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I was picking up a birthday cake for the drop-in center where I work. As I walked out of the grocery store, I realized that the plastic cover on the cake wasn't as firm as I had thought. It had dented in, and I smeared a small part of the icing on the side and top of the cake. I thought I would go back and see if they could fix it. The lady working at the counter was visibly disappointed; she rolled her eyes and was quite dramatic as she went to work. I commented to the other...
I am a Sixties Scoop Survivor and someone who was adopted and then met my biological family later in life. Then there are a number of other pieces of the pie of my life-issues of addiction, rebellion, and the issues of having two sets of families. Then add issues related to health and the health of family members and all the other experiences good and bad that have happened in my life and in most of our lives. Then there are issues that may not happen to us directly, but...
My life changed that day. I had prepared a visual feast for my Sunday school class. I loaded books on mountains and waterfalls, colorful birds and fish, animals from every continent, galaxies and snowflakes into boxes in readiness for the next morning. Just as a funny thought, I asked the Lord if He had anything to add. I did not really expect an answer; I thought I had covered His creation well and I was just doing a lesson. But He did answer me. I heard, "All things were...
Have you ever bumped into someone and asked them, "What's new?" Maybe they replied, "Same old, same old." Maybe you have felt bored with life to the point where you were tired of waking up every morning, doing the same routine and looking at the same face in the mirror every day. If this is your experience, I would love to remind you of some amazing facts. You are living at this moment among seven billion people. Every day, 155000 people young and old die from various causes;...
Una was a beautiful Cherokee girl. Her name meant "Remember," and she did remember the smallest details of not only her own life, but the details of those who lived in the green valley that had been the home of the Cherokee since the beginning of time. Una remembered all the battles and births and deaths. She remembered the best and the worst of times. She remembered everything. Una was smaller than the other girls her age, and she had beautiful hair that hung to her waist....
I love the English language. But if you're trying to learn it, it will confuse the life out of you. A good twist of phrase. A play on words. Here are a few alternative definitions to common English words. See if these make you smile: Selfish: What the owner of a seafood store does. Rubberneck: What you do to relax your wife. Subdued: A dude who works on a submarine. Benign: What you be after you be eight. Primate: Removing your spouse from the front of the TV. Paralyze: Two...
We don't know about you, but we feel like 2021 has been a tad of a whirlwind. We accepted our roles with Indian Life Ministries just over a year ago! And COVID-19 has certainly kept us on our toes almost every day. But, we have been so blessed and are so thankful. Now that we have been with Indian Life for a full year, it doesn't feel like our learning curve is so very straight up. Instead of straight up, perhaps the angle of the line is more at a 45 degree, not 90. We've...
I sometimes think about the first time I ever flew in a plane, where we were totally dependent on instruments. We were coming into Anchorage Alaska in a Navajo Chieftain and the airport was all "socked in" with fog. The pilot kept checking with the tower as to how much visibility we had & finally got the okay to land when we were about 10 miles out. I remember the helpless feeling I had as we descended into that last fog bank and everything disappeared! I was watching the...
I wonder how many doors you and I stepped through today? I probably stepped through various doorways in my house at least 15 times since waking. When I went downtown, I stepped through the post office door and the insurance agency door. I entered each purposely. I was on a mission; I needed to get to a certain place that only had one way in; I had to go through one particular door. My will totally dictated my movements and the direction I was going. There is another door that...
As I reflect on how many of us as Indigenous people have contributed to the highest set of statistics, in a variety of social ills, I'm left with many thoughts. It makes me think more deeply about all the obstacles to success we as have faced throughout North America. So many different tribal groups and so many souls. When I do think more deeply about all we've been through over the last 500 years, my own life fits part of those higher statistics. It's a process of reflection...
Have you ever sensed life passing so fast that you couldn't keep up with it? Every ten days we have to do laundry, and I constantly say, "I just did laundry yesterday!" Christmas always takes me by surprise. I turn 75 this summer; yet I'm sure I turned 17 only a few months ago. I heard of someone doing this with their age, so I tried it and was amazed by what I saw. I imagined a tack pinning the end of a string on 1947, the year I was born. Then I extended that string up to...
What scares you? I fear having a heart attack while playing the game Charades. And public speaking. I fear heights. I get woozy on a stepladder, or looking down a staircase, or when I sing gospel classics like "Love Lifted Me." That's what you get from living your entire life on the prairies, where the largest hill in sight is that mound of dirt a gopher pushed up in your backyard. Of course, fear is healthy if you stumble on a grizzly bear and her cubs. It'll stop you from gi...
My daughter, Storm, has an incredible memory. She can remember everything I ever did that was wrong. Recently she reminded me of an incident that happened when she was a teenager. It was late at night and I remembered I needed some cash for something I had to do the next morning. I didn't want to drive to the bank alone to use the ATM machine so asked my daughter to go with me. She was ready for bed, wearing pajamas with cows jumping over the moon printed on them and house...
When I take a look at my life and everything I've gone through-all the good and the bad-I see various reasons why I went through bad times. The reasons were usually a result of at least one of four things: 1-Temptation and sin; 2-The pressures of the world and bad influence of friends; 3-The attacks of Satan and his demons; 4-Things beyond my control that I didn't ask to happen, want to happen or invite to happen, but nonetheless happened. 1-Temptation and Sin: During my late...
I watched the jet streaming across the sky and wondered at how many people were inside; I wondered where they were going and if they were nervous about speeding along at such heights. How can that plane fly through the same air that we breathe into our lungs? It seems too airy to carry anything. How does that cruise ship carrying 3,000 people, their vacation stuff and enough food to feed them all, float along on water that I can dip my hand into? I would never have believed...
He set His face as a flint, while I flipped. A little while ago I got caught in a blizzard while travelling on the highway with my RV. The snow was blinding! I couldn't see anything-not the hydro polls to my left or right or even a few feet in front of me. The wind was coming straight at me and the snow was blowing in ferocious lines along the side of me on the highway. I had been driving in these hazardous conditions for about an hour. I knew I would be going down a steep...
I am an extremely young grandpa, still able to outrun and outjump thirteen grandkids. It helps that they are seven and under. When they're worn out from trying to catch me, they say, "Read to me." Sweeter words were seldom spoken. My second grandchild, Eowyn, snuggles up on my lap and listens, wide-eyed as three little oinkers set out to seek their fortune. She loves pigs. Loves it when the first little porker buys a load of straw. Loves it when the sweet little swine builds...
It was pitch dark. The heat radiating from the walls of the cell wouldn't leave me alone. Sweat dripped off my hairy body. The night moved slowly-as slowly as the walls cooled. Being in the Administrative Segregation Unit (The Hole), life moves at a snail's pace. There is little to do physically and even less when it's burning hot. Time seems to slow to a stop. A 24-hour day feels like a week; a week is a month and a month is eternity. During the day the noise from steel...
There is an old saying: "It's better to wear moccasins than to try to carpet the world." In other words, take care of yourself and your own life before you try to change the world. When my friends are unhappy, I want to fly in like superman and "fix" things and make them happy. Sadly, in my efforts to "help," I sometimes made things worse by interfering. I didn't realize this until a friend of mine decided I would be much better off living close to her. She contacted realtors,...
Q: Right now it seems like every time we turn around someone has died or is seriously ill. As Christians, we know heaven is a reality for believers who've gone before. But how do we deal with the very human emotions of loss and keep our grief healthy? How do we keep from dropping into depression? People tell us to look to God and trust Jesus, but what does that look like in our lives? A: At the onset, I must state that I am not a therapist and my response to this question is b...
I love old guitars. What can I say? I just love old guitars! A bunch of years back, we were singing in a really remote, fly-in community and I couldn't believe what I saw hanging on a friend's back wall. It was a 1956 Gibson ES125-a collector's classic that was a few years older than me! I'd never played one before, and I was just wowed by this half-century-old guitar!! I was even more speechless when my friend gifted it to me! Two weeks later, I was getting the Old Gibson...
OK, Scrooge didn't save the world but it is hard to think of Christmas without thinking about Scrooge. In 1843, Charles Dickens didn't realize when he wrote "A Christmas Carol" that 175 years later people would still love the story. We can sympathize with Scrooge, he had a horrible childhood, he was orphaned, his sister died, he lost the woman he loved . . . we can understand why he turned into a bitter, miser who only loved money. Then comes redemption. He changes, he has a...
When my aging parents lived in our granny suite, they bought a new stereo because they could no longer hear the old one. The old one was an attractive little unit, complete with record player and 8-track. I think Noah used it on the Ark for weather reports. I was showing Mom and Dad how to set the digital clock on their new unit when my son Jeffrey, who had been admiring the 100-watt speakers said, "Um, Grandpa, you should put this thing in your will. I'd like it." My father...
I've been thinking about transitions. We don't think much about the more mundane ones-like halftime in football, lunch time at work, period break at a hockey game (I used to ref hockey 'cuz I got more ice time that way . . . ), or even a simple thing like a semi-colon; we pay more attention to the more significant transitions like graduations, weddings, birthdays and the like. Transitions all have two things in common; they mark an end to one thing and start another. The old...
I've been thinking a lot about forgiveness lately. The kind of forgiveness that feels like, if I extend it, and choose to consider actually forgiving, that I am the one who is losing. You know the kind of forgiveness I'm talking about, right? The kind where you've been hurt so deeply, on such a core level, that you can't possibly consider forgiving the other person? The kind that causes a physical ache in your heart and is accompanied by anger when the ache subsides. The kind...
