My Valentine's Gift for supporting the Surrey Community Cat Coalition Valentine’s Day can be difficult if you’re single, but this year it was lovely. It began with a huge heart-shaped box of chocolates, a prize for donating to the Surrey Community Cat Coalition. My love and concern for homeless cats was returned in a tasty gift.
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Local snowdrops bring cheer on wintry days An instrument of torture used to kill Jesus, the cross seems central to the Christian faith. Is there a way to see it that is uplifting rather than depressing? Can we apply it to our own trying times? My radical reading in the 1980s We wore soft cream-coloured raincoats over our undergarments. I had watched others being baptized at the front of the sanctuary for years, wishing I was tall enough not to drown. Now I was ready.
Breakfast this morning with fresh pineapple from Hawaii My recipe for oatmeal comes with a story. When my parents arrived in Canada as refugees in 1949, they ate a lot of oatmeal, sometimes three times a day when there was nothing else. They had to repay their travel costs and there was no government support, so what money my father earned went to paying back the loan and supporting my mother and the children.
Campbell Valley Regional Park, the site of some risky driving behaviour We can’t always avoid crashing, but our attitude and even prayer can protect us. As I’ve seen the devastating impacts of road crashes, when I drive, I often pray for a safe journey. I recently learned a more powerful way to pray.
I filmed Sumi Kinoshita speaking about her book in June, 2017 Sumi Kinoshita wrote about her experience being interned in her gripping memoir, Shikataganai: It Can’t Be Helped. Her writing is crisp and dispassionate as she recounts devastating losses and discrimination endured. The vivid descriptions and archival and family photos paint a fascinating picture of British Columbia in the 1940s and 1950s.
Blackie and Ginger on their cat tree, 1995 I’m not in a relationship now, but when I think back, the most loving thing any man has ever done for me was by T. He was like a gift who arrives in your life but you don’t quite realize it. I saw the potential for friendship right away, and invited him to stay in my home until he had his own place. He was stuck in a motel after being transferred to our northern community.
The poet in Ecclesiastes helped me to leave Sometimes you can’t solve a situation with nonviolent communication. It may be best to sever contact. I had a difficult experience recently, but don’t they all bring important lessons if we pay attention?
I’m working on a script for a conflict situation, using the approach from Marshall Rosenberg’s excellent book, Nonviolent Communication, A Language of Life. I’ve found the book very helpful in the past to deal with conflicts that had me at a complete loss. We don’t learn how to handle conflict well in our society. There’s a lot of judgement, which Rosenberg calls a form of violence. I wouldn’t go that far, but I agree that communicating without judgement gets you further. Photo: My kitty with my Christmas reading I enjoyed reading a heartwarming new anthology of fifty-five Canadian Christian writers, Christmas with Hot Apple Cider: Stories from the Season of Giving and Receiving. I read it each morning at breakfast for about a month. It was a lovely way to enjoy the holiday season and continue to experience its warmth after the celebrations were done for the year.
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WriterIrene Plett is a writer, poet and animal lover living in South Surrey, British Columbia, Canada. Categories
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