How To Build a Permaculture Vegetable Garden

The garden season is winding down here in Seattle though we still need to pick our apples and pears and complete the harvest of beans, carrots, broccoli and greens that will hopefully continue for the next few months.  This is a good season to start dreaming for next year. Permaculture is a form of agriculture [...]

Is This Real?

Last week I posted a couple of articles that deal with our perception of reality and how it is manipulated by the education of the secular world.  There are other forces too that shape our view of reality, not least the creative arts of music, art and more and more TV and the internet which [...]

Novels I am Reading and How the World is Changing

I just realized that I have read 4 novels in the last week all written by people of different nationalities.  I remember when I first lived in the U.S. I loved to travel because it was the only way to find books written outside the U.S. Then for a while it seemed that no matter [...]

Living with Pain and the Messiness of Life

Yesterday I had a tooth extracted.  Pretty painless actually and the dental office did everything possible to make it even less painful.  I was offered general anaesthetic but opted for local – after all it was only a 20 minute procedure and generals can have complications.  That saved me $500.  I even refused the laughing [...]

My Favourite Apple/Blackberry Crisp

We have 3 apple trees in our parking strip that usually produce far more apples than we can possibly eat fresh.  We also love to harvest wild blackberries which grow in great profusion in the Pacific NW.  This last weekend we headed up to Camano Island for that purpose and because the apples on our [...]

Salvation is free, discipleship is costly

Yesterday’s lectionary readings ere all about the cost of discipleship.  The gospel portion from Luke 14 25-33 is one of the most challenging scriptures I read.  And like many of us I would really like to believe that Jesus did not mean these words literally.  But I think that he did.  Or as our preacher [...]

Back From Esperanza

Tom and I have just returned from 5 wonderful days at Esperanza, a very small and remote settlement on the West coast of Vancouver Island that can only be reached by boat and that is after an hour’s trip along gravel road to Tahsis. But the trip was worth it. The settlement was started in [...]

Loving the Unloveable

I was just reading an article this morning about the wildlife we like to attract to our garden.  It talked about the fact that all of us love to see nice furry creatures like squirrels and winged creature like colourful birds and buuterflies out our windows.  We tend to ignore the destructiveness of some of [...]

In Need of Administrative help

You may have noticed from some of my blog posts recently that I am a little overworked at the moment.  I am currently looking for someone who might be able to volunteer to help in the MSA office as an administrative assistant 10 – 12 hours a week.  If you know anyone that might be [...]

A Breathing Prayer

I have had several requests for this prayer recently.  I use it in the introduction to my GodSpace workshops and wrote it last year when I was in a time of really needing to center down myself.  It really helps me to relax and focus on God. I suggest that people sit with their hands [...]