it as a sort of a weird form of empire building, or of creating a business, even though they do not understand what grief is, themselves, because of having almost no experience in it.  In a sense, they are defrauding the people they are supposedly serving.  No, it's not necessarily fraud in terms of finances, although one could possibly make a case that the payment for the sessions is somewhat fraudulent.  And no, it's not the same as the grief scams that try to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from grievers.  But, it is, in a very real sense, taking advantage of the grief of other people in order to benefit one particular person, who not only may not be providing the comfort and support that the mourner actually needs, but may, because of presenting this situation falsely as an opportunity for the mourning, may be preventing that mourner from finding realistic comfort and support.

Hebrews 10:35-36

So do not throw away this confident trust in the Lord.  Remember the great reward it brings you!  Patient endurance is what you need now, so that you will continue to do God’s will.  Then you will receive all that he has promised.

Lifting depression?

My depression *may* be easing a bit.  I'm seeing some indicators (that I tend to track both going into, and coming out of, depressive cycles) that this, the deepest depressive cycle I've had since before I married Gloria, and the longest in my entire life, might (might!) be coming to an end.  (Now I have to consider whether this is because of the newest drug, whether this cycle is *finally* coming to a long overdue end, whether this is a blip, or whether, in my cognitive impairment, I am misreading the signs.)

One of the indicators is that I am becoming annoyed with the mental health professionals.  In the depths of depression, you generally don't have the energy to be peeved with people: you just try to have enough energy to go along with things.  But now I'm getting irked by the facility of some of the suggestions or responses: after all, while I don't have a lot of the medical and even psychological training that these folks have, I *have* had a deeply personal motivation to research and study this condition since before most of them were born.  (Recently I taught the shrink one of the reasons that depressives, the bereaved, and similar mental conditions have trouble with most holidays; a factor she had never considered.)

I'm trying to take what they say seriously, and not fight against them, but I keep remembering the title of an editorial from long ago: "The Danger of Simple Answers."

Sermon 20 - Science vs Faith

Sermon 20 - Science vs Faith

I believe in God because I am a physicist.

That may sound strange to some of you.  An awful lot of you, and an awful lot of other people, consider science and faith to be enemies.  A lot of people think that evolution means God can't exist.  As far as I'm concerned, that just means that you don't know what evolution actually is, and says.  Evolution doesn't say anything about god.  It just gives a mechanism for the variation, distribution, and growth of different species of animals and plants and life in general.

The thing is, science is simply believing what the evidence says, until you get more and better evidence, that definitely says something different.  Now this is really interesting, because C. S. Lewis writes somewhere that faith means that once you have made a decision to believe in God, you don't change your mind, until you have a very good reason to change your mind.  And, even if you do come up with a reason, you make sure that it's a very good reason before you change your mind.

Don't those two statements look an awful lot alike?

I am not having a good time right now.  As a matter of fact, I am not having a good life right now.  I am a grieving widower, and lonely, and depressed.  (Which may have to do with each other, or are maybe separate and cumulative.  In any case, it's not fun.)  I don't want to live this life.  My life is not worth living right now.

The thing is, that's my experience right now.  Well, and for some time now, but, even so, it's now.  And it's me.  And an awful lot of you keep telling me that your life is good, that God is good to you, that God supports you, that the church supports you.  So, that kind of contradicts my feeling about my life.  And, in addition, I can remember times when my life was good.  I can't remember how they felt, now, but I do remember it happening.

I even have proof that it happened, once upon a time.  Gloria, when we first got married accused me of making what she called "happy noises."  I didn't know what she meant.  I thought that, since I was way worse at singing than she was, that sometimes when I was singing under my breath, I may have been singing so badly, that she couldn't tell that I was singing.  And then, one day, after our first grandson was born, and we had, for various reasons, bought a video camera, and we had been out with our grandson and I had been videotaping what had been going on, and we were watching this video afterwards, Gloria suddenly cried out, "There!  That's the happy noises!"  And, sure enough, you can hear, on the video, that I am making a sort of vaguely-but-not-really-musical, tuneless, and rhythmless, humming.  It's very hard to describe, but if you heard it once, you would know what Gloria meant.  So, I have documented video evidence that once upon a time I was happy.  So, I've been happy, once upon a time.  Just not now.

So therefore, even though my life feels really terrible right now, there's still reason, and even evidence, to hope that my life might be happy at some time in the future.  That I might get to the same kind of life that most of you seem to be living.  So, that's faith.  The evidence against life, the evidence that my life is terrible and always will be terrible, is not strong enough to overturn the evidence of your testimonies, and even my own remembrances.  As well as that video.

So, science and faith would seem to be very similar.  God doesn't ask us to believe without any evidence.  Jesus famously, on one occasion, said that we shouldn't put God to the test, but the Bible also says that we should taste and see that the Lord is good.  That we should, in fact, try God, and see if He works.

Okay, that's one part of why I believe in God because I'm a physicist.  But there's more.

We are asked, as Christians, to believe a lot of very weird stuff.  And I'm not even talking about bread from heaven, or virgins giving birth, or parting seas, or other stuff like that.  I'm talking about things that seem to be not only unlikely, but inherently, and logically, contradictory.

We are asked, for example, to believe that Jesus is both fully God and fully man.  At the same time.  Now this, of course, is flatly impossible.  Inherently, and logically, impossible.  So, obviously we can't believe it.

Except that there are things that seem to be impossible, but just happened to be true.  I am, as I say, a physicist.  I know a little bit (a very little bit) about quantum physics and quantum mechanics.  This is new stuff in the scientific realm, and it will definitely make your head hurt.  For example, a photon is a particle of light.  So it is a particle.  A particle is a pretty much a point: it is here and it is not there type of thing.  So a particle cannot be a wave, which is not a specific point, but is spread out over an area.  Except that a photon is, also, and at the same time, a wave.  We have done experiments to prove that a photon is a particle.  And we have done experiments to prove that a photon is a wave.  And both experiments turn out to be true, and both conditions turn out to be true.  A wave is distributed across space, and even time.  And so it can't be the same as a particle.  That's just logically impossible.  It's got to be either one thing or another.

So, we've got something that should be logically impossible, and just happens to be true.  So, we have to believe in something that seems to be contradictory.  I don't know how a photon is both a wave, and a particle, at the same time.  But it is.  That's just a fact.  I can't figure out how it works: I have absolutely no idea how that could possibly be.  It seems inherently, and logically, contradictory.  But it's true.

So what *seems* to be logically contradictory, can't be.  Because it is true.  It is provable.  It is a fact.  And because it is true, it means that we don't understand everything, and what we *think* seems to be a logical contradiction, isn't.

So, believing that Jesus is fully man, and fully God?  Okay.  I don't know how that works: I can't figure out how that could possibly work.  But, it happens to be true.

Same with Jesus being the same as God, and being distinct from God.  That seems to be impossible.  It logically contradicts itself.  It's inherently contradictory.  But it's also true.  Just like the photon.  So, because I'm a physicist, I am asked to believe impossible things before breakfast.  So, believing that Jesus both is and is distinct from God, well, I just have to accept that.  It's the truth.  I don't know how and why, but science means that you believe the evidence, until you get a better explanation.  Maybe I will get a better explanation, sometime.  Maybe I will get a better explanation in heaven.  Or maybe not.  But it's true, and the evidence points that way, so, I've got to believe it, because I'm a scientist.

There is another aspect of science and faith.  This is possibly a bit more complicated.  Although, it seems relatively simple, on the surface.

There is one worship leader who annoys me.  He, on occasion, in introducing certain songs, lauds the wonders of God's creation.  I don't really have a problem with that.  However, in his view, the wonders of God's creation seems to be limited to the fact that galaxies are immense.  The thing is, God's creation is much more wonderful, much more complex, and much more immense than he could ever imagine.

The annoying thing is, that, as a scientist, I know the complexity of God's creation.  Or, at least, I know more about it than most people.  I certainly don't know all of it.  That's one of the things that you learn, as a scientist: the more you know, the more you realize you *don't* know.

But in terms of the immensity of God's creation, well, let's start at the other end.  We have already talked about photons, one of the smallest of items in God's creation.  So, we come up to our size, and it's difficult to imagine how much bigger we are, than a photon is.  When we get down to things that are about 10,000 times smaller than we are, that seems to be the limit at which we can perceive things.  After that, we just call them microscopic, and we figure that everything microscopic is about the same size.  They aren't, of course.  In fact, there are about seventeen orders of magnitude in sizes below the microscopic limit.  There's only four orders of magnitude between microscopic and us.  So the range of difference in sizes between the smallest things in the universe, and the microscopic limit, is more than a billion times a billion.  I know, I know: it's getting really hard to wrap your head around that.

And when we go in the other direction, things are about the same.  We have a hard time figuring out difference in sizes between us and what we can see with the naked eye.  What we can see with the naked eye, even when it's as big as a mountain, tends to be limited to about two orders of magnitude difference in size from us.  So there's another 19 orders of magnitude between the farthest distance that we can conceive of, and the size of the universe, itself.  That is quite a spread.

Yes, we live on a big world, at least in terms of what we consider to be big.  Our world is much bigger than we can readily imagine.  And our world is a pretty small speck in terms of the size of even our solar system.  If you want to get an idea of how big are world is, in comparison to the solar system, you can go to UBC.  Somewhere on the UBC campus is a globe which has been set as the size of the sun.  Then, in order to get the size, and the spacing, of the planets in the solar system, you have to drive out Marine Drive, and then 41st Avenue.  On light standards along 41st Avenue, there are signs indicating the relative distance to the Sun of the planets, and the relative size of the planets, in relation to the size of that globe on the campus that is set to the size of the Sun.  Before you get to the end of our solar system, you drive all the way across Vancouver and into Burnaby.  That's how big our solar system is in comparison to the world which, we have already noted, we really have a hard time figuring out the size of.

And our solar system is a minor, pedestrian, uninteresting star, among millions of stars, in the Milky Way galaxy, where our solar system resides.  And the galaxy, well I won't even try and express how big the galaxy is in relation to our tiny little solar system, which is already more immense than we can imagine.  But wait, as they say in the advertisements, there's more!

Galaxies aren't the biggest things in our universe.  In the same way that stars, collections of millions of stars, make up galaxies, galaxies seem to be grouped into things called galactic clusters.  Galactic clusters are, again, much huger than mere galaxies.

This next bit is something that we have only learned in about the past twenty years, since people started doing all kinds of math in terms of measuring how far away stars, no sorry galaxies, no sorry galactic clusters, are from us, and in what direction, and then using graphics software to map the stars, no sorry, galactic clusters, into a map of the overall universe.  And, having done that, a very interesting pattern emerged.

Gloria was very interested in quilts, and she once showed me a picture of a quilt that she very much liked, which had different size rings and circles on it, seemingly somewhat randomly placed.  I told her that that was the shape of the universe.

That's what we have learned from the mapping of the galactic clusters in the universe.  The galactic clusters themselves seem to be structured on a kind of a framework.  There are enormous voids in between the galactic clusters and the clusters themselves seem to be placed, or at least lie, on curved planes and surfaces.  This means that the universe, when you look at it from the outside, when you can see the shapes of all the dots that are enormous galactic clusters, the surfaces, surrounding empty voids, seem to be remarkably like soap froth, when you're washing dishes by hand, or when your kids are playing with bubble bath in the bath at the end of the day.  The universe is shaped like a foam of soap bubbles, with the galactic clusters on the surfaces of the bubbles, and enormous voids of empty space in between them.

And we have only now discovered this.

We discovered it because of math, and science, and computers that allow us to physically view representations of data that were just numbers before.  Science has discovered something about the universe, that nobody, in all the centuries and millennia before us, has known.

Looking at this representation of the universe, it is interesting to note that the universe is somewhat more regular than most soap foams.  There seems to be a periodicity to the surfaces and voids that is more regular than the randomness we see in ordinary soap bubbles.  Why is this there this regularity?  We don't know.  As I say, the more you know, the more you know that you don't know.

This is very much in line with the old hymn, How Great Thou Art.  Oh Lord my God, when I in *awesome* wonder, consider all the world thy hands have made, I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder, Thy power throughout the universe displayed.

Science, if you use it properly, doesn't disprove the existence of God, or even argue against the existence of God.  Science lets you see, more clearly, just how awesome God is.  How fantastic his creation is.  How complicated are the aspects of his universe.  How far beyond our understanding are the ways of God.

Which brings me to one final point.  As I say, as I have repeatedly said, the more that you know, the more that you know there are things that you don't know.  This is true in science.  But it's also true in the Christian life.  There is always more to study about God.  There is always more to know about God.  The title of the book, by J. I. Packer, "Your God is Too Small," is, quite literally, true.  Whatever your idea of God; however far you have gone in studying God, theology, and the Christian Life; there is always more to know.  The more that we get to know God, the more we know about God, the more we realize that we do not know God, not fully.  Our concept of God is always too small, because God is much greater than we can ever imagine.

There's another, well, not exactly reason to believe, but theological point, at least, to be made from science, and about faith.

As I said, I'm a physicist.  And one of the things that we learn from physics, is that, in terms of light and dark, light is the reality.  Darkness actually has no existence.  Darkness is only the absence of light.  In the same way, in terms of heat and cold, heat is the reality.  Cold is not a thing.  Cold is simply the absence of heat.

There is a point to be made from that.  In terms of good and evil, these illustrations would indicate that good is the reality.  Evil is not an actual thing.  Evil is simply the absence of good.  Now, in one sense this is bad, because it points out, once again, that we are sinners, because we are not perfect, and are not perfectly good at following God's commands.  But it also means that whatever evil is arrayed against us, battling against us in daily life, is not actually real.  I'm not saying that there aren't bad things that happen, or even bad agents that are working against us.  But, ultimately, evil is just the absence of good.  Evil is turning away from God.  God is good.  God is the reality.  And, as Romans 8 tells us, none of the evil powers and agents arrayed against us can do anything about that.  Neither life nor death nor angels nor principalities can separate us from the love and goodness of God.  Evil cannot stand against us, because it is inherently flawed: it is based upon the absence of reality.

There's a little sidebar to this point.  And that has to do with heat, and cold, and the laws of thermodynamics.  Some people, in reaction to the bad things that happen in our lives, point out that it takes the sun, and the rain, to make a rainbow.  That is, actually, true, and I could point out the physics behind it, but that would probably take too long right now.  But it is also true, in physics, that if you do not have both heat and cold, nothing is going to happen.  I said that cold is not a real concept, and I'm still holding to that: I'm not contradicting myself here.  Cold is not the reality; heat is: but in order to get any useful work done you need a range of relative heat.  You need some areas that have more energy, and some areas that have less energy.  It is the flow of energy, or heat, from one area, that has lots of energy, to another area that has less energy, that can be used to do work.  By itself, you cannot force energy from the less energetic area, to the more energetic area.  This is known as the second law of thermodynamics, and it means that we cannot get any work done unless we have some kind of differential in heat.

Again, there is a theological point to be made of this.  The same point that people make with the comment about needing both the sun, and the rain to make a rainbow.  You need areas of greater heat, and lesser heat, to get any work done.  That is just a fact of the physical universe.  And, I suspect, that it is a fact of the spiritual universe, as well: in this universe that God has created; in this universe that God has provided for us as a playpen for us to grow up in; we need to have areas of more goodness, and less goodness.  It is important that bad things happen.  It is important that bad things happen to us.  I don't know why.  I don't know if *anybody* knows why.  But God has done it, and God must have done it for our good.  We have to take that on faith.  But, our faith is, in many ways, supported by what science tells us about the world that God has created.

Swimming on New Years

I went in the Port Alberni Polar Bear Swim today.

I've never been in a polar bear swim.  I don't like crowds, and the event is always very, very crowded in the Vancouver area.  It wasn't quite as crowded in Port Alberni.  Although I was a bit surprised at how many people did show up.  But very few of them actually went in the water.

Actually, I signed up to help with registration, but, when I found somebody willing to hold my clothes, and have a towel already when I got out, and drive me home, I decided to go for it.

Port Alberni has had the polar bear swim for quite a while, in different places in the city.  They didn't do it over the pandemic, and this was an attempt to get it restarted.  It seems to have been a resounding success.  The organizers were able to get local restaurants and businesses to provide prizes for a draw from the registrations, and a local church managed the registrations, and the Salvation Army had their emergency food truck down there, providing coffee, hot chocolate, and hot dogs.  A group had a fire going at the fire pit on the beach, and they even had marshmallows there.

A lot of people came in costume.  Actually, a lot of people who came in costume, didn't go swimming.  In fact, it's quite possible that the number of people who actually went in the water was considerably smaller than the number of people who came down dressed in ridiculous clothing.  So I guess a lot more people came for the fun of a dress up, rather than the swim itself.

I went in the water.  There is even video proof that I did.

It wasn't too bad going in.  Turning around and trying to get back out, I was feeling a bit of difficulty.  Once I got out of the water and into the air, actually it wasn't that bad.

After the swim I was driven home, and I have been soaking in a hot bath, trying to warm up my aged, frigid, and aching bones.

The illegal New Years fireworks of Port Alberni