'Tis the Season

'Tis the Season for Illness

In the days right before final exams, I was conquered by a cold bug. When you have to know pretty much everything about Christian thought and culture to the year 1500, you don't want to be sneezing and blowing your nose. But I survived and hopefully I fared well on the exams.

I spent last weekend in Calgary with my cousin Shandi and her tiny toddler Sebastian. He has everyone wrapped around his finger and he knows it. I just can't help it - I love him so much. Unfortunately, Sebastian was sick.

Sebastian's dad is Filippino so on Sunday, Shandi and I went to a Christmas party for the culture society of the Pangasinan province of the Philippines. Shandi and I stuck out a little because we are not Filippino. I felt a little more conspicuous since I am not part of their closeknit community. We were listening to overly loud Christmas music, looking in curiousity at the half dozen clowns making balloon animals and eating cold hot dogs, when Sebastian threw up. So we went home.

Baby brother Grant picked me up and took me to the Hat. When I arrived, I found out that Sebastian was learning to share. In fact, he had shared his illness with me. Isn't giving what the holidays are all about?

'Tis the Season for Coming Home

I feel like a little kid again as I anticipate my second post-Taiwan Christmas. Advent has been an extra long season for me this year. I've been attending Christmas parties since the start of December and practicing Christmas carols with a choir since mid-November. For the last month in my Greek class, we've been translating Matthew 1 and Luke 1,2. I have been immersed in Christmas. I have been overwhelmed by the Incarnation.

This is year will be the first Christmas away from home for an Australian friend of mine at Regent. He shared with me an interesting thought on Christmas. We think of family and coming home, but in way, that's the opposite of what happened that first Christmas.

Jesus didn't come home; he left. He came to earth. He left his father. He took on skin. Even Mary and Joseph were away from home; they weren't in Nazareth and they had no place to stay. Christmas stunk of animals not cinnamon and evergreen branches. It wasn't comfortable and it wasn't home.

Home on the prairies, I don't want to think about exile and foreignness. I'm too busy enjoying family and home, a sense of belonging. Images of the last few days of homecoming run through my mind. Shandi and I laughing at Mike's bedhead. Sebastian's pitiful face before he blew chunks. Nana's bright smile with her new teeth. Poppa's hugs that always smart a little because of the pens in his shirt pocket. Grant wearing a mid-80s brown pinstripe suit to a hockey game. Gregg almost plowing into a herd of deer on our way home from that same hockey game. The parents happy faces because all their children will be home. Grandma Irene delivering the mail. Silly small things. But this is home.

Augustine of Hippo said, "Our hearts were made for You, O Lord, and they are restless until they rest in you." Maybe we could say "they are homeless until they find their home in you." The Incarnation makes it possible for us to find our true home, our home in God.

Ho Ho Ho!

Like most students, I am celebrating the start of the holiday season by writing final exams. I hit a few Christmas parties in between nights of study and solitude. Today was my first exam of the week and two more will follow in the days to come. Then I will board a WestJet flight for Calgary and eventually wind my way to the winter wonderland of Frontier. Brr.

With the morning's test over and a couple hours of study finished in the library, I headed home for lunch. Walking to the bus, I felt something dripping on the back of my leg. The first time, I assumed it was "mysterious wet", the phenomenon of somehow getting moisture on your person from unspecified and unseen sources. This was a common occurrence in my Taiwanese life. After another drop on the same spot, I knew the rain was coming from my backpack. Indeed, my water bottle had burst its top and dowsed the contents of my bag, including a pink sheet of paper which felt inclined to share its dye with everything around it. A pink puddle emerged on the sidewalk. Just another day in my life . . . A good Samaritan stopped and gave me a plastic Safeway bag. She turned out to be Anna, a Christian girl who likes to study in Regent's atrium. So perhaps I made a new friend/acquaintance. But still, the soggy books and papers were disheartening.

But seeing the bus pull up brought a smile to my face. I had hit the jackpot. The Santa bus. Stuffed animals were lined up on the dash. Splashes of red and Christmas decorations circled around the driver . . . who was none-other than Santa Claus himself. I showed him my bus pass and wished him a hearty, "Merry Christmas" before taking a seat.

Thank God for blessings like a stranger with a Safeway bag and a Santa Claus who exchanged his sleigh for a bus.

Canadian Winters

I like hot weather. It's a theme that anyone who has read this blog would be well aware of.

Now, I do like snow. I just don't like the fact that snow is cold. My internal thermometer still hasn't reprogrammed itself from my time in Taiwan.

The weekend before last, it snowed. And it was beautiful. Big fluffy snowflakes drifted down from the sky, twinkling like stars in the orange glow of the streetlights. It was peaceful . . .


But so unlike BC. I've been told it never snows here. I left my trusty purple and green sorrels at home in Saskatchewan. As I trudged through snow-laden sidewalks on my way to the bus, I missed those loud boots. The snowbanks kept getting bigger because no one in Vancouver knows how to deal with snow. No one has a snow shovel. No one knows how to drive. (I saw a car - I think an old style Citation - motor down Broadway with chains on the back tires. Slight overkill, I would say. ) When we woke up to a winter wonderland, everyone seemed to be wondering.

I am from Saskatchewan. A few inches of snow is nothing to worry about. I put on some layers and took a bus to Regent. When I arrived, the parking lot was suspiciously empty. The building was suspiciously dark. A sign hung haphazardly on the door. Regent College is closed. It didn't even occur to me that snow would stop school. I am a farmer's child. I go to school even when it is blizzarding outside. I stood a while looking at the sign, somewhat dumbfounded. Then I made my way back to the bus. I ran into a friend, an Ontarian who also laughs in the face of snow. Together, we fled the campus and joked about British Columbians and their incapacity to deal with snow.

I guess the snow should remind me: I do live in Canada.