Ticket to P(R)ide

On By ednafroeseIn Chance, Choices, competitiveness, gamesLeave a comment
Photo of the game box of Ticket to Ride.

            In a world in which nearly every imaginary activity has been gamified and even “gaming” became a necessary new noun, I’m going to dare to write about old-fashioned board games. Yes, those games that come in cardboard boxes and are laid out on the table for the family to play, using dice and cards and little plastic people. What an anachronistic activity! Oddly enough, though, board games are still popular, if one can judge by the seasonal pop-up kiosks in shopping malls selling paper calendars (another anachronism!) and board games, both old and new. Apparently, the artifice of moving pieces on a board still holds some appeal.  

Photo of the board of Ticket to Ride with a game in progress.

            It was by happenstance that my husband and I discovered we had not fully understood either the rules or principles of Ticket to Ride, a discovery that changed my feelings about the game to a degree that I found disturbing. I’d never really paid attention to why I liked some games and disliked others. Now I needed to figure out what had really changed in my attitude to Ticket to Ride and if that mattered in any way. It wasn’t just an objection to a seeming rule change; given how freely we had adjusted the rules of Brazilian Rummy to make it more playable for just two people, I clearly did not feel that rules were immutable.

            When attitudes and behaviors seem inexplicable or downright weird, it usually pays to look back as far as necessary to work out what’s going on. In this case, that meant saying “hello” once again to my childhood self, that shy little country girl with minimal social skills.

 In my family of origin, games were played only on Sundays when work was not allowed. Often those game-playing sessions were enhanced with home-grown, freshly roasted sunflower seeds or still warm popcorn. These are some of my happiest memories of farm life, albeit not without shadows.

I was the youngest in the family, by a margin of 6 years, so games that required strategy or skill were impossible for me to win, unless someone let me win, which, I realized fairly early, was an insult of its own. So unless some element of randomness was built into the game, I wasn’t particularly interested.

 Strategy vs. chance: surely the makers of games have always grasped that much depends on the balance between those two. There were those in my family who definitely preferred checkers and chess, especially the latter. Both players begin with identical playing fields and number of pieces to march toward victory. The board is a battlefield that is level in all senses, and all possible moves are clearly delineated and equally available. There are no dice and no cards. Checkers and chess are games of intelligence only. There is some built-in aggression (the third key factor in games), since pieces are mowed down along the way. However, each assault on the opponent’s troops carries definite risk to one’s own. There is little tactical benefit in “killing” for the sake of “killing.”

            My father, I recall, never played Snakes and Ladders, which is entirely chance: the roll of the dice determines everything. (The moralistic notes on the board that connected ladders with good behavior and snakes with naughtiness were completely negated by the way the game was actually played. One can’t help but think of the way that good behavior has become suicidal in politics these days and naughtiness simply extends influence and power).

He also had little patience with Sorry (which I really liked) because while there were some limited choices, so much was determined by the luck of the draw that there was little pride in winning. Possibly my father had had more than enough randomness in life (he had come to Canada as a refugee) that he did not willingly tolerate chanciness. Not that he was averse to risk, per se; he just wanted as much control over the degree of risk as possible.

 Monopoly was another game that we often played; it did include some randomness—players roll the dice for every move. Mostly, though, it depended on economic strategy. It was capitalism in miniature. And I do not recall ever winning a game. Monopoly’s one virtue was that it didn’t lend itself to open aggression among players; winning didn’t depend on deliberately sabotaging someone else’s opportunity to make money, except by capitalism’s inherent principle of taking advantage of an opponent’s fiscal distress.   

 Interestingly, I recall laughter accompanying Monopoly, at least in the early stages of the game before the bankruptcies began. There was laughter with Sorry and Pit and Crokinole and other vintage games. There was no laughter at the chess games. Intellectual ability was on the line, and intellectual prowess was highly valued.

            So, back to Ticket to Ride.

two photos of little trains created on a blank background.

We had not figured out that the game was designed, not only to require strategy (every turn involves some choices), but also to reward sabotage of other players. Suddenly, the game felt less benign. My husband and I had enjoyed the game so much, I think, because it required us to think carefully and to work with whatever cards we were dealt (that element of chance), but left the inevitable interferences with one another’s trains also to chance: skill plus chance in a ratio that minimized the importance of winning or losing. There was little personal pride at stake: it was the process that was fun.

 We have watched our children and our grandchildren play board games – and we played with them, of course. As any elementary school teacher could have told us, not every child can handle the competitiveness fostered by games that depend on aggression as part of the winning strategy. One game, rarely played by our children and played only once by grandchildren, was actually named Aggravation. The entire point of the game was to be mean to your opponents.  Granted, there was a substantial element of chance in the game, but not enough to neutralize its corrosive effect.

  It has been fascinating to observe a new trend in board games: cooperative play. The competitive element has been eliminated and players are all on the same team, facing the challenge posed by the game itself, each contributing some skill to the communal effort. I have not played such games enough to speculate on what has happened to the role of chance in these new games. No doubt much research on precisely that element has already gone into their design.

            For now, my brief visit to the past has not only helped me to make peace with Ticket to Ride—as long as we can “adjust” rules to suit us, there’s no problem—but has also ended my sentimental attachment to the now very old board games that still sit on our library shelves. The time has come, I think, to dispose of some ancient paper money and some deteriorating game boards. I hope that I can find some recipient for the antique wooden chess pieces, since it seems a shame to consign those to the garbage.

Photo of a small wooden box containing wooden chess pieces.

            What I should consign to whatever dustbin holds mental behavior patterns is my competitive desire to win at games, however chancy they might be. I hereby admit that I have never been immune to the allure of beating the odds. After all, my pride is at stake.

Two Deaths That Matter

On By ednafroeseIn Choices, death, Life, spirituality2 Comments

“In truth, all deaths matter. What I say is simply that these two matter to me.”

Winter scene with a partly cloudy sky. Dark evergreens throw black shadows onto the snow. It is a country scene with no sign of human habitation except for a barely discernible wooden picnic table.

            That two men died on February 16, 2024, is not, in itself, a noteworthy fact. Thousands upon thousands of men and women and children die each day on our planet earth. All those deaths are important to those around them who continue to live, and all of those lives, now ended, deserve to have their stories told. I speak of only two.

            The name of the first, Alexei Navalny, is well-known in many countries besides his native country, Russia. He was still young, only 47. Had he been free to work toward his vision, he could have accomplished much. Even so, he has galvanized supporters who continue to expose corruption and call for fairer government. His fearless return to Russia after his recovery from the poisoning attempt in 2020 has inspired admiration everywhere his story is known.   

            Navalny lived with passion and courage. He loved his country and he loved his people more. So with all the skills he had—and they were many—he condemned Putin’s oppression of his people and his selfish exploitation of his country. Regardless of the efforts to keep him from speaking out, he refused to be silenced and that cost him his life. Whatever the immediate cause of death (in the Siberian prison where he was held), which we may never know with certainty, there is no doubt at all that President Vladimir Putin of Russia wanted him dead.   

            I am not Russian and have not even heard Navalny speak in person, let alone known him in any meaningful sense of the word. Yet I grieve his death, and pray that it will not have been in vain.

Winter photo of river with frost-covered shrubs on the bank.

            The name of the second man who died on February 16, Rev. Vern Ratzlaff, is definitely less well-known. He was also much older, having already had a long and full life. His last years were spent in a care home, dependent on staff for daily needs and on friends and family for what social life he could still manage, but those are minor details.

What matters is that in his own way, he lived with a passion for truth and justice as intense as any and loved his people, his congregations, with a compassionate heart. He had a brilliant mind and was a competent religious scholar and excellent teacher. He could have been a successful academic, yet he chose otherwise. The God he worshiped had called him to preach and to live out justice and peace and love. And so he did.

            For us, he is the tall bearded man, slightly stooped, with a gentle smile, who offered us friendship and a place in his church community. In his presence, we felt encouraged, trusted, safe. He had an ability to learn from others, with an astonishing openness to spiritual perspectives that differed from his. Although raised in a conservative-minded denomination with devout adherence to a clearly outlined Christian doctrine, Vern had learned a wider ecumenical vision that he fostered in the churches that he ministered to. His friendships were wide-ranging; he was welcomed with respect in other churches, and in synagogue, temple, and mosque.  

            He had a quirky sense of humor, an ability to laugh at himself, with a boyish sense of fun. Not all introverts appreciate so-called practical jokes, but Vern could delight in the absurd and the silly. At the same time, he had an inner stillness that let others breathe and be. He loved music and sang in choirs until that was no longer possible. He and his wife were generous and hospitable, welcoming others to their home and table; guest speakers in his church were invariably invited out for lunch.

He was not perfect – no human is. There were shadows in his history, interludes that a hagiographer would gloss over. However, Vern himself would not want a hagiographer: he knew for certain that God was gracious and forgiving. He would, no doubt, ask his grieving friends to go on living according to scriptural words that he loved and taught: this is what is required of you, “to act justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).

Winter photo of a river bank and a steel bridge. Shrubs are covered with hoarfrost.

Be Still, My Heart

On By ednafroeseIn Beauty, peace, reflectionLeave a comment
Winter photograph of a park with a solitary, empty bench in the lower third of the photo. On either side are huge elm trees, winter bare but lightly coated with hoar frost. Also on either side, closer to the edges of the photo are lower shrubs, also covered in hoar frost. The photo seems taken in black and white but it wasn't.

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”

Matthew 11:28

            The itinerant teacher who spoke that invitation and offered rest was wearing dusty sandals when he spoke those words, not snowy boots. There were no mittens on his gesturing hands, either. The landscape around the Sea of Galilee was nothing at all like this small park a mere two blocks from our home.

            Why this photo should call up that long-ago promise of rest, I’m not sure. Indeed, I can’t even explain why I recently chose this 5-year-old photo as my computer background, after stumbling upon it by chance. Ever since, it has haunted me, drawn me in. It wants to become the subject of some grand reflection, no doubt, but its complete and inscrutable silence has left me without words.

            I offer it simply as an invitation to look and meditate. Let your heart be still for awhile.

For a time / I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry

Bread and Jam on New Year’s Day

On By ednafroeseIn Bread, Generosity, Pleasure, possibility2 Comments

            On January 1, 1996, I saw my mother for the last time. We had brought her to our home to share a meal with our children and two of my siblings who were visiting from another city. The meal was simple but featured a favourite traditional Mennonite dish – porzelkji (a deep-fried fritter with raisins, typically dipped in sugar). My mother had always served porzelkji on New Year’s Day. Two days later, I got a call from the nursing home where she lived; she had died suddenly.  

            That was 26 years ago. The complex mixture of emotions of that time have long since dissipated and been replaced by gentle nostalgia and acceptance. We had had a difficult relationship, my mother and I. While I had been the favoured last child, one last gift of motherhood for someone who measured her worth through motherhood, I had also been the most rebellious teen-ager and that precisely in the years of her menopausal misery. I was also the only child who settled down in the same city where my parents lived after selling the family farm. Inevitably, I became, in her last decades, both a necessary support and a convenient target of anger when fear and/or illness haunted her.

            Even before she died, I had begun to understand how much she had been shaped by two major traumas: the Russian Revolution when she was a child, and the Great Depression when she was a young adult. Both taught her more than she would have chosen to know about insecurity and scarcity. She never forgot those lessons.  

Photo of breakfast: a bowl of fresh fruit, yogurt and granola; a slice of toast spread with jam, a mug of coffee, and a small jar of homemade jam.

            All that came to mind this morning as I spread my homemade jam on a slice of toast (homemade bread) for breakfast. I chose it from the two or three jars of jams/jellies that are typically available in our fridge. Imagine that—I open more than one jar at a time! Every morning I can choose what I wish to put on my toast.

            My mother, however, had always insisted that no new jar of jam was ever, ever opened before the last one was completely used up. That was not a problem for me when we were still a family of six; even my mother’s large jars of jam were usually soon consumed. By the time I was the only child remaining at home, that was no longer the case. I was heartily sick of whatever flavour was currently open before we were permitted to have something else.

            That principle of using up the old before ever touching the new applied to bread as well (and clothing, but that’s another story), something I hadn’t particularly thought about until we were visiting at the home of one of our children where bread is also home-baked. A fresh loaf, warm from the oven, was sliced for supper even though a partial loaf from the previous baking still sat on the kitchen counter. This was a home where new delights could be fully appreciated without scruple. How wonderful was that!

Photo of four loaves of bread cooling on racks on the kitchen counter, with one loaf already on a cutting board and one slice cut.

            Had I truly been raised in an atmosphere where efficiency and cold, responsible use of everything to its utmost had ruled out so many possibilities of innocent joy? It seems so. I want to make it clear that I appreciate my parents’ compulsion to be thrifty: they had both had intimate acquaintance with poverty, even starvation. I do not have the right to decry their practical ability to use the last bit of everything, even to hoard newness as long as possible. In the face of today’s reckless consumerism amidst an over-stressed environment, their values offer an important counter-narrative.  

            On the other hand, I want to argue that thrift and utility do not have to rule out generosity or delight. Put the freshly cooked jam, with its glorious color and wonderful odor, into smaller jars (and keep reusing those jars!). Enjoy the freshly baked bread while it’s still warm, knowing that a freezer can take care of whatever older bread remains, or turn the stale bread into croutons and avoid the packaging that comes with buying croutons (my mother would have been truly appalled at the notion of paying good money to get chunks of dried bread!). Simple pleasures are to be treasured and readily shared.

Two photos: one of four loaves of bread, the other of a pyramid of homemade jams.

            I still have much to learn about a wider generosity that makes sure that everyone has access to bread and jam—fresh bread and good jam (preferably made from plenty of real fruit and not sugared to death). At the beginning of 2024, I grieve over the increased need for food banks and the continued waste of much food, both in the production and in the sales thereof. We can surely do better than that, although in fairness, I should note that many organizations are working to reduce waste and improve access. What I also hope for is that necessary charity includes dignity, and above all, delight. Let there be joy for everyone.

It would be a long time before I knew that grace is found more in delight than in duty.

Patrick Henry

A Christmas Wish List for My Readers

On By ednafroeseIn Beauty, Christmas, Connection, Forgiveness, possibilityLeave a comment

Writing a blog, which I’ve done for almost four years now, is a lonely affair. I’m not complaining, since writing is almost always a lonely pursuit. Every now and then, though, I do think more particularly about my readers and try to imagine where you might live, or what we might talk about if we could have coffee together someplace interesting–in your country or mine.

Writing about Christmas is an additional challenge because of all the designated holidays that I am familiar with, this one has been written about and sung about and indulged in and celebrated more than any other. Surely everything that can be said about Christmas, concerning whichever grand narrative you choose to focus on, has been said – many times over. A wish list, on the other, can be new every year.

Unfortunately, these days the world seems locked into so many conflicts and stupid flirtations with apocalyptic scenarios that the very act of creating a wish list seems frivolous. One could, of course, go big and like one of my grandchildren, add to the list “the moon.” Why not? Why not ask for the utterly unlikely, such as world peace?

Instead, I will retreat as I often do to the small things, for they matter more than we think: it is out of little actions that our habits of mind are formed, and it is out of our habits of mind that we make the big decisions and the crucial speeches that can change the world. Well, our own small spheres at least.

So, the list:

At least once, in the days before and after Christmas, I wish for you the time to watch an entire sunrise, preferably in a place without street lights and power lines. In my part of the world, the days are very short now, and the sun rises after breakfast, as it were. Take a cup of coffee or cocoa with you and watch the subtle first hints of color transform themselves into a blaze of glory. It is always a miracle, especially when the nights have been long and dark.

I wish for you two uninterrupted hours or more in which to curl up in a comfy chair or wide window seat where you can let yourself become utterly absorbed in a good novel. Preferably a classic or a young adult book that will bring you into a world that has a stable moral centre and in which a happy ending can be anticipated.

I wish for you many warm hugs and I-love-you’s. There might be gifts involved as well, but they aren’t that necessary, are they?

I hope that in your home, your office, your favorite hang-out, there are flowering plants. In my world, that’s most likely to be poinsettias, but maybe you’ll be lucky enough to be near a spectacular amaryllis in full bloom. Or maybe where you live, there are gorgeous flowering shrubs outdoors. Let there be someplace where you can smell the earth and savor the complexity of petals with their heavenly tints.

And this last wish might seem perverse or more like an admonition than a wish: I hope that there is at least one opportunity for a phone call or an in-person meeting in which you can say, “I’m sorry,” and be heard and still feel safe. We are none of us faultless. Without a doubt, there are individuals who need to hear an apology that will open up possibilities for better understanding. Christmas inevitably contains some tough stuff; it’s the fall-out, I suspect, from over-wrought expectations of all sorts. I wish for you one interval of time, however brief, in which hope can arise and love increase.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

In Memory of Those Who Are Still with Us – Even When They’re Not

On By ednafroeseIn Beauty, Grief, memoriesLeave a comment

            In our church calendar, the last Sunday before Advent is called “In Memoriam.” Part of the morning service is given to remembering all those who were part of the church community, however tangentially, who have died in the previous year. As each name is read, together with their relations, a candle is lit. Gradually the darkened sanctuary is warm with candlelight. We sit in quietness, remembering, perhaps allowing a few tears to slip down our cheeks. But it is good. All these beloved should not be forgotten, for they have played a part in our lives.

            These days of Novemberish darkness, when the prairie world where I live has turned into a monochrome study of the color of dead foliage, I am paying more attention to small items of beauty indoors. Besides the satisfaction provided by ever-generous houseplants, I have been given joy by what I’m going to call “memory pieces.” There are other people, besides our family and friends, who should not be forgotten.

            Years ago, in our first visit to the Black Hills of South Dakota, the closest grocery store to our campground was in Keystone, the tourist town next to Mt. Rushmore. Amidst a host of typical souvenir shops with all manner of kitsch, from the mildly amusing to the downright offensive, we discovered one shop (called The Indians) that was owned and run by Indigenous artists and entrepreneurs. There were some cheaper articles (rent has to be paid, after all), but mostly the shelves were stocked with beautiful indigenous art work from all over the USA. Our hearts were quieted, our sense of justice gratified.

As Mennonite pacifists, we had found the ubiquitous gun culture displayed on t-shirts, gun holsters, posters, etc., deeply disturbing. As life-long hikers in the Canadian Rockies, we were more dismayed than astonished at what the sculptors (aka dynamiters) had done to Mt. Rushmore, formerly a sacred mountain for the Arapaho, Cheyenne and Lakota Sioux peoples. The official name of the sculpture is “Shrine of Democracy.” Given that the establishment of American democracy required the violent displacement of Indigenous peoples, the name seems bitterly ironic.

Years later, when we revisited the Black Hills, we spent almost all our time hiking  through mostly unspoiled territory, but we did take time to revisit “The Indians” art store in Keystone because I wanted to purchase a few more items to take home with us – items of remembrance. Remembrance of those who are still with us, despite past efforts to erase, or at least forget, their presence.

One of those little glass dishes now sits by our kitchen sink as a soap dish, adding color along with sanitation. Every time I rinse soap residue from the pebbles, I am touched again by the loveliness of the glass work.

The pebbles themselves are a memory of a quiet afternoon on the beach of Beacon Hill Park, Victoria, BC.  It was late summer; the grass was a uniform dry brown, the flower beds looked disheveled, listless. They wanted to go to sleep for the winter, but it was still too hot. So we chose not to explore the park. Instead, we went down to the ocean beach, planted our bums near some driftwood and ran our fingers through the sand, picking up tiny rocks to admire their uniqueness.  

There is something about touching stone, whether it be a boulder or a pebble or something in between, that feels like eternity. Celtic mystics have written about the “thin places” on earth, where the mystery of the divine Other draws near. Where our human selves become small and insignificant, yet also miraculous and exultant. Pebbles are not usually considered such thin places; they’re just pebbles.

Until they are chosen as memorials.

I prefer pebbles to grandiose sculptures.

One Door and Only One

On By ednafroeseIn Choices, Doors, Forgiveness, hopeLeave a comment

              From somewhere in my memory, a fragment of a children’s song from my Sunday School days surfaced, unbidden:

One door, and only one          One door, and only one
And yet its sides are two,         And yet its sides are two,
Inside and outside,                  I’m on the inside,
On which side are you?          On which side are you?

I didn’t remember the rest of the lyrics; this bit might have been all that we sang. A quick internet search, though, revealed other verses, with equally stark choices. “One Lord and only one” offered the “right way [or] wrong way,” and “one Book and only one” put the singers in “the good place or the bad place.” I’m glad that as a child I didn’t sing about the good place and the bad place because I was already plenty worried about place.    

I hadn’t heard the arrogant certainty of the tone, nor had I paid attention to the astonishing gap between that dichotomy of choice and a God whom we believed to be the Creator of a world with mind-blowing variety and breadth. To be clear, the small agricultural community where I grew up, where almost everyone attended church (the choice of two churches was hardly a choice at all with their minimal differences), had given me no real awareness of a vast universe with infinite galaxies and equally infinite complexity in the tiniest clusters of cells. That came later.

Then I had obediently pointed to myself for “I’m on the inside” and to unknown others for “on which side are you?” while trying to stifle the persistent inner fear that I was probably not on the right side of the door.  

 Very likely, the song writer’s intent was to reassure children that all would be well if  they were given clear answers about how the world worked, both now and hereafter. I’m choosing also to assume that the song writer had not considered the long-term consequences of such direct, uncompromising “othering” of everyone who didn’t speak of God in precisely the same way or didn’t even believe in God. After all, this was a simple child’s song, with a very catchy, bouncy tune.  

            The appeal of the door as a metaphor is understandable. A door does indeed have two sides and in a wild rainstorm or a blizzard, the obviously welcoming place is inside. Who, after a long journey, hasn’t arrived to stand at a door and knocked hopefully? When that door is flung open, warmth rushing out to envelope the traveler even before arms offer hugs, all the travails of the journey are forgotten. Then again, another scenario is possible: the house lights are off, the door remains firmly closed.

Doors are, by definition, openings in walls, in buildings, in enclosed gardens, in institutional offices, and so on.  They are a very visible symbol of inclusion and exclusion. They offer a way in, or, if necessary, also a way out.

 When the persistent little ditty of “one door and only one” refused to leave my mind, I began looking at doors. I drove along streets in our neighborhood and others. Camera in hand, I stared at doors – so many styles and colors, so many different yards leading up to those doors. Such astonishing variety in just the doors, let alone the atmosphere that must have been behind those doors, or the greetings that would have spilled out in so many languages.

            This is not the venue to explore fully the nuances of inclusion and exclusion, either sociological or theological, although I do want to mention one book (no regular reader here will be surprised!), Myroslav Volf’s Exclusion and Embrace, which is the best book I’ve ever read on the human need to form supportive communities and the divine imperative to keep those communities open-doored.  Volf writes as the Christian he is, but he points out that all world religions speak of love and the grace of welcoming strangers.

As I have pondered the meaning of the door, with its implied walls and enclosed spaces, I remembered an experience I had years ago, touring the ruins of St. Boniface Cathedral in Winnipeg with other family members. The cathedral, built in 1905-1908, had been badly burned in 1968. Its surviving outer walls had been left as a monument of an old architectural style, and a new church had been built in 1972, partially inside the ruins.

As we walked through the ruins, I began to linger, wanting to be alone, suddenly aware of a Presence. Light was everywhere, including within me.

People had worshipped on this site since 1818 (the ruined St. Boniface Cathedral was the third one built there); over the generations, they had expressed their faith through beautiful architecture as well as through songs and homilies and sacraments. Now the façade and walls stood open to the light and the wind. The solid beauty of the rock belonged to the outdoor gardens and to the open sky. That felt right. It included me, protestant that I am.

            These days as the rockets fall, hurled out of the hatred and fear spawned by the cruelties of centuries, I wish there were fewer fences and more open doors. I wish that the necessary doors (and they are always necessary to keep out insects and unwanted animals and the wind and the rain and . . . . ) could be openings into welcome and understanding. I wish that we could stop dividing complex issues and multiple needs into either/or, good/bad. Even as I recognize that evil does exist and must be dealt with, I wish that we could find enough humility to listen better and to recognize our common human yearnings for love and security. I don’t know how to end a political/religious conflict that is already bathed in the blood of thousands. At least in my neighborhood, I want to learn a gentler language and leave a door open wide enough so that the possibility of community can be glimpsed on both sides.

The Solace of Solitude and Silence

On By ednafroeseIn Beauty, memories, Mountains, SolitudeLeave a comment
Photo of Lake Annette with evergreen branches in the foreground. Reflection in the lake is perfect.

            Some places mysteriously become part of the structure of the heart, as much as valves and arteries and veins, though undetectable by ECGs. Jasper, Alberta, at first just a pretty place to work for the summer and make money off generous tourists, turned into a heart dwelling before I understood what had happened.

Lake Annette, in the photo above, was definitely part of that process. Even on my first day in Jasper, as I sorted out what my job was going to be and where I was going to live, I felt wrapped around by the beauty of the mountains. My heart had been wooed already in childhood when I had traveled once or twice through the Rockies. Now, in my first young adult adventures away from home, I found more than grandeur or adventure.

Slowly but surely the quality of silence inherent in the rough gathering of stone and water and pine and spruce drew me in, offering a solitude of soul I think I’d been longing for all along. Oh, I hiked with friends and explored the trails and lesser lakes around Jasper; we borrowed bicycles and rejoiced in our developing stamina; we swung gently on the playground swings in evenings off and watched the sun disappear in a way that it never did on the prairies.

 Much as I loved sharing all these moments with friends, and then with a boyfriend, I treasured the times of aloneness when I belonged to the landscape and to myself. Expectations gone. Fearfulness dismissed. I was learning how to breathe and be. To smile and to be happy. Ach, that word is over-used and inadequate here. I was exalted, exultant.

            I took the photo above just a few years ago, at the tail end of a road trip in the last days of summer. I had retired by then, metaphorically speaking also in the last days of summer, becoming mellower, less driven, more practiced in the art of resting in silence, never imagining then how important that art would be in the summer of 2023.  

We visited Lake Annette again last summer, in 2022. Jasper is, thank God, still a small mountain town. Still dependent on tourists and skiers and hikers, but not over-developed and commercialized past the point of help. The mighty Athabasca River and the surrounding mountains have limited the growth of the town to where it is now and has been for decades. There are signs enough of wealth and privilege, but the hiking trails remain accessible to all, never mind how expensive or ratty the boots of the hikers may be. The campgrounds now boast more massive RVs than simple backpacker tents, but there are still plenty of those tents, with bicycles nearby.

Many of my once favorite trails are now too busy for my liking (the Valley of Five Lakes is practically standing room only on a lovely summer day), yet there are still reflection-perfect ponds near half-forgotten trails where crowds of marsh marigolds celebrate in joy and the shyer wood lilies lurk in shade. There is also plenty of space along the rocky edge of the river where one may be alone to meditate and turn over small stones in the hand. Hours pass unnoticed while inner voices go quiet against the immortal voice of the river. 

Photo of the Athabasca River, focus on the rocky edge of the river.

In this summer when all travel became impossible for me, let alone the usual stay in the Rockies, I have needed all the fortitude I could muster to practice contentment with much solitude indoors. However, that mysterious grace in the universe that drops the right book off the shelf into hands that had expected nothing is still at work. Anam Cara by John O’Donohue had been given to me by a dear friend decades ago. I think I read it then; I don’t remember if I finished it. I was probably not ready for its Celtic mysticism. Now, after having sat, practically invisible, on my bookshelf for who knows how many years, it demanded to be read.

And read it I did. With increasing interest and pen in hand for underlining. I am grateful, if not quite grateful enough yet to bless the weeks and weeks of enforced bed rest that led me to pick up Anam Cara. The section titled “Aging: An Invitation to New Solitude” might once have terrified me. Now, flat in bed for more hours in the day than I once would have thought endurable, I could read this without being frightened: “A new quietness settles on the outer frame of your active life, on the work that you have done, the family that you have raised, and the role that you have played. Your life takes on a greater stillness and solitude.”  I doubt that O’Donohue was thinking of the kind of enforced stillness that I was enduring.

Nevertheless, I could see his point that we often “miss out on the great treasures of our lives because we are so restless. In our minds we are always elsewhere. We are seldom in the place where we stand [or we lie!] and in the time that is now.” Between the regrets over the past and the worries of the future, O’Donohue observes, we have little energy left for savoring what is in front of us.

I’m inclined to counter with an argument that we find our meaning in life through learning to recognize divine guidance in the past and setting our goals for the future. There is a time and place for revisiting past mistakes and offering apologies, for instance, just as there is a time and place for resolving to do better in the future and even making promises that can’t be fulfilled in the now.

As always, a single viewpoint doesn’t show us the whole scene, let alone what may be found in the next valley beyond the hill we’re now climbing. Which, I think, O’Donohue understood better than I do. So I grant him the final words.

Stillness is vital to the world of the soul. If, as you age, you become more still, you will discover that stillness can be a great companion. The fragments of your life will have time to unify, and the places where your soul-shelter is wounded or broken will have time to knit and heal. You will be able to return to yourself.

John O’Donohue

Broken People

On By ednafroeseIn gifts, Gratitude, Love, PainLeave a comment

            My opening photo was taken about a year ago during a visit with a friend in Victoria, BC. It soon became my phone’s background, and I have repeatedly contemplated the interplay of lines, the range of textures, and the subtle dance of muted colors. From the froth of the grass fronds to the mysterious black bulk of the forest and down to the dry grass, lit by the last bright rays of sunlight, the scene delights me. The V-ripples of the few ducks are an unexpected gift; I had focused on colors and clouds, not ducks.

            A life-long prairie dweller, I was an awed visitor here, marvelling that late September could offer such a visual feast for the eyes. All that water, salt water at that. Would one ever tire of it?

            Now in another summer, and still held captive by persistent pain (an angry sciatic nerve, if you must have specifics – see previous post), I see this photo every time I pick up my phone. It comforts me as I try to accept my current status as a broken person. Not fully functional.

            In the last weeks, I have had more than enough time to think about that “not fully functional,” suboptimal condition. I have pondered the ways that humans enter that state:

  1. We are made sick through viruses, bacteria, or harmful substances. Fortunately, Western medicine has become quite adept at treating diseases, discovering causes, finding medicines, developing vaccines, improving hygiene, etc.
  2. We are injured through accident or others’ malevolent actions. Here, too, we have remedies; trained first responders, skilled surgeons and therapists, inventors of mechanical aids of all kinds, and rehab specialists. We can do something about injuries, at least the physical ones.
  3. We are broken—through age that wears out parts, through misuse that makes our organs miserable, through initial genetic misfirings, through . . . . ? We can detect brokenness, in most cases, but have trouble seeing causes, or can’t tell where physical breakage has led to emotional breakage, or the other way around. It’s taken us far too long to recognize consequences of trauma and/or abuse. We’re also not very good at distinguishing between brokenness and difference (should we be talking about a continuum?)

The unknown is frustrating in all three categories, never mind that the categories overlap and won’t stay sorted. Just find the problem and fix it, fast—that’s the mantra of our culture. It has not served me well this time around.

      Then, in my quiet, sometimes lonely, pain-ridden hours came the gift of a book recommendation, serendipitously from the friend whom I’d been visiting when I took the photo that opens this posting. With the quirkiness of grace, the book’s title was The Giver.

      Yet more—it wasn’t The Giver that I really needed to read (although I loved it), but the companion novel that Lois Lowry wrote: Gathering Blue. In that imaginary world, one small scamp of a lying, thieving boy who’s been cuffed and yelled at and beaten and starved, travels from his village—where survival is all that matters and everyone grabs what is available and fights for what is not, and anyone who is sick or injured is promptly dragged to the Field of Leavings to die—yes, this wild little boy named Matt goes off to the “far beyond” in search of a blue-dyeing plant for the only friend who’s ever shown him kindness, and finds a wholly different Village he calls “the place of Broken People.”

      Upon his return with the desired plants and a strange, blind man (resident of the Village of Broken People), Matt is at a loss to describe this place where he was immediately welcomed and cared for after his arduous journey through the Forest. “Them be all broken, them people,” he said, “But there be plenty of food. And it’s quiet-like and nice.”

      When his friend, Kira, a girl with a bad leg from birth (saved from immediate death only by a determined mother who refuses to let the village expose the infant as would be the usual practice), questions Matt further, he shrugs in bewilderment: “Like you. Some don’t walk good. Some be broken in other ways. Not all. But lots. Do you think it makes them quiet and nice, to be broken?” Kira does not know how to answer. Her mother had taught her, “pain makes you strong.” But this tale of people who rescued strangers like the blind man now before her and tended them until they healed baffled her. No one in her village would have ever done that, let alone even known how.

      Lowry, however, does not offer the easy answer that Matt seems to grasp at, that being broken makes people nice. There are other characters in the novel who have let pain and loss turn them cruel and even more ruthless in their fight to survive and gain power.

      In the end, Gathering Blue offers simply the metaphor of the rare blue dye made from woad, which can be found only in the “Village of Healing.” As the blind man explains, his pronouns crucially changing, “There is always someone to lean on . . . Or a pair of strong hands for those who have none. . . . They help each other . . . we help each other.” It is left to us readers to consider how, in our world, we might move from the awed “they help each other” to the voice of belonging: “we help each other. . . . we are like a family.” Both those who are broken and those who are not.

“The village of healing has existed a long time. . . . Wounded people still come. But now it is beginning to change, because children have been born there and are growing up. So we have strong healthy young people among us. And we have others who have found us and stayed because they wanted to share our way of life.”

Lois Lowry

The View from My Bed

On By ednafroeseIn books, Gratitude, hope, PainLeave a comment

            It’s a limited view, of course. The prone position, at least indoors, doesn’t offer much to look at. In the last many days (I’ve lost count), the pain of a nasty back episode has necessitated almost continual bed rest. I would have been pleased with a skylight—clouds and stars both draw the human spirit upward and outward. 

            So: the wise ones among us, who ponder the meaning of life, agree that pain is not only  an inevitable part of life but also a great teacher of wisdom. I am not a sage, just an unwilling, and uncomfortable observer of the dogwood branches, caught in the relentless prairie wind, sweeping back and forth across the window, making shadow patterns on the curtains. Every now and then, a blue jay, sometimes wet from our nearby bird bath, comes to the bird feeder to ponder the day’s offerings and then hammer open peanut shells with his/her beak. Then the jay is gone again, until the next visit. Wisdom remains elusive.

            Nevertheless, I have learned a few things in the past month:

            It is prudent to select your confidantes carefully when you choose to talk about back pain (or colds, or any common human ailment). Unwanted advice is immediately and freely given, especially by those who know little about you or the problem. While in my worst days, I would have tried any magical brew—so I said in my desperation— I do want to believe that common sense would have come to my rescue and prevented outright silliness. Better to turn complete hermit and take a vow of silence than be regaled with others’ tales of suffering and/or miraculous cures.

            I learned that the familiar number scale for measuring pain—on a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your pain?—doesn’t convey enough information. I offered my physiotherapist (who knows me well enough to interpret my moods) a new scale: stiff upper lip toleration of discomfort; winces and grimaces; moans, groans, and muttered imprecations; uncontrolled sobbing; and at the top end, screams. It’s a sliding scale, of course, because what evoked a bare grimace early on might later provoke sobs of weary despair.

            I discovered that the most important task of a health care worker, at whatever level, is to be kind. It’s that simple. Kind enough to listen. Lack of kindness doubles pain and deepens the loneliness that already surrounds the sufferer, who dwells in a separate country, the land of Oz, as Nora Gallagher describes it in Moonlight Sonata in the Mayo Clinic.

            In another time, that was the book that gave me comfort, that spoke words that I could hear and understand.

This time it was Marilynne Robinson’s Lila, not a book about illness at all or anything remotely close to my situation. I did not grow up as an orphan; I have always known who my parents are. I have never been homeless or lived as an itinerant worker. I have not known the kind of depressed economy that makes work in a whorehouse a reasonable alternative to starvation.

            But something about Lila’s strange encounter with an old preacher in a small town held my attention. He saw her as a fellow human being with innate dignity and extended to her, not only incredible kindness, but also grace. He lived his theology, fully prepared to question all of his erudite Calvinist doctrine rather than cause Lila any distress. And the possibility of such all-embracing grace was what I needed to hear.

For chronic pain has a way of involving body, soul, and spirit. It pulls together into one overwhelming sensation all of the stress and all of the guilt over hurtful mistakes and complicated relationships and all of the existential worries and whatever else is stewing around in the mind. That entire mess needs to be accepted and offered grace.

            Reading Lila was a serendipitous choice, because the final bit of wisdom that being helpless in pain gave me was a new awareness of how difficult life must be for those who don’t have an address, who don’t have easy access to medical care, who couldn’t imagine paying for additional services like physiotherapy or even any necessary medication. I’ve had lots of time to ponder the privileges available to some and not to others.

Lila ended with some hope, I’m glad to say, while remaining realistic and thoughtful. My own involuntary journey into the land of Oz seems headed toward the exit (still too far away for my liking), for which I’m more grateful than I know how to say. I have also not walked alone. That is an incredible gift.