Canada Day in 2021

Our neighbour is renovating his childhood home right next door to us, and in the process, his electrical supply wire is being rerouted -- right up against the backyard flag pole where we hang our Canada Flag every July 1st, Canada Day. 

At first, I was quite unhappy that we had to take the flag pole down... but since then, the revelation of over 1,000 unmarked graves of children who died at the Indian Residential Schools in our country have made me a lot less proud of the flag that was a real source of pride when I travelled Europe in my twenties. Canadians like me are waking up to the shadow side of our country, visible in its long history of settlers mistreating those who lived here for thousands of years before a pope invented the Doctrine of Discovery and Europeans took over the lands we now call Canada.

The history of prejudice continues today, with recent attacks on Muslim women here in my own city. This grand country we call Canada does not feel like a safe place for many people who live here, namely, people of colour and our LGBTQ2S+ siblings. Some of the descendants of Canada's settlers still have entitlement issues, forgetting that they are no better than anyone else even as they look down on people who are different than them.

So when my good neighbour, Shelley, offered me the sign pictured here, I was delighted. I can't fly a Canada flag this year, and truthfully, I'm not sure I would want to if I could. Not this year while we're in the thick of the discoveries of these unmarked graves and the pain it causes so many Indigenous neighbours; maybe next year. But the message of this sign fits perfectly for right now.

Let's do more than fly flags or post signs like this one. Let's make Canada a country we can be proud of by preventing it from becoming a home for hate. There is plenty of room here for healthy diversity, for reconciliation and healing, and for everyone.

Sunday Reflection: My simple morning prayer

I've gotten out of the habit of posting on Sundays, mainly because my Sunday mornings are now spent with the Inner City Pastoral Ministry, where we opened worship to 30 participants today, first time since November, and where we are able to provide lunch/snack bags for 200 people (and lots of water in this heat!) thanks to generous donations from over 70 faith communities in our city. It's a very important ministry for the Community of Emmanuel members, who have been asking for worship and prayer since covid restrictions forced us to shut the doors at the end of last year.

My own prayer patterns have changed a lot over the course of the pandemic, but I am taking delight in the evolution of my morning meditation, which now includes this simple prayer that I have shared before, but which has developed its own melody over the last year or so. So this has been my un-moodled "Sunday reflection" since March, as I sing it on my short drive to the Inner City each week before I meet my brothers and sisters there. If you turn on the subtitles, it's easy to sing along. Feel free to use it as you will, or to share it wherever it might be appreciated.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3SWUOLzgKM

Saying no to coal

With the June 17th Alberta Energy Regulator's decision against the Grassy Mountain Coal development in Southern Alberta, ranchers, farmers, environmentalists, First Nations communities and people like me are breathing a huge sigh of relief.

For a few minutes, anyway.

But there are more coal projects in the works, and it's important that Albertans continue to fight against the decapitation of our gorgeous rockies, the destruction of our wilderness, and the pollution of the prairie provinces' river headwaters that many of us eventually drink, never mind the habitat of many creatures that are already endangered.

So the Council of Canadians has these wonderful lawn signs (above) that are available to help interested people make others aware of the issues, and they have also made it easy to send an email to the Alberta Coal Policy Committee that is reviewing the other potential coal developments. You can access a link to their email campaign by clicking here, or click here to request a lawn sign. 

Tomorrow I will be participating in a brochure campaign to keep the issue in the forefront of peoples' minds. In the meantime, I encourage you to check out the links above, and to share information with the people around you. Coal strip mining is the last thing we need to be doing in a world that's in the midst of a climate crisis. Let's protect our rockies and headwaters for the sake of future generations.

Reflections on National Indigenous Peoples' Day 2021

The t-shirt I'm wearing today

With the recent revelation of the discovery of 215 unmarked graves at a former Residential School in Kamloops, BC, 104 others near Brandon, Manitoba, and the potential for many more across the country (the Truth and Reconciliation Commission gave 4,100 as a number of named and unnamed students who died at the schools -- but it's likely higher), our Indigenous brothers and sisters, and hopefully those of us around them, are very aware that there's a lot of grief that comes with being of Aboriginal descent these days. Yesterday at the Inner City Pastoral Ministry, Garry* told me that he was a Kamloops survivor. I'm so glad he is! His smile is a reflection of the sun even as his community carries so much pain... pain that no one should ever have to carry.

Today I'm marking National Indigenous Peoples' Day quietly, thinking of him, and of the childhood friend who taught me about indigeneity through her friendship. We were friends for just a few years in my childhood, as my family moved away from our shared small town in Saskatchewan when I was nine years old. Noreen was a child of the Sixties Scoop and a wonderful friend, but wasn't a letter writer, so we lost touch. She paid my family a visit in Edmonton when I was in High School and it was so great to see her again, but again, we lost touch. For many years. And I never stopped missing her.

When the internet became a place to find people, I googled her and found a picture of her riding a camel in Madagascar, but the website that displayed it offered no way to reach her. Then in 2015, Facebook came to the rescue. I found someone with her name, sent a tentative message, and our friendship as adults (in the same city!) began. 

Then three years ago, Noreen returned to her First Nations community in Saskatchewan, and lost her connection with Facebook when her phone died. I tried everything I could think of to reconnect, but was at a complete loss. I wrote a poem for her and sent it to her last email address, not knowing what else to do. That didn't work either.

But with the announcement of the 215 children lost because of the Kamloops Residential School just recently, I dreamed of my friend, and redoubled my effort to find her. Fortunately, I discovered her daughter on social media and asked to connect with her mom once again. And in no time at all, Noreen and I were texting like no time had passed, talking about our families and gardens and friendship. She has made a huge difference in my life in ways I can't even begin to express, but mostly in giving me an unending desire to connect with many other Indigenous sisters and brothers. Her friendship is an incredible gift, one I've done nothing to deserve, and I am grateful for her, so today I sent her the poem that got lost in cyberspace, and tomorrow we might video call each other, I hope!

I'm very grateful for her, and for the wisdom and goodness of Turtle Island's Original peoples, who have forgiven us so much already, and who are willing to work with us toward reconciliation of the many wrongs Canada's settler population have ignored for too long. There's so much I learned in the Indigenous Canada course two months ago that all Canadians should know -- so that we can begin to heal the hurts.

I pray that in the years to come, we will become aware of all the festering issues that need to be healed and attend to them with speed and compassion. We have so much work to do to apologize and fix things, and it all starts with reaching out to each other. Yesterday at the Inner City Pastoral Ministry, a group of dancers came to do a demonstration and educate us a little bit. I leave you with a few beautiful images from a very touching morning with such kind, and talented dancers, all! Their strength and goodness were more than inspiring. 

May we all be inspired to build relationships of peace and justice!

*Not his real name.

Simple Suggestion #284... Nominate a neighbour (Front Yards in Bloom)

Poster borrowed from the Evansdale
Community League Website

I intended to post this a while back, but with garden dirt on my hands most of the time lately, I rarely open my laptop for moodling. So this is a time limited post for my Edmonton neighbours!

It's Front Yards in Bloom nomination season until June 30, and for the next couple of days you'll find me walking the streets of my neighbourhood and noting the addresses of neighbours whose yards inspire me to stop in my tracks and smile, or at least take a second look at the beauty they are creating.

For some of us, a yard is like a canvas, a place to create a landscape that feeds the soul, not to mention bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, jackrabbits and other wildlife that's less visible. My regular readers know that I'm with God and St. Francis when it comes to rectangular monocultures that many folks seem to value, and cheer more for yards full of colour, texture and life.

So the City of Edmonton's Front Yards in Bloom nominations are a wonderful way to encourage neighbours to create spaces that attract wildlife, increase biodiversity and give us lovely things to look at. If you have a neighbour who gives extra time and effort to their greenspace or balcony or tiny yard, or who plants edibles or native plant species where folks can appreciate them, why not visit the city website and nominate them to let them know you recognize their work as something special that makes the neighbourhood more beautiful?

The deadline for nominations is June 30th.

Looking for more Simple Suggestions? Click here.

Special message for my readers

Sunset between Nanton and Claresholm

This blog platform recently informed me that the automatic email subscription service that brings Simple Moodlings directly to many of your inboxes is ending as of July. Which means that those of you who find my little love letters to the world among your emails soon won't unless I come up with an alternate strategy for putting them there. *****

This has led me to a bit of soul-searching. You may or may not have noticed that these moodlings are fewer and farther between in the last few years, even in the year before covid arrived. Part of the decline in my web logging effort has been due to the loss of my most faithful mother-in-law reader, part due to the development of other interests and to that low-grade corona virus fatigue I've mentioned before. So for the past weeks I've been asking myself, is it possible that I have nothing left to offer?

And the answer to that question will ever be a resounding NO! As long as we have this beautiful world to wonder at, I will be wanting to share it with my handful of readers, people who are special to me. Even Friday's roadside picture of the sunset (from a weekend visit with my dad-in-law) at the top of this moodling is worth sharing with you, in my books...

So Simple Moodlings is not riding off into the sunset.

I looked at my email subscribers' list this morning and am pretty sure I recognize at least seventy percent of the email addresses on it. Thank you for being there! And there are other readers who don't receive weekly emails but who tell me on occasion that they enjoyed something they happened to read when they made a point of visiting Simple Moodlings, or if I happened to cross post a moodling on other social media platforms. Thank you to you, too!

So... almost eleven years after it began, Simple Moodlings continues, perhaps more sporadically than in past years, but there's a difference. It won't just show up in readers' inboxes UNLESS you send me an email to let me know you want it there. 

***** Email "I'm In!" to simplemoodler@ gmail.com and I promise to get my moodlings to you one way or another. *****

And if you haven't been an email subscriber yet, now's your chance!

There's simply so much wonder to share, even just a little at a time. 

Spring beauty, spring miracles

I'm loving what's going on in the yard these days. There's so much blooming, and many seedlings poking through the ground. It's been fun walking around with my phone camera set to the macro image setting and taking pictures of things close up. To me, this kind of beauty is a miracle, but then, if you really think about it, EVERYTHING is a miracle.

I managed to get all of the garden planted on the weekend, and am glad I did because I hurt my foot yesterday and am staying off it for two days just to be on the safe side while the swelling goes down and I wait for x-ray results. I'm pretty sure it's not broken, just badly bruised. Since the weather is cool, the spinach can wait a few more days to be harvested, and hopefully it will rain to keep my pots watered, though I'm not holding my breath. Lately, the 30% chance of rain forecasted never seems to arrive in this neighbourhood, though I saw some water on the streets a few neighbourhoods over. 

Anyway, today is a lovely day for putting my feet up and reading an interesting book, something I rarely do in the month of June when there's so much to see and do outdoors. I'm grateful that my injury is minor, and looking forward to getting back outside to see more of what's below! Enjoy your week!

#ilovespringmiracles #everythingsamiracle

Perennial forget-me-nots

"Never Alone" rose

Stella D'Oro day lilies

Purple bearded iris

Striped multi-tulip (seven flowers on one stem!)

The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry

This man's poetry always touches something deep in me. If you can, take a minute to enjoy this wee film by Charlotte Ager and Katy Wang.

https://vimeo.com/451530204