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by on 3.24.08

the ant and the grasshopper – maple leaf version

A parable for my American friends…

The ant & the grasshopper … Classic Version!

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he’s a fool, and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The shivering grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

The End

The Maple Leaf Version (i.e., The Canadian Version) [with appropriate footnotes to explain things for my non-Canadian friends, eh?]

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he’s a fool, and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. So far, so good, eh?

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Filed Under: Canada, Fun and games
by on 2.16.08

more on the anglicans in Canada

While encouraged by the decisions of some Anglicans’ willingness to separate themselves from direct association with their compromised Canadian diocese, still their efforts likely don’t yet take them far enough. In an article in today’s Globe & Mail, more news about other congregations considering a split is offered. But there is this:

Conservative Anglicans want to separate without cutting their ties with the majority of the Anglican Church that share their traditional views, Bishop Donald Harvey, moderator of the recently formed Anglican Network in Canada, said yesterday in an interview from Newfoundland.

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Filed Under: Anglicans, Canada, Church, Separation
by on 2.15.08

anglican turmoil – deeper than same-sex?

The largest Anglican congregation in Canada, St. John’s, in the exclusive Shaughnessy district of Vancouver, BC, voted last Wednesday to break ties with its diocese and to join with a ‘competing’ diocese, that of the Southern Cone, basically a South American parallel to the Canadian branch of the church. [I don’t pretend to understand how dioceses work or how they are organized.] This decision is full of risk for the congregation as it looks like the liberal Canadian diocese will mount a fight for the buildings and property of the congregation.

As a fundamentalist, I certainly applaud any resistance to the anti-orthodox establishment of mainline churches. The issue precipitating the split is the same-sex marriage debate, but it appears that more is at stake.

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Filed Under: Anglicans, Canada, Church, Separation
by on 11.14.07

on the highway of heroes

November 11 is called Remembrance Day in Canada. From my youth it has been a day of older men in medals, somber speeches, and poppies on lapels. The poppies are a distinctly Canadian memorial, inspired by the poem In Flanders Fields, by Lt. Col. John McCrae, MD, a Canadian military doctor who died of pneumonia during WWI.

Some TV news items on the day pointed us to a new Canadian memorial of our war dead, this time from the battlefields of Afghanistan. When the bodies of our soldiers arrive home in Canada, they are flown first to an air force base in Trenton, ON. From there, they travel in a funeral procession led by police cars up the 401 highway to Toronto for autopsy.

Our Canadian people have taken to lining the overpasses on the highway, waving flags and saluting the fallen heroes as they return home. I can’t find the news item I saw, but these links will tell the tale. I found the last one, a video with no sound from within one of the cars in the procession, to be quite moving.

A-Channel article on the highway

Canada AM interview with creator of petition

a view from the procession

John McCrae’s In Flanders Fields:

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch, be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields
Filed Under: Canada
by on 10.12.07

on the decline of religion in the True North

From an article on the funeral home business in Montreal comes this notice:

The Chronicle West End Edition > Regional news > The business of dying: “You have to understand that people are going to the church less and less. People are using funeral complexes for receptions and a number of other services to pay respect to the deceased, instead of going to the church”

The challenge remains. In our community, Christ, his gospel, and his church are largely ignored. One imagines that pure hatred would be better than bored indifference.

Regards,
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3

Filed Under: Canada
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